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| gromit |
 Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 10:05 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
Posts: 9010
Location: Shanghai
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The first unwitting mule is the opera director who brings in the statue stuffed with smack. It's his bag which gets snatched and thrown into the cab, kicking off the film. For a while, he's a suspect until the police realize what's really going on. I liked how it misdirects the audience for a while. That's the one shipment that the police get (and replace with powder).
You probably forget about him, because the hitmen only track down the other three shipments they were hired to recover.
Ellroy is all wired up and wacky on the commentary. Full of sexual innuendo. Some funny stuff and pretty wild for a dvd commentary.
Ya think Yambu goes to Finnochio's? |
Last edited by gromit on Tue Dec 01, 2009 10:27 am; edited 2 times in total
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 10:19 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 10:45 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
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Location: New York City
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gromit wrote: The first unwitting mule is the opera director who brings in the statue stuffed with smack. It's his bag which gets snatched and thrown into the cab, kicking off the film. For a while, he's a suspect until the police realize what's really going on. I liked how it misdirects the audience for a while. That's the one shipment that the police get (and replace with powder).
Gromit: "It's an interesting premise, except for the small problem of retrieving the drugs which, in all 4 instances in the film, goes wrong enough so that the first three end up in 4 deaths and the last one is an even bigger mess."
Okay, I get the first mule. What are the four deaths? I only count two deaths for the first three. (The steamroom guy and the houseboy.)
gromit wrote: Ya think Yambu goes to Finnochio's?
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| gromit |
| Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 11:08 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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I guess you're in agreement with Siegel that the film didn't really start until Eli Wallach jets in.
With the first stash, the cabbie and policeman do each other in.
Actually it should probably be 5 deaths, since the porter from the opening botched theft gets thwacked later. |
Last edited by gromit on Tue Dec 01, 2009 2:54 pm; edited 1 time in total
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 1:31 pm |
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| I have to see this movie! |
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| billyweeds |
| Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 1:57 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 20618
Location: New York City
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marantzo wrote: I have to see this movie!
I thihk you're gonna like it a lot.
And be sure to listen to the whole commentary. It's the first I've heard in ages and ages that's worth listening to. |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 9:57 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Manhattan
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| Speaking of must sees, Kar Wai Wong's In the Mood for Love certainly falls into that category. A tone poem from 2001, it is a story of two people who decide not to have an affair and as a result, fall deeply in love. It is by far one of the better films on the subject I've ever seen. And while it's not an easy film, it's worth every single moment. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Tue Dec 01, 2009 11:13 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12921
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Watched two of L. Frank Baum's Oz films, The Magic Cloak of Oz and The Patchwork Girl of Oz, from 1913 and 1914, respectively. Magic Cloak belongs to the make-it-up-as-you-go-along style of movie-making. Fairies make a magic cloak that will grant the wearer one wish, then realize they have no idea what to do with it, so they ask the Man in the Moon who says to give it to the unhappiest person, who turns out to be Fluff, whose father was a ferryman who just drowned. (Apparently he didn't get the memo about no one being able to die in Oz--although I didn't see anything but the title that had anything to do with Oz.) Fluff's wish is to be happy once again. So Fluff, her brother Bud and her aunt all go to Noland, whose king has just died, and Bud becomes king because he is the 47th person through the east gate (which is, coincidentally, how Oklahoma chooses their senators). So they spend the treasury on toys (which we do, too, but call it military spending). Then the town is invaded by Rolly Rogues, who are round people who roll downhill. All in all, a pretty awful film, and not even adopted from one of Baum's novels.
Patchwork Girl is better (how could it not be), and is adapted from one of Baum's novels. Ojo and his uncle are starving to--well, not death, since this actually is Oz, but discomfort--so they go to the Emerald City, On the way, they encounter a magician who is making the Powder of Life, which his wife wants to use to make a servant from a Patchwork doll. The wife is planning to not give the Patchwork Girl (Scraps) brains since brains are a liability in a servant, but Ojo concocts some from powdered brains in a cabinet. Thus when Scraps is brought to life, she is sentient, but since her head is patchwork, she's also addled (this is clearer in the book), and knocks over a flask of petrification fluid, which petrifies Ojo's uncle, the magician's wife, and the magician's daughter's Munchkin boyfriend. The magician doesn't want to make more Powder of Life, since it takes six years of stirring (I'd think it would be easier just to hire a servant), but it occurs to him that all he needs is an antidote, which requires a quest.
The notes on The Patchwork Girl of Oz describe them as rescuing the Emerald City from the "evil Princess Ozma," which made me say WTF? But Ozma's not evil, and we didn't have the Ozmaniac Riots of 1914. Apparently the person who wrote the notes didn't see that part of the movie.
Both movies are easily avoidable, but I feel a weird compulsion to review everything. Patchwork Girl is about an hour long, making it one of the first feature-length films as well as one of the first pretty bad ones. |
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| marantzo |
| Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 7:22 am |
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| Two great synopses and very funny linking Oz (or the non-Oz as it seems) with Oklahoma had me LOL. |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 10:04 am |
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Joined: 31 Aug 2004
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Location: Shanghai
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Syd, where did you get a hold of those two early Oz films?
PS I thought they were banned in OK! |
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| gromit |
| Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 5:49 pm |
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Location: Shanghai
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Momma's Man is a somewhat slight, self-indulgent film. A thirty-something takes a business trip to New York and visits his parents and can't find the will to leave. He regresses into his old high school routine, while his wife frets back in LA with their infant daughter.
The film features the director's real mother and father (dad is filmmaker Ken Jacobs) and it mostly takes place in their actual Chamber Street apartment -- a monument to clutter, loft living and a bohemian artistic way of life. An actor plays the son who can no longer confront his responsibilities.
There were a few instances where a good idea was well-executed. But mostly there was just a mood of ennui and general dissatisfaction, with nothing much happening. I wish we either got more exploration of why this regression occurs, or more time getting to know the lives and personalities of the parents. Either could have been interesting, but instead, we get a good deal of comic book reading, guitar playing (of juvenile songs written during high school), and sitting around in long johns. He also catches up with two former friends, but those encounters don't amount to much.
We get only a few brief, poorly lit snippets of Ken Jacobs' work. Momma's Man is only 94 minutes. It would have been nice to have a 5 minute scene in which the main character and his father watch a segment of a Ken Jacobs' film. I've never seen anything by Ken Jacobs, but have heard many good things about his 6+ hour Star Spangled to Death, full of 20th Century American propaganda films and racist clips, combined with footage of two of Jacobs' unusual artistic friends shot in the late '50's. The film is apparently one of those 50-year-in-the-making magnum opuses, or so I'm told. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 6:43 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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gromit wrote: Syd, where did you get a hold of those two early Oz films?
PS I thought they were banned in OK!
Netflix. |
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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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| Marc |
| Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 6:55 pm |
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| Marj, I'm with you on IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE. I know folks around here find it slowgoing, but I was completely in the mood for MOOD. Enthralling and erotic. |
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 7:15 pm |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
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Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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I liked In the Mood for Love quite a bit, too.
I'd love to do a Wong Kar-wai fest at some point (there is a box, but it ain't cheap).
I'd suggest that for a forum, but I bet it won't be popular (and I don't have time to host it). |
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| Marj |
| Posted: Wed Dec 02, 2009 7:41 pm |
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I actually had a problem with the disk. Every so often the subtitles would just disappear. I had to stop and reverse some things to make them reappear. So that made it a bit slow for me, Marc.
Still it was such a lush movie. I don't know the last time, I've reacted to a film like this. It felt like more than empathy, if you know what I mean.
Lady, I'm going to see 2046 soon. Rod liked it better than In the Mood for Love. |
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