Folks, this is the danger of imprecisely titled movies, particularly ones about ninjas.
This is what I thought I was going to see:
But there is no such movie available on Netflix, or Amazon. In fact, they rerouted me to Bionic Ninja, which has an IMDB page that sure looks like the trailer above. But it turns out what I was looking for is this movie. That movie (Rage of Ninja) is only available on VHS, so the Bionic Ninja I picked up for $4 (with three other Ninja movies) is pretty much a bust.
See, Bionic Ninja, while from the same director (Godfrey Ho, using one of his many aliases) is nowhere as interesting as the trailer above. Since there's no trailer for Bionic Ninja, I can't show it to you, but it wouldn't matter. The plot is incomprehensible:
Bionic Ninja has something to do with the KGB using ninjas in Hong Kong to steal a secret formula for... something, except that they fail to steal the formula before some other guys do. A CIA agent then arrives, but is really British, or something, and he becomes fascinated by the "magic" ninjas. I say "magic" in part because he calls them magicians but also because the ninjas are able to appear and disappear at whim. Not "sneak off into the night" disappear, but literally just pop in and out of a scene as though editing trickery were at play (hint: it is).
There are at least ten other characters I counted that have something to do with the plot, but they're so poorly identified and are piled on top of each other so quickly that it's impossible to figure out exactly what's happening, who is doing what to whom, or what any of it has to do with the formula, the KGB, or the ninjas.
After a while, I got bored and hit the "fast forward" button until I saw instances with ninjas, which it turned out were few and far between. There was a kind-of training montage with the hero, and then a pretty lousy fight in a storage yard with two guys in ninja costumes shooting Uzis for no good reason. There is no Bionic Ninja that I could find, nor do the ninjas even really do anything except jump around. There are some other fight scenes, but when you don't really know who is fighting or what they're fighting about, it's pretty easy to lose interest, so I tuned out about halfway in.
More than anything, I was bummed that this wasn't Rage of Ninja, which was what I was hoping for. When I watch a ninja movie, I'm not looking for sleek assassins hiding in the dark and being badasses; I want truly nonsensical fight scenes coupled with bad dubbing and a white dude who has no business mixing it up with martial artists. Something like this:
Huh. Funny, I think that's the other half of the double feature with Bionic Ninja. Maybe all is not lost...
Showing posts with label Orientalism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Orientalism. Show all posts
Monday, April 19, 2010
Thursday, December 24, 2009
Holiday Guest Blogger: Douglas Fir
Greetings, human meat-bags. The Cap'n abandoned his shift again, so while he's
Ha! Get it! Because I'm a tree! Even the idiots can understand now, which I presume makes up 99% of you so-called "readers". Truly, just a little OAK on my part. Please, we both know you're being read this gagorium entry by some speech mechanism, which provides you with the requisite farts and toodles to keep you from being distracted. That, of course, MAPLE or may not be part of my insidious plan to lull you into stupor, so that my plans of coniferous world domination may again take SEED!
Much like my last visit to this backwater corner of the internets, I Douglas Fir will provide you with the week's "top" movies, but re-titled in a manner that the most snail brained of you can grasp the meaning. Failing that (and I won't), I will provide a quality Tree related pun, because it's what you deserve.
To prevent any further BIRCH-ing and moaning, here are the "top" films rotting your jello brains:
1. U Can has Blue Kitteh for $500 million Dollars.
2. Bestiality, Disney Style!
3. My White Mother Says to Play Football.
4. For Richer, For Poorer 2: Even Less Funny
5. I wish that DOGWOOD steal her away from Sparklevision!
6. Yes We Afrikaans!
7. I Always Get SYCAMORE Jim Carrey Kid's Movies.
8. Planes, Planes, and Automoplanes.
9. Sissy Fight.
10. Old Dogs.
To be fair, when the fact that a film like Old Dogs exists, there's not much sense in obfuscating it. Uh oh, I used a word that confuses and angers you! Best to cower under your pillows for the impending arrival of Santa Fir! And I swear, if you leave those fires burning again this year, I will so press charges!
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Odds and Sods
Remake update:
The following remakes have been added to the "must be made before people wise up to this" queue - Maniac, I Spit on Your Grave, The Amityville Horror (again), Maniac Cop, and Child's Play.
Unfortunately, the Cap'n used up all of his tirade for the year regarding remakes, so you're on your own to manufacture faux surprise and rage. In the wake of The Last House on the Left, can anybody say they're surprised some sleazeball producer wants to remake I Spit on Your Grave? Have they even seen the original? Would they want to?
---
Some time soon, maybe Monday, I'll put up a Blogorium review of Funny People, which I watched during a break from studying for the GRE. In short: I liked it, although it's less accessible than Judd Apatow's other directorial efforts (The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up) or most of his producing gigs. The film is largely about unlikeable people doing rotten things to each other as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Nevertheless, I thought Adam Sandler was quite good, as were Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Eric Bana, and Leslie Mann.
It still boggles my mind that the same Eric Bana was in Star Trek and Funny People. It's really like two completely different people. I guess that's a compliment to Bana as an actor, and in some weird way to Apatow and JJ Abrams.
---
Thirst is still in the "to watch" pile, along with Up.
I didn't really have anything to add to that, other than to give you the mental picture of those two movies coexisting on some plane of existence.
---
As I do from time to time, the Cap'n threw in some Blu-Ray discs late last night to check out the quality. While I can't honestly say I've seen more than the first fifteen minutes of Howards End, The Robe, or Monsoon Wedding, they all looked great and I'm honestly looking forward to finishing them over the holiday break.
Monsoon Wedding may be the antidote to Slumdog Millionaire I've been looking for. Howards End is already more engaging than I once thought it would be. The Robe, the first Cinemascope release, looks better than some of the newer films I've put on. Criterion's Gomorrah should be arriving soon on Blu-Ray, and apparently it's quite good. They have a lot of quality coming out, much of which is from last year or early this year, including Revanche, A Christmas Tale, Hunger, and Steven Soderbergh's four hour epic Che.
---
I also put on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and even with its improbable opening sequence, I still say the movie is pretty good until Indy and Mutt leave the United States. From there on, I can't really strongly argue against detractors, but I still don't hate the movie.
---
The year is winding down, gang, so if you have requests for movies the Cap'n should look into in preparation for the Year End Recaps, please drop me a line.
The following remakes have been added to the "must be made before people wise up to this" queue - Maniac, I Spit on Your Grave, The Amityville Horror (again), Maniac Cop, and Child's Play.
Unfortunately, the Cap'n used up all of his tirade for the year regarding remakes, so you're on your own to manufacture faux surprise and rage. In the wake of The Last House on the Left, can anybody say they're surprised some sleazeball producer wants to remake I Spit on Your Grave? Have they even seen the original? Would they want to?
---
Some time soon, maybe Monday, I'll put up a Blogorium review of Funny People, which I watched during a break from studying for the GRE. In short: I liked it, although it's less accessible than Judd Apatow's other directorial efforts (The 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up) or most of his producing gigs. The film is largely about unlikeable people doing rotten things to each other as soon as the opportunity presents itself. Nevertheless, I thought Adam Sandler was quite good, as were Seth Rogen, Jonah Hill, Jason Schwartzman, Eric Bana, and Leslie Mann.
It still boggles my mind that the same Eric Bana was in Star Trek and Funny People. It's really like two completely different people. I guess that's a compliment to Bana as an actor, and in some weird way to Apatow and JJ Abrams.
---
Thirst is still in the "to watch" pile, along with Up.
I didn't really have anything to add to that, other than to give you the mental picture of those two movies coexisting on some plane of existence.
---
As I do from time to time, the Cap'n threw in some Blu-Ray discs late last night to check out the quality. While I can't honestly say I've seen more than the first fifteen minutes of Howards End, The Robe, or Monsoon Wedding, they all looked great and I'm honestly looking forward to finishing them over the holiday break.
Monsoon Wedding may be the antidote to Slumdog Millionaire I've been looking for. Howards End is already more engaging than I once thought it would be. The Robe, the first Cinemascope release, looks better than some of the newer films I've put on. Criterion's Gomorrah should be arriving soon on Blu-Ray, and apparently it's quite good. They have a lot of quality coming out, much of which is from last year or early this year, including Revanche, A Christmas Tale, Hunger, and Steven Soderbergh's four hour epic Che.
---
I also put on Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, and even with its improbable opening sequence, I still say the movie is pretty good until Indy and Mutt leave the United States. From there on, I can't really strongly argue against detractors, but I still don't hate the movie.
---
The year is winding down, gang, so if you have requests for movies the Cap'n should look into in preparation for the Year End Recaps, please drop me a line.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Guest Blogger: Douglas Fir
Greetings, pitiful humans! Your benevolent overlord, Douglas Fir here, checking in with some non-holiday related pearls of wisdom. The Cap'n was
Many of you have asked ol' Doug what he does when not taking over the world during December, but the truth is that like you pathetic bags of meat, I Mr. Fir indulge in quality movie watching. Not that trash like Termites 4: Down to the Last Drop or other such tree-related snuff films, but quality fare.
Why just the other day I was watching Above the Law and Hard to Kill, which I find appropriate since they describe me. You knuckleheads just don't appreciate descriptive titles any more, which is why these movies don't play at every theater all of the time (and believe me, as a talking tree I've been thrown out of my share of theaters). Oh sure, a movie like Paul Blart: Mall Cop doesn't leave much to the imagination, but imagine if it had been called Fat Die Hard. Then you'd know exactly what you were getting into!
For you tree-mendous benefit, I've decided to change the titles of the Top 10 Movies from last weekend so that the maximum number of people can tell immediately what they're going to see. For example: Hotel for Dogs = Hotel for Dogs*.
1. Robots Fight and Dumb Humans Watch
2. Ice Age: Dinosaur's Didn't Die
3. Johnny Depp with a Tommy Gun
4. People who Hate Each Other Fall in Love
5. Why did We Drink so Much?
6. Old Man and Boy Scout Fly
7. Girl with Cancer's Sister
8. The Train Hijacker
9. Hard to Watch
10. Why Not Just Buy a History Book?
See? All of those tell you exactly what you're going to see. This way, even if you don't see the movie, you have the basic idea and can converse with people who have. It eliminates confusion and helps humanity slowly dumb themselves down, paving the way for my inevitable conquest.
In the meantime, I think I'm going to watch something like Cat in the Brain, which better deliver exactly as promised. If there's not a cat in someon's brain, then I'm demanding a refund from Video Barn!
* Okay, bad example. But I'm a friggin' tree! You should be amazed I'm blogging at all. Someday when you bow before me, I'm going to bring up the time you insulted my cinematic prowess. Just you wait.
Thursday, June 11, 2009
Yee-ha!
Some days, you find just the right something to make a week full of crap sandwiches worthwhile. It's usually something you never expected to actually see, so that makes it all the better.
Student Bodies, move out of the way. You've been bumped by the only movie that I GUARANTEE will play during Summer Fest:
Everything else I said would play is playing, including Terrorvision, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, the 3-D stuff, Chopping Mall; it's all good. But something lost its "prime time" slot because an actual damned copy of Hillbillys in a Haunted House came into work.
This is the kind of movie you see on a list like The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made and think to yourself, "that looks special." You then try to find it for Trailer Sunday and can't, and that usually means it's not going to be find-able anywhere. Thank goodness for working at a used dvd store.
So what does this gem from 1967 have going for it? I'm glad you asked. How about John Carradine, Lon Chaney, Basil Rathbone AND Merle Haggard? What about an "entourage of foreign spies" looking to "steal a secret formula for rocket proepllant"? I know, it doesn't even sound like a horror movie, but there's totally a guy in a gorilla suit on the cover, and the mansion is haunted!
"What am I getting myself into?" you ask. Well, how about this:
Now, I just noticed that between the time I watched The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made and tonight that someone put the whole movie up, but I'm politely requesting you not watch it yet. Something this classic needs to be appreciated with others, people who can accurately judge if it really deserves to be one of the fifty worst movies ever made. That's some special company to keep...
Student Bodies, move out of the way. You've been bumped by the only movie that I GUARANTEE will play during Summer Fest:
Hillbillys in a Haunted House
Everything else I said would play is playing, including Terrorvision, Mega Shark vs Giant Octopus, the 3-D stuff, Chopping Mall; it's all good. But something lost its "prime time" slot because an actual damned copy of Hillbillys in a Haunted House came into work.
This is the kind of movie you see on a list like The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made and think to yourself, "that looks special." You then try to find it for Trailer Sunday and can't, and that usually means it's not going to be find-able anywhere. Thank goodness for working at a used dvd store.
So what does this gem from 1967 have going for it? I'm glad you asked. How about John Carradine, Lon Chaney, Basil Rathbone AND Merle Haggard? What about an "entourage of foreign spies" looking to "steal a secret formula for rocket proepllant"? I know, it doesn't even sound like a horror movie, but there's totally a guy in a gorilla suit on the cover, and the mansion is haunted!
"What am I getting myself into?" you ask. Well, how about this:
Now, I just noticed that between the time I watched The 50 Worst Movies Ever Made and tonight that someone put the whole movie up, but I'm politely requesting you not watch it yet. Something this classic needs to be appreciated with others, people who can accurately judge if it really deserves to be one of the fifty worst movies ever made. That's some special company to keep...
Friday, May 8, 2009
Blogorium Quick Shots: Slumdog Millionaire and Synecdoche, NY
For once, with very little school related business in the way and only phone calls to make, the Cap'n has time to catch up on a backlog of movies. It's good too, because I've had two movies from Netflix for what feels like forever, always being put on the back burner. Now that I've finally finished watching Slumdog Millionaire and Synecdoche, NY, I'll share some brief thoughts on both films. Both come from indie favorites, but the difference is that one was the Academy Award Winner for Best Picture this year and the other was reviled at Cannes for being "indulgent". We'll see if they deserve their reputations.
---
Slumdog Millionaire is a well made movie, I can't argue with that. The structure is interesting, the story unfolds in an interesting way, it's shot and edited impeccably, and I can totally understand why audiences went crazy for it. It has a feel good ending, a "love conquers all" meets "rags to riches" story, and cute kids. Against some stiff competition, I have no trouble seeing how and why it was the Best Picture of 2008, and it's nice to see Danny Boyle finally win an Oscar after a career I've enjoyed almost every part of*.
The question is: why didn't I enjoy Slumdog Millionaire? Despite all of these things which I'll readily acquiesce to, I found myself getting bored with about an hour left, and I had a nagging feeling the movie was doing exactly what I was worried it might.
Before I'd ever seen the film, I heard really faint criticism about Slumdog Millionaire about its representation of Indians as poverty ridden. Doing some simple searching, I found a page on the admittedly (at times) dubious Wikipedia about this, but my mind was already wandering somewhere else. I began to wonder if Slumdog Millionaire represented neo-Orientalism?
Having watched the movie, I have a hard time arguing against an Orientalist reading of Slumdog Millionaire. The film depicts the hard life of three homeless children who are subjected to miseries and rise out by resorting to petty and (finally) organized crime. Well, the "bad" brother does, because he works for a gangster who helps "Westernize" Bombay. The "good" brother, who wants the girl eternally torn between the two of them works for a call center for a European telecommunications firm and then becomes a folk hero in the Indian version of a British game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. When he wins it all, he finally shows the girl that he's worthy of her true love and shows the authorities and conventional thinkers that Jamal the slumdog is more than the bottom of the barrel.
Nearly all of the money Jamal and Salim make comes from western tourists or the game show, and there's a particularly interesting scene where Jamal takes two Americans on a "tour" while Salim and his friends strip their car clean. When a policeman sees Jamal with the Americans, he starts beating him, but the tourists ask the officer to stop and then give Jamal "American hospitality" in the form of a hundred dollar bill. At the end of the film, after winning 20 Million Rupees, Jamal is waiting at the train station for Latika (his true love) and is leaning against a statue of Frederick Stevens, a British architect who designed the train station during India's colonial period.
It doesn't help that this film about India which is partially in Hindi is written and directed by the former colonizers of India, Brits. This makes it very difficult to watch this film without that critical lense in place when you consider how Slumdog Millionaire presents India to the "west". The film is wildly popular and I do wonder how western audiences understand the film and its role in an ongoing struggle to break the cycle of "East" and "West" in a postcolonial discourse. I find many aspects of the movie troubling in ways which completely distract from the storyline and disrupt enjoyment of the film for its admittedly fine technical merits. I'm not trying to accuse Danny Boyle or Simon Purefoy or Channel 4 Films of intentionally perpetuating Orientalism, but you could certainly make the case that Slumdog Millionaire continues in the tradition of Gunga Din and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
---
I'm afraid I'll have a difficult time talking at length about Synecdoche, NY. It's not because I didn't like the film; in fact, it moved me considerably. The problem is that I feel like I must watch it three or four more times to have a firm grasp on what I experienced.
What I can say is that this strange backlash against Charlie Kaufman that began with Cannes is totally undeserved. Claims that the film is "indulgent" or "intentionally obfuscating" are debatable, if I must concede that much, but I would have to guess that this reaction is tied to the fact that Synecdoche, NY is not "funny" in the same way Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are.
The film has whimsy, but it is frequently tainted by a downbeat perspective on life, one that likely turned people off but which I found to be the charm of the film. Despite how dour Caden Cotard's life seems, he finds a way to push through in his search for truth. The whimsical elements of the film tend to make Synecdoche, NY more confusing than endearing, particularly the way the film wraps around itself so many times and becomes difficult to navigate. Strangely, as the actual setting becomes more complicated, I found the film easier to follow.
If anything, the beginning of the film is the hardest to get used to. Philip Seymour Hoffman's Caden is a difficult character to latch onto, one whose sense of time and of emotional meaning is schizophrenic at best. However, if you can follow the disjointed period up until he receives the grant and begins working on a play that represents "truth", I really feel the heart of the film Charlie Kaufman is working with becomes apparent. Ironically, this is also the point where we meet characters who play characters we're already following often in the same scene.
For example, after Caden begins casting the play, he casts a man named Sammy to play "Caden", and then casts a woman named Tammy to play "Hazel", the assistant to Sammy's "Caden" so that it reflects the real Caden's relationship with the real Hazel. Therefore, we have scenes with Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hazel (Samantha Morton) interacting with "Caden" (Tom Noonan) and "Hazel" (Emily Watson). To confound this, periodically Sammy and Tammy break "character" and interact with their counterparts. It doesn't help that with the makeup Emily Watson can at times be a dead ringer for Samantha Morton.
And yet, by the time you've gotten to that point in the movie, it's really not that hard to follow. I admit that it sounds tough, but I had a harder time getting used to the "dream logic in real life" (as Kaufman puts it) that moves us through Caden's medical problems in the early parts of the film.
Synecdoche, NY is not an easy film to watch because it is so demanding of your attention, and there are layers I'm not even getting yet. Nevertheless, by the time it ended I was moved deeply and will make every effort to buy this film when I can. Charlie Kaufman has not "lost it", as some critics dismissed the film as. Instead, he strips away the easy levels of entry in order to dig deeper into the psyche, and what he finds as "emotional truth" in that labyrinth is something special indeed. I can't recommend all of you to see it because I think some of you will justifiably hate it, but some blogorium readers will connect with Synecdoche, NY in a personal way. I hope.
---
Well, that covers two movies. I still need to watch Frost/Nixon in order to freshen up the queue, including the possibility of re-watching JCVD and Neil-favorite The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a movie I simultaneously dread watching and yet must see. The spine numbers demand it.
Oh, and chide me for it now, but I feel compelled to rubberneck at the oncoming trainwreck that will be s. Darko. Believe me, I know, but the Cap'n does it so others need not to.
* Sorry, but The Beach kind of sucks. I do love Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary, and 28 Days Later, although I have not seen Millions.
---
Slumdog Millionaire is a well made movie, I can't argue with that. The structure is interesting, the story unfolds in an interesting way, it's shot and edited impeccably, and I can totally understand why audiences went crazy for it. It has a feel good ending, a "love conquers all" meets "rags to riches" story, and cute kids. Against some stiff competition, I have no trouble seeing how and why it was the Best Picture of 2008, and it's nice to see Danny Boyle finally win an Oscar after a career I've enjoyed almost every part of*.
The question is: why didn't I enjoy Slumdog Millionaire? Despite all of these things which I'll readily acquiesce to, I found myself getting bored with about an hour left, and I had a nagging feeling the movie was doing exactly what I was worried it might.
Before I'd ever seen the film, I heard really faint criticism about Slumdog Millionaire about its representation of Indians as poverty ridden. Doing some simple searching, I found a page on the admittedly (at times) dubious Wikipedia about this, but my mind was already wandering somewhere else. I began to wonder if Slumdog Millionaire represented neo-Orientalism?
Having watched the movie, I have a hard time arguing against an Orientalist reading of Slumdog Millionaire. The film depicts the hard life of three homeless children who are subjected to miseries and rise out by resorting to petty and (finally) organized crime. Well, the "bad" brother does, because he works for a gangster who helps "Westernize" Bombay. The "good" brother, who wants the girl eternally torn between the two of them works for a call center for a European telecommunications firm and then becomes a folk hero in the Indian version of a British game show, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire. When he wins it all, he finally shows the girl that he's worthy of her true love and shows the authorities and conventional thinkers that Jamal the slumdog is more than the bottom of the barrel.
Nearly all of the money Jamal and Salim make comes from western tourists or the game show, and there's a particularly interesting scene where Jamal takes two Americans on a "tour" while Salim and his friends strip their car clean. When a policeman sees Jamal with the Americans, he starts beating him, but the tourists ask the officer to stop and then give Jamal "American hospitality" in the form of a hundred dollar bill. At the end of the film, after winning 20 Million Rupees, Jamal is waiting at the train station for Latika (his true love) and is leaning against a statue of Frederick Stevens, a British architect who designed the train station during India's colonial period.
It doesn't help that this film about India which is partially in Hindi is written and directed by the former colonizers of India, Brits. This makes it very difficult to watch this film without that critical lense in place when you consider how Slumdog Millionaire presents India to the "west". The film is wildly popular and I do wonder how western audiences understand the film and its role in an ongoing struggle to break the cycle of "East" and "West" in a postcolonial discourse. I find many aspects of the movie troubling in ways which completely distract from the storyline and disrupt enjoyment of the film for its admittedly fine technical merits. I'm not trying to accuse Danny Boyle or Simon Purefoy or Channel 4 Films of intentionally perpetuating Orientalism, but you could certainly make the case that Slumdog Millionaire continues in the tradition of Gunga Din and Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom.
---
I'm afraid I'll have a difficult time talking at length about Synecdoche, NY. It's not because I didn't like the film; in fact, it moved me considerably. The problem is that I feel like I must watch it three or four more times to have a firm grasp on what I experienced.
What I can say is that this strange backlash against Charlie Kaufman that began with Cannes is totally undeserved. Claims that the film is "indulgent" or "intentionally obfuscating" are debatable, if I must concede that much, but I would have to guess that this reaction is tied to the fact that Synecdoche, NY is not "funny" in the same way Adaptation, Being John Malkovich, Human Nature, or Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind are.
The film has whimsy, but it is frequently tainted by a downbeat perspective on life, one that likely turned people off but which I found to be the charm of the film. Despite how dour Caden Cotard's life seems, he finds a way to push through in his search for truth. The whimsical elements of the film tend to make Synecdoche, NY more confusing than endearing, particularly the way the film wraps around itself so many times and becomes difficult to navigate. Strangely, as the actual setting becomes more complicated, I found the film easier to follow.
If anything, the beginning of the film is the hardest to get used to. Philip Seymour Hoffman's Caden is a difficult character to latch onto, one whose sense of time and of emotional meaning is schizophrenic at best. However, if you can follow the disjointed period up until he receives the grant and begins working on a play that represents "truth", I really feel the heart of the film Charlie Kaufman is working with becomes apparent. Ironically, this is also the point where we meet characters who play characters we're already following often in the same scene.
For example, after Caden begins casting the play, he casts a man named Sammy to play "Caden", and then casts a woman named Tammy to play "Hazel", the assistant to Sammy's "Caden" so that it reflects the real Caden's relationship with the real Hazel. Therefore, we have scenes with Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman) and Hazel (Samantha Morton) interacting with "Caden" (Tom Noonan) and "Hazel" (Emily Watson). To confound this, periodically Sammy and Tammy break "character" and interact with their counterparts. It doesn't help that with the makeup Emily Watson can at times be a dead ringer for Samantha Morton.
And yet, by the time you've gotten to that point in the movie, it's really not that hard to follow. I admit that it sounds tough, but I had a harder time getting used to the "dream logic in real life" (as Kaufman puts it) that moves us through Caden's medical problems in the early parts of the film.
Synecdoche, NY is not an easy film to watch because it is so demanding of your attention, and there are layers I'm not even getting yet. Nevertheless, by the time it ended I was moved deeply and will make every effort to buy this film when I can. Charlie Kaufman has not "lost it", as some critics dismissed the film as. Instead, he strips away the easy levels of entry in order to dig deeper into the psyche, and what he finds as "emotional truth" in that labyrinth is something special indeed. I can't recommend all of you to see it because I think some of you will justifiably hate it, but some blogorium readers will connect with Synecdoche, NY in a personal way. I hope.
---
Well, that covers two movies. I still need to watch Frost/Nixon in order to freshen up the queue, including the possibility of re-watching JCVD and Neil-favorite The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, a movie I simultaneously dread watching and yet must see. The spine numbers demand it.
Oh, and chide me for it now, but I feel compelled to rubberneck at the oncoming trainwreck that will be s. Darko. Believe me, I know, but the Cap'n does it so others need not to.
* Sorry, but The Beach kind of sucks. I do love Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, A Life Less Ordinary, and 28 Days Later, although I have not seen Millions.
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