Ard Vijn - November 17, 2009, 3:28am

After all those wonderful screenshots in our quiz I just had to see “Fine, Totally Fine”.
And what do you know: it was indeed a very enjoyable slice-of-life comedy. By the time I arrived at the holiday snaps in the end credits, I really liked everyone in them and felt sorry for the film to have ended.
It also doesn’t hurt that me and my wife both got some great laughs out of it.
 
This might have worked just as well as a series. A Japanese version of “Black Books”, perhaps?

when i first read about the film and saw some stills, i too thought it was one of those crazy laugh-out-loud comedies. but it turned out to be this really lovely, gentle film about three misfits finding each other. but it does have its laugh-out-loud moments, especially the scene at the haunted house. :D

i can’t recommend this film enough.

“Kiss, Kiss, Bang Bang”

A damn mini masterpiece! 
Funny, exciting, surreal and dramatic mixture that features two wonderful lead turns by Downey and Kilmer and equally good support turns by the whole cast.

Despite the purposeful homages, light parodies and cutting observations on other films this manages to be quite unlike any other film in that Tarantino way…but with a far less fanboy attitude (not that I mind that).
Shane Black shows he can handle directing chores as well as he can handle the writing ones.

Took me a foolishly long time to see this, so if you haven’t yet…don’t be a chump like moi…See it! 
Hell, OWN IT!

No argument there. Loved it from start to finish; it’s very, very Shane Black, but yes, I’d say he does manage to make the jump from writer to director a lot better than some might have expected. It’s lean, succinct and not at all indulgent (well, only in a good way ). The biggest surprise for me was how emotional it was - the scene with Downey under the bed, and what happens during and afterwards, was one of the highlights IMO.

Eight Rooks - November 19, 2009, 1:55pm

The biggest surprise for me was how emotional it was - the scene with Downey under the bed, and what happens during and afterwards, was one of the highlights IMO.

Indeed yes.  A wonderful moment, as was the scene with him and the girl under the overpass and the scene with the paedo Father and Kilmer.
Then you would go from this kind of straight dramatic stuff to the brilliantly broad and funny scene in the hospital with all the dead people coming back!

Re-watched some goodies with some buds:

Big Trouble in Little China
The Dark Crystal
Drive (DC)

Might do some podcasts on these ones.

‘Drive’ is lots of fun.

’‘Trick ‘r Treat’’
http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvtrick.php

Highly recommended!!

Despite mixing some very black humour, a smattering of welcome nudity, pretty strong violence and the odd splash of gore “Trick ‘r Treat” still manages to feel like an old school, even charming, Horror movie of the kind you used watch on late night TV as a kid.

It has a nostalgic sensibility but wraps it up in some excellent, modern film making techniques and effects.
It also has a great cast all on top form, a very novel and entertaining twist on the tired Anthology film (in the way it breaks its stories up into intertwining, bite sized,  pieces),  plus a truly loving and wonderful Halloween atmosphere.
All of which means the film slips into that very, very rare category indeed…that of near perfection.

Along with the original, seminal, “Halloween”,  “Trick ’r Treat”, should become the staple Halloween movie from now on… for generations to come.

Yeah, Drive is a shit-ton of fun and my friends had a great time watching it. Trick R’ Treat is probably the best horror flick that I’ve seen in awhile. Preferred it to Drag Me to Hell which was also decent but not as much fun IMO.

I just finished viewing Lu Chuan’s epic docu-drama THE CITY OF LIFE AND DEATH (2009) and found it a dynamic and emotion-filled film based on the incident known as the “Rape of Nanking” when the Japanese Imperial Army occupied the then capital of China. Overall I found the film a fairly well balanced if not pragmatic portrait of the devastating events that impacted both the Chinese soldiers and citizens at the time. Visually stark images counterpoint the poignant yet significant portaits of the key figures on both sides of the warring factions. Why this wasn’t picked-up by some US distributor confounds me, although I believe it has been shown at some film festivals both in Europe as well as in Toronto. (Would reccomend the 2-disc Chinese release by gdFace.com for its supplemental features as well as a nice silver-lined slipcase box)

Next in the context of historical dramas I hope to view upon its dvd release is THE FOUNDING OF A REPUBLIC directed by Huang Jian Xin and Han San Ping.

Better than “The Nanking Massacre”?

“Dracula” (1979)

A pretty unique version of the story (based on the old Hamilton Deane play as well as Stoker’s novel itself) sees the entire Harker/Transylvania portion of the plot removed.

This is a mixed bleesing though. 
Unlike any other version we actually have a lot of time to cover Dracula’s ‘stay’ in England.  But it comes at the expense of perhaps the best portion of the story that contains some of the most memorable, effective and atmospheric set-pieces.

The screenplay does cover a few of the Transylvania moments by inserting them throughout the English sequences and changing their context;
Like the wall climb, the cut finger, the mirror, the fed upon baby and the (strangely altered) “Children of the night’ speech.
But they lose much of their mysterious, scary, atmospheric power by not happening in Dracula’s castle to a stranded and frightened Harker.

The less said about some of the cheesy seduction visual effects (a notorious sequence) and the soppy ‘romance’ scenes between Lucy and Dracula the better though.

But we have some very good moments here. 
The shape changing aspect of Dracula is used well (even the bat looks not too bad, though it’s stupid to have him change back from being a Wolf and be wearing clothes!!), the SFX and matte work is very good, Dracula has some good conversation sequences and sly manipulation scenes (at last ‘The Count’ part of Dracula is given a vital chance to shine), there are some effective scenes in the asylum and the sets are wonderful (even if Carfax Abbey has the most over the top cobwebs in cinematic history).

Some of the changes to the novel (you can edit Stoker’s novel, but only idiots try to [U]change it[/U] and do so at their peril) are interesting but some are annoying.
Why on Earth switch Lucy with Mina?  It’s a needless and silly change that grates having Mina be killed and turned instead of Lucy.
Making Mina the Daughter of Van Helsing is pointless artistically but gives a quicker way the get Abraham Van Helsing into the story. 
Sadly not much is made of the father/daughter aspect though…not even when Van Helsing has to despatch his own undead child.
And the big finale change as far as Van Helsing goes works okay as entertainment amazingly…but again to any fan of the story it does grate.

Olivier is pretty good, if rather hammy, as Van Helsing (a million times better and less hammy than Anthony Hopkins though!), Donald Pleasence is fun as a very much changed Dr Seward, Trevor Eve makes a pretty poor Harker and as ‘The Count’ Frank Langela is actually very, very good (hair aside) but is rather a damp squib as far as being a scary Vampire goes (much like Louis Jourdan in the more faithful UK TV version from 1977).

The ending though (after a pretty exciting finale fight with an effective, rare indeed, change as far as Dracula’s ‘demise’ goes) is thrown into the toilet with a nonsensical, stuck with unintentionally funny visuals, ‘twist’ that seems like it was shoe-horned in to make way (though Director John Badham denies this) for a sequel.

It’s directed with lots of style by Badham, but also at a rather leaden pace which is not helped by the strong emphasis on the ‘romantic Count’.
At least we are spared the God-awful ‘love though the ages’ garbage of the mostly awful “Bram Stoker’s Dracula” though.

Some good things, some weak things, some bad things.  But it is a better film than its often thought of and what it does good it actually does better than most other “Dracula” films.
So, not as remotely good as it really should have been, but a pretty nice try.

Finished watching the first season of Dollhouse. Not too bad, fairly decent. I did enjoy Eliza Dushku’s varied performances.

I’ve been neglecting my ‘to watch’ DVD pile in favour of roaming the post-apocalyptic wastes via the XBox in “Fallout 3: Game of the Year Edition”.
But a few days of constant pain in my arm (old you know….so damn old) has forced me to stop twiddling knobs and finally get around to watching a film. So I chose….

“Rope”

Famously an exercise in technicality where the illusion that (almost) all a film was shot in one long take was tried out on Joe Public.
But it never really works. 

Much of the ‘Stage Play/One-Take’ set-up serves no purpose either artistically or dramatically and often the hidden ‘breaks’ in this one-take illusion are glaringly and jarringly clumsy.
When Hitchcock’s roaming camera first zooms in on a guy’s back to hide the cut it works fine.  But repeat it 2 or 3 times more and it becomes annoying and sticks out painfully, surely even for 40’s audiences.
It seems Hitch was trying something for Joe Public who may have not seen the obvious, but any cineaste would.
And (although not the film’s fault) time and technique has moved on and as such these trite little tricks simply don’t fool a modern audience.
So, literally, all we are left with now are 4 or so pointless and clumsy zooms into a character’s back.
This is made even more bizarre in the fact that, despite all this ‘hiding’ of the cuts, Hitchcock makes two other clear and open cuts during the film in two scenes (one cut to Stewart the other to the maid) which make you wonder why he wobbled into the backs of people’s jackets to hide the others anyway!

The film also lacks that vital Homosexual aspect to make the storyline really take hold.
Hints (like when the maid says ”they got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning”) are dropped here and there that the two lead murderers (Farley Granger and John Dall,  based on the real Leopold-Loeb murders) are indulging in one of those achingly pretentious romps through intellectual Homosexuality, but it’s perhaps too subtle (must have been even more obscure for general Joe Public in 1948) and this is made worse by the fact that James Stewart, as their old university Professor, really should be Homosexual too and have this link with the killers.
But hey, it’s James Stewart! 
You could not have picked a more cleaner cut, family friendly, populist actor (utterly wonderful though he was) for such a role.  As such that Homosexual link, and thus perhaps even a University affair, with the killers is simply not there.
Edges are being crucially blunted.

Interestingly, according to the DVD interview with the writer, the actual seeing of the murder in the opening seconds, was a later addition by Hitchcock. 
The writer had it so we never see the murder so that we are never actually sure if there even has been a murder, let alone if a body is hidden in plain sight in the room. 
This would have changed the dynamic of the film massively, but it would have again added another layer to the plot and make for a bigger reveal at the end.
What you would have lost though, without this certainty,  is the wonderful black humour and crucial sadistic games that are played (both visual and verbal) with the fact that there is indeed a body whose ‘coffin’ is being used to serve food from (to the corpse’s Father no less) and that the sly remarks about the dead character being late are indeed in the worst of taste.
Things that keep the rest of the film actually interesting and entertaining even if a crucial edge of tension is lost because of it.

As far as acting goes everyone does well with John Dall really standing out.  Granger though (whose career would gleefully slide down hill into astonishingly exploitative Euro shockers like “So Sweet, So Dead” and full-on gore violence like “The Prowler”) seems to push it all too much. 
His character is simply too unwound and uncertain to have ever actually committed the murder.  That his character is a coward as far as getting caught goes is just fine if it does not get highlighted too strongly, here though it is.  He also often shows a really out of place moral repugnance to the crime…Self-serving cowardice yes, but morality from someone who planned and carried out a thrill-kill murder?  it does not wash.

Stewart is as watchable as always, but he seems ot be strangley mugging for the camera during his early scenes.  Sometimes literally so as there are at least two occasions where he nervously glancers at and off camera.

The screenplay also seems to want to have its cake and eat it. 
The shockingly explicit, uber-fascist and chillingly cold-blooded, intellectual reasoning used by the murderers for committing the crime,  and for indeed not seeing it as a crime, are a kind of (only 3 years after the War) Nazi wet dream rhetoric which must have been quite strong and brutally realistic at, and for,  that time.
And that such thoughts have been put into (the admittedly damaged already) minds of the killers by their Professor, played of course by Stewart, opens up some very dark and deep waters indeed.
And let us not beat around the bush here, Stewarts’ views are indeed twisted and explicit and phrases along the lines of ‘intellectuals and superiors have every right to commit murder’ and that how ‘they are the only ones really suitable to murder another ‘inferior’ are clear and precise. 
And this is James Stewart (WW2 hero as well as clean-cut actor)  saying these things, and these things have indeed been the reasoning for an actual murder.
But then we have some shoe-horned in preaching from Stewart to clear his character of any true blame, when the film has him state that the killers have ‘twist

“Niagra” 

Not as good as I remembered.  Marilyn Monroe makes for a rather weak femme fatale as she’s far more femme than fatale.
Not much happens until the last 3rd and all of it is obvious.
But the cast, Monroe as a welcome sight and a couple of good sequences keep things ticking along.

“A Star is Born” (1954)

Previously made in a non-musical version in 1937 with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March and then later on in 1976 with Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson, this middle version, with Judy Garland and James Mason, of the well known story (about a new star discovered by a fading, self-destructive, one) is perhaps the most famous and lasting and with just cause.

As a very minor musical fan (and then mostly comedy musicals like “The Blues Brothers” or “Cannibal the Musical” or ones with an interesting story hook first, where the music is kept as a stage act, like “Cabaret”), I admit to winding through most of the 2 big musical numbers in this so what may have been a big plus in the film left me cold.  Though I recognise Garland’s huge talent.
But the top support cast and great acting by the leads (coupled with the real, wonderful, surprisingly self-critical,  Hollywood setting) and classic storyline kept me highly entertained and rather moved.

As the destructive, waning, acting star James Mason is on top form.  He gives perhaps the definitive Mason performance and essays a fascinating character who can turn on the charm and show great love one moment before succumbing to the drink and becoming a self-loathing, selfish wreck of a man the next.

Garland shows just why she remained such a beloved performer for so long and her musical skill and star power shines here during the (for me often too long, but thankfully mostly realistic stage/film set based) musical numbers and even when drink, depression and much heartache had taken its toll (ironically Garland in real life, through the passing of time, actually became very close to Mason’s character) and she was reduced to belting out show tunes in seedy, gangster run, London nightclubs…Garland kept that icon status and [I]“A Star is Born”[/I] really shows you why, because as well as the musical sequences she handles some for the later, full on dramatic, scenes brilliantly as well and bounces of the brilliant Mason with aplomb.

Any movie fan should find much to love in this, a musical movie fan even more so.

“A Night in Casablanca”

The last of the true Marx Brothers films sees them pretty much neutered from their original, anarchist, roots and instead we have them in a far more conventional ‘underdogs who save the day’ roles.
now, instead of blatantly causing absolute chaos (reaching the levels of actual war in “Duck Soup”) they tend to right wrongs and set things straight!
Shame.

This trend had already started a few years before in what became their most successful films, “A Night at the Opera” and the far superior “A Day at the Races” (although even then this change was not so severe) but by now the weakening of their characters was also teamed with (unlike “Opera” and especially “Races”) a lack of any real classic set-pieces and sketches.
Their is simply no memorable verbal greatness from Groucho and even the slapstick from Harpo and Chico is tame.
When mixed with their now muzzled characters, this lack of classic Marx humour is crippling.
Only an, actually very funny,  late in the day ‘packing the clothes’ slapstick sequence,  where the Brother’s play havoc with the packing to leave plans of the lead baddie, drags the film out of the mire and it’s very well crafted set-piece, and as such stands out in the sea of mediocrity that surrounds it.
Sadly the film as a whole stands alongside the equally weak and pointless “The Big Store” and “Go West” as the worst of The Marx Brother’s proper films.

Stick with “Races”, “Horse Feathers” and “Duck Soup” for some truly classic Marx Brothers greatness.

“The Last Picture Show”

Peter Bogdanovich’s seminal work was one of the first of the 70’s ‘maverick’ Director movies to make a splash (after 67/69’s “Bonnie and Clyde” and “Easy Rider” had led the way).  And it holds up very well today.

The frank for the time (less so now, but it still has an edge) sexuality and expose of small town sexual mores and hidden scandals made the film a big, if controversial, hit and showed how Hollywood was growing up, changing,  and attempting to drag the audiences back to the cinema and away from TV, not with flashy spectacle and gimmicks but with an explicitness (both in sex, nudity, language and violence) and adult orientated subjects and sensibility that TV just never offered.

The stunning ensemble cast and Bogdanovich’s tight, assured, direction and editing ensure that even when not much, plot wise, is actually going on there is always something on-screen to keep us entertained, intrigued and moved.
It does seem rather slight today though, with much of what was new and radical at the time being far less so now.  So it does work now on two levels;  It works still as a finely crafted, superbly acted, small town drama, but it’s also become a bit of a time piece and some of the cutting edge fascination has been turned into simple historical interest.

But the cast (with Cloris Leachman, Timothy Bottoms, Ben Johnson, a beautiful and young Cybill Shepherd - breasts and all- and Ellen Burstyn being the stand-outs) and Peter Bogdanovich’s direction ensure that as an entertaining, often deeply moving, dramatic piece the film is still well worth a viewing in 2009.

Battlestar Galactica: The Plan

Kind of interesting seeing certain events from the point of view of the cylons, sort of fleshed out the story. Could have used more action though.

Drive is indeed a hell of an entertaining low-budget kickabout, if it’s the same film I’m thinking of. Got to love the director when he cheerfully admits on the commentary the reason the bad guys wear masks is so you won’t see it’s the same group of stuntmen over and over and over again…

“Manhunt” (Rovdyr)
http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvmanhunt.php

A blatant homage in style and content to 70’s Grindhouse cinema in general and to Hooper’s “TCM” in particular, this Norwegian slice of visceral backwoods horror does the homage well (and it’s done with an obvious fan’s eye), but ultimately fails as its own film.

This is due to the repetitive nature of the whole enterprise, the silly plot points (where you have never seen such a lucky unlucky person in the shape of our female lead as far as finding handy weapons goes) and a badly handled ending.

Some good acting by the lead actress, and some of the FX and deaths are good (some crappy CGI blood…again…aside) and the film’s gritty style and often nasty content gives us something to enjoy…
But in the end its a barely average also-ran.

Watched the original “Sleuth”.

Too long, too self indulgent, and a slightly confused (the police?) but generally obvious twist.
Only the great Caine and Sir Larry himself give us anything to really enjoy.