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| mo_flixx |
 Posted: Thu Mar 13, 2008 9:21 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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Last film in the Woo-athon tonite: PEACE HOTEL. I guess this must be Woo's tribute to Sergio Leone, a Chinese western (not sure what period??) with Chow Yun-Fat.
This was my least favorite of the Woo films I've watched recently.
Why do I get the feeling that Woo can't do period films??
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BTW, I'm curious if anyone else if a fan of the Eurasian HK actor, Anthony Wong. He has a small part in THE PAINTED VEIL. His mother was Chinese and his father was Australian. He's kind of an odd looking guy. He has a major role in EXILED.
I enjoyed seeing him as a young man in HARDBOILED. He came out of HK TV. In HARDBOILED, he's a baddie but actually still rather handsome. Now that he's aged, he doesn't really look so good but is great in character roles.
The commentator in HARDBOILED mentioned the Anthony Wong game. Wong wears a series of colored jackets (almost like DeNiro in CASINO). The game is that everytime Wong appears in a different colored jacket you take a shot of your favorite brew. The commentator did this while he did the commentary!! OK... |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 11:53 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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Wondering if anyone has seen Pixote, Survival of the Weakest, a 1981 Brazilian film about a street urchin/proto-criminal. The reason I ask is that I watched Who Killed Pixote? last night, a film about the life of the young star of Pixote, Fernando Ramos da Silva, whose acting career never went much further and who returned to a life of street crime, and was finally killed by the police age 19.
From IMDbland:
Quote: Mini Biography
Fernando was the star of only one film in his short life. He played Pixote - a street child - in Pixote: A Lei do Mais Fraco (1981). During his short period of fame, Fernando was seen as a symbol of hope for the Brazilian street kids. He grew up in a poor neighborhood of Diadema - a industrial city close to São Paulo - Brazil. Illiterate and poor, Fernando played Pixote at the age of 11 years old. His only previous experience in acting was an amateur play. After the success of Pixote, Fernando moved briefly to Rio de Janeiro. There, he tried his luck as an actor in a "novela" (Brazilian soap opera). The fame was brief, without literacy, he could not memorize the scripts. He ended up returning to Diadema. There, he had the same fate as many like him. He got involved with gangs and drug dealing. At age 19, he was killed inside his house by the police. The circumstances of his death are are still a mystery. Three of Fernando's brothers were also killed in the streets of the Brazilian inner cities. Fernando is survived by a daughter. Although he never lived in the streets and always had a family, he stands as a symbol of the Brazilian street children, until this date.
Who Killed Pixote? has a good cast, an involving true story, an interesting structure, and yet falls flat as a movie. The problem is mostly due to over-acting (alot of shouting), a TV-look to the production, and a really cheesy 80's style soundtrack. At one point the awful reflective piano piece comes in and ends abruptly when a car-jack smashes a car window, and I thought for a minute they were winking at the audience. But no, the soppy music returns over and over.
I did like the opening of the film, and how the film occasionally returns to Pixote in his hideout -- a bright yellow car, apparently stolen and kept in an abandoned building, which he has transformed into a scrapbook of news clippings and photos from his days as Pixote.
I'd really like to see Pixote. |
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Killing your enemies, if it's done badly, increases their number. |
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| yambu |
| Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 1:51 pm |
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Joined: 23 May 2004
Posts: 6441
Location: SF Bay Area
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| I watched Diabolique for the first time. I admit I didn't see the ending coming until seconds before it was revealed. Not bad for a fifty-three yr old film. Simone Signoret and the woman who played the other lead were terrific together. However, I don't see Signoret as any kind of siren, though she did turn me on when I saw Room at the Top in about '60. |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:32 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| gromit -- Pixote is a very hard film to watch, but completely worth it. |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| tirebiter |
| Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 2:52 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4011
Location: not far away
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| yambu: Diabolique is one of my favorites. The "other lead" you mention is Vera Clouzot, director Henri-Georges Clouzot's wife. |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 8:58 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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yambu wrote: I watched Diabolique for the first time. I admit I didn't see the ending coming until seconds before it was revealed. Not bad for a fifty-three yr old film. Simone Signoret and the woman who played the other lead were terrific together. However, I don't see Signoret as any kind of siren, though she did turn me on when I saw Room at the Top in about '60.
But she was until years of abuse took their toll on her looks. |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 9:00 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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ehle64 wrote: gromit -- Pixote is a very hard film to watch, but completely worth it.
That's right. I've seen the film. I didn't know about the sad end of its child lead. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Fri Mar 14, 2008 10:26 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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I finished up watching two early John Garfield films last night, on TCM. The first, Out Of The Fog, was the best by far; based on an Irwin Shaw play, it has that familiar refrain of Key Largo and others comparing Nazi-type ideology with gangsterism, and also (with Robert Rossen co-scripting) sneaks in a few capitalism-as-evil points too - paging Joe McCarthy! Garfield's garrulous ratbag of a villain is fond of pseudo-ubermensch pronouncements and we know he deserves just about any nasty fate when he beats Thomas Mitchell with a rubber hose. It's the only film I've ever seen where Garfield plays a complete asshole and he does it exceptionally well; Ida Lupino matches him as Mitchell's hot-to-trot daughter who mysteriously finds Garfield sexier than prospective boyfriend Eddie Albert. Lupino was rare and cool in her willingness to play females of less than stellar moral status. But the film really belongs to Mitchell and John Qualen as the put-upon "gentle people" who decide to fight back.
The other film, Castle on the Hudson, is utter cornball, made watchable by Garfield, and Pat O'Brien, vomit-worthy most of the time in playing another gilded authority figure, offers a memorable piece of physical acting in the very last scene. |
Last edited by Rod on Sat Mar 15, 2008 12:14 am; edited 1 time in total
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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 12:00 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Going through the 2005 Academy award shorts.
Well, I finally watched "The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation," which won the Oscar for Best Animated Film a couple of years ago, and I hated it as much as I expected. It's about the animator-narrator's poisonous relationship with his father, an abusive Italian-American (born in Pennsylvania but grew up in Sicily) who grew up involved with the mob, spent time in jail in both Italy and America, wore his wife and family down, and had an explosive temper and demeaning disposition. The feature is half still photographs and half childlike illustrations, including crayon drawings. I found the whole exercise repulsive. He should have called it "Daddie Dearest," but that would require a sense of humor, which this animator totally lacks, so we get about thirty minutes of bile.
"Badgered" is okay, slow moving and cute but slight. I'm going to wait till I get home to watch "The Mysterious Geographic Explorations of Jasper Morello" because I don't think the computer here will do it justice.
The other two animated shorts nominees that year are not on the DVD. "One Man Band" is on the Pixar Shorts DVD and is one of their best shorts. It's about two street musicians vying for a little girl's coin. "9" I've only seen on Youtube. It's about ragdoll robot-like creatures battling a monster that looks like a cross between a giant ant and a macrame nightmare. This is going to be turned into a movie produced by Tim Burton, and if it's done the same way, it's going to be one strange looking film. Either of these would have made a great Oscar winner. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 1:17 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Moving on the the animated shorts on 75th Annual Academy Awards Short Films.
This was an unusually weak year for this category.
The Cathedral is about a man who for some reason finds himself on a landscape under a lavalite giant planet. He's facing what looks like a cathedral made of trees. When he goes inside there are faces in the trees looking at him, and when the sun comes up, exactly what you expect would happen happens. Visually striking, with an annoying electronic soundtrack to heighten the tedium. It would have made mediocre filler for Heavy Metal.
In Das Rad (The Rocks), two beings that look like animated piles of rock sit on a hillside while centuries flash by in seconds of movie time. We get to see the rise of mankind, with an occasional break to human speed so we can actually see a person. Cities rise and fall. Actually, this one's not bad at all, just insubstantial.
Atama Yama is a weird Japanese fable about a miser who collects tons of garbage because, otherwise, "what a waste." Eventually, he picks up some cherries, and eats them, and, rather than waste the pits, swallows them too. Soon he has a cherry tree growing on top of his head, and next spring, the cherry tree blooms and people start flocking to the top of his head to have picnics... Interesting short with homely but somehow appropriate animation, and nice tricks of recursion. Unfortunately it is narrated by a song in a Japanese style that's like fingernails on a chalkboard. Fortunately, it's subtitled so you can turn off the song.
Mike's New Car is a spinoff from Monsters, Inc.. Mike wants to show Sulley his new high-tech car, and naturally all the features backfire on him. Funny and slight at four minutes.
With competition like this, The ChubbChubbs! was the obvious winner. If you were unfortunate enough to see Men in Black II (or Stuart Little) in a movie theater, you've also seen this. Meeper is a big-nosed green alien who works as a janitor in a nightclub at the edge of forever which caters to famous creatures from sf movies, such as the Alien, Darth Vader, and Gort the Robert. Meeper gets himself thrown out, where he is told by a dying Jar Jar Binks that the ChubbChubbs are coming. Meeper sees a cloud of dust on the horizon so tries desperately to warn the aliens in the club. But then he has to face the ChubbChubbs himself.
If you haven't seen this, do NOT rent Men in Black II, which is a horrendous piece of shit. See if you can find this collection, or rent Surf's Up!, which has it as an extra. |
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I had a love and my love was true but I lost my love to the yabba dabba doo, --The Flintstone Lament |
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| ehle64 |
| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 1:47 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 3:27 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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THEY FINALLY BROUGHT IT OUT. FINALLY.
And I love me some "I was ___, but..." Ozu series! (Even if only one is on there.)
AND I'm going through a mini Japanese thing right now...
Sigh - another box to get... |
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http://www.wakasaworld.com |
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 3:46 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4607
Location: Norman, OK
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lady,
They're just doing it because they hate you and they're cruel. (That's what I keep telling myself when somebody brings out a bunch of things I can't resist.) |
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"All in all, it's just another feather in the fan."
Isaacism, 2009 |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 5:10 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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| The Ozu box set of silents left out a delightful film about young college students skiing in northern Japan. A must for any ski fan. Really fun to see all the old fashioned equipment, women skiing in skirts, etc. |
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| Rod |
| Posted: Sat Mar 15, 2008 9:00 pm |
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Joined: 21 Dec 2004
Posts: 2944
Location: Lithgow, Australia
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Idlewild is one of the more frustrating recent viewing experiences I've had. It is vibrant, original, well-made, modern and yet coherent, sassy but not strained, knowing but not camp; which puts it light years ahead of the other tripe that's been called a "musical" in recent years. It doesn't lurch like a drunken aging floozy desperately trying to be exciting like Chicago and Moulin Rouge!, or hide within camp melodrama like Dreamgirls to disguise its lack of good material; it actually has energy, some snappy music, good dancers, a sense of fun.
But this kind of deliberately retro tale works best if used as the bare rack to hang all the zaniness from, and instead the film alternates between plot and pizzazz - stretched out to two hours, the director Brian Barber doesn't yet know how to hit the proper balance between style and story. It's reminiscent of The Cotton Club not in just in obvious ways, but also because it wants to conjure an organic sense of a world. It's far more interesting when searching the back rooms of the club where most of it is set for spliff smokers and half-dressed chorines, and tossing in surrealist ditties like an advice-giving whiskey flask and the dancing music notes, then when paying attention to the actual drama. It's also stuck with two very flat leading men - Andre Benjamin makes a fair - but fair only - leading man, and Antwan Patton is boring when not rapping, and both, plus that watery lead actress Paula Patton, easily have their asses stomped by snappy support from Terence Howard, Jackie Long and Macy Gray. Obviously the film was made as the musical with the boys from Outkast, but really they should have settled for being the Kander and Ebb rather than Kelly and Sinatra. |
Last edited by Rod on Sat Mar 15, 2008 10:51 pm; edited 2 times in total
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A long time ago, but somehow in the future...It is a period of civil war and renegade paragraphs floating through space. |
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