Embrace the anachronism arachnoid mechanism.
Postscript: And as long as we’re linking to films about big-ass mechanical things attacking people, check this out.
Archive for the ‘Movies’ Category
World War II: Now With Giant Mechanical Spider
Monday, January 25th, 2010Top Five Anime
Thursday, January 21st, 2010SF Signal has a Mind Meld up asking people to name their top five choices for anime. I wasn’t asked to participate in this one, but if I had been, my list would probably look like this:
- Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
- FLCL
- Princess Mononoke
- Spirited Away
- Voices of a Distant Star
My review of GitS:SAC can be found here. I also have a review of FLCL available, should I be able to find someone who’s willing to pay me for it…
DVD Review of Drunken Fist Boxing (Summary: AVOID)
Tuesday, January 19th, 2010A couple of weeks ago, some friends got in a copy of Drunken Fist Boxing, the sequel to Jackie Chan’s breakthrough film Drunken Master. We thought: It’s a Jackie Chan film, how bad could it be?
The problem is, despite Jackie being featured prominently on the DVD cover, this is not a Jackie Chan film; the only footage of him in the film is flashbacks to Drunken Master, making it the cinematic equivalent of a clip-show. But that’s not the only thing that makes it a ripoff. I would say this is a crappy pan-and-scan video transfer, but there’s actually no scanning: they just chop off parts of the screen. There are times when there are obviously supposed to be two people talking to each other, but one of them is completely off the edge of the screen. Plus the dubbing is atrocious; sometimes you can’t even figure out what they’re trying to say.
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See this?
See Jackie Chan’s face It’s a dirty, rotten LIE! |
Occasionally you get some decent kung fu (when you can see it), and a generic plot about the teacher from Drunken Master training two students, one of which is the very hot Pan Pan Yeung, when an old enemy of the master shows up in town and…look, it’s a sub-Shaw Brothers kung fu flick from 1979. The plot only exists to string together the fight scenes. And the fight scenes aren’t good enough to make up for the general suckitude.
The cheesy rip-off nature of the DVD makes this one impossible to recommend even to serious kung fu aficionados. Avoid.
Howard Waldrop and I’s review of The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus is up
Monday, January 11th, 2010Obituary Watch: Dan O’Bannon
Friday, December 18th, 2009Dan O’Bannon, the screenwriter for Alien, the writer/star of Dark Star, and the director of The Return of the Living Dead has died at 63.
That’s a pretty worthy legacy to leave behind…
I participated in a Mind Meld over at SF Signal
Wednesday, December 16th, 2009On the best SF books and movies I enjoyed this year.
Sadly, almost none of those actually came out this year…
Two Things Dwight Might Like
Sunday, December 13th, 2009I mentioned one of these to Dwight at the Saturday Dining Conspiracy and chanced across the other.
Appetite City: A Culinary History of New York by William Grimes. This got a very favorable review in National Review (the print edition; alas, the review does not seem to be online).
Shackleton – The Greatest Survival Story of All Time (3-Disc Collector’s Edition). I actually chanced across this Kenneth Branagh DVD in my nearest Blockbuster’s going out of business sale, and was pretty much the only thing there that wasn’t crap, overpriced, or overpriced crap. Alas, the copy had too many scratches on it to take a chance on it even at $3.99, so I gave it a pass. Since Dwight is into Great Age of Exploring books, I thought I would mention it. And Branagh has been great in everything I’ve seen him in. (Then again, that may only be Henry V and Hamlet…)
Sight and Sound Critics and Director Polls
Thursday, December 3rd, 2009And speaking of movie polls, here’s the 2002 Sight and Sound Top Ten Critics poll, with many of the usual suspects (Citizen Kane, The Godfather, The Rules of the Game, etc.) on display in the top ten. It (and the longer list of films receiving votes) is long on French art films and short on crowd-pleasers, even those (like The Shawshank Redemption) with a fair amount of critical acclaim.
I’m somewhat surprised to find Vertigo ranked second, as (IMHO) it’s not even Hitchcock’s best film (I’d put Rear Window, and possibly one or two others, above it).
There’s also a Top Ten List compiled by directors (and another longer list), which is slightly different.
Top Ten Movies of the Last 30 Years
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009So Dwight pointed out this list of the top five films of the last 30 years to me. I haven’t seen Brokeback Mountain, but the rest of the list is at least credible. In trying to come up with one myself, I found myself unable to limit it to just five, so here’s the more traditional Top Ten List:
- Brazil
- Schindler’s List
- Heavenly Creatures
- Raiders of the Lost Ark
- This is Spinal Tap
- The Incredibles
- The Lord of the Rings (Yeah, I’m counting them as one movie. You got a problem with that, wise guy?)
- The Killing Fields
- The Lives of Others
- Fresh
Honorable mention: Goodfellas, Black Hawk Down, Fargo, Hot Fuzz, The Prestige, Hamlet (the Branagh version), Hard-Boiled, Dead Alive (AKA Braindead), Police Story III: Supercop, Juno, The Empire Strikes Back, Shall We Dance? (original Japanese version), Unforgiven, Blade Runner
Disclaimer: These are all at this particular moment in time, and I’m sure right after I put it up I’ll remember something I forgot to include. Shameless Amazon filthy lucre linkage above (generally to the edition I would get, unless it’s not in print, like some Criterion editions). Some settling may occur. Some body parts may not exist. Do not taunt Happy Fun Ball.
So what are your top ten?
Movie Review: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Sunday, November 1st, 2009The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari
Directed by: Robert Wiene
Written by: Hans Janowit, Carl Mayer
Starring: Werner Krauss, Conrad Veidt, Friedrich Feher, Lil Dagover
It being the spooky season, I decided to pick up The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, the classic German Expressionist horror film from the 1920s. (I’d studied German Expressionism a little bit in college, especially the work of Georg Kaiser.) It’s pretty much a must-watch for serious students of film history. For the more casual viewer, you have to ask yourself: How much are you willing to put up with a slow, creaky silent 1920s German melodrama to get to the weird stuff, and how much do you like strange sets?
Because the story of a carnival mesmerist whose casket-dwelling sideshow attraction seems to commit murders between shows just isn’t that interesting until the Usual Suspects-esque conceptual twist at the end. But those sets! Every single set in the main story is filled with distorted lines meeting at weird angles.
Here’s a couple of examples:
If you want to spend some 70 odd minutes looking at those sets (dozens of them, all weird and twisted; if many living in CaligariWorld weren’t already mad, trying to sit on those conical chairs would certainly drive you around the bend in short order), you’ll have a grand old time. If not, there may not be enough here to hold your attention. Cinema hadn’t yet developed the language all of us in the glorious world of the 21st Century all take for granted, so they hadn’t learned to do things like jump cuts; all the scene changes are done by irising the lens shutter. Neither German Expressionism nor silent melodrama were known for their restraint, so the acting is exaggerated.
There’s nothing in here really remotely scary, but a few scenes do manage to remain unnerving all these years. And it may very well be the first “screw-with-your-head” conceptual shift ending in cinema. Something for the serious cinephile, or the Howard Waldrop fan who wants to get a little more out of “Occam’s Ducks”.