It's where I talk to myself. Gaming, politics, and links I don't want to forget about.
Turns out Jet Li is making his good movies over in France these days. Bob Hoskins and Jet Li, together again! Plus Morgan Freeman, although I can’t watch Morgan Freeman these days without thinking of my friend Jamie’s blockbuster Morgan Freeman idea. He wants to make a movie in which Morgan Freeman is, you guessed it, the grizzled wise gentle cop chasing a serial killer. But Freeman turns out to be the killer in some particularly vile and sadistic fashion.
Anyhow, this looks great.
Warner Brothers is allowing us, the plebes, to vote on which classic movies they’ll release on DVD next. Kinda fun, even if there’s no information about how the voting works. Me, I liked All Fall Down, Ice Station Zebra, Kansas City Bomber, King Solomon’s Mines, and Party Girl.
Billy the Kid to Rio: “Will you keep your eyes open? Will you look right at me as I do it?”
I more or less randomly watched The Outlaw today; it was on this set of Western classics I picked up last weekend on Jack Gulick’s advice. Fifty movies for thirty bucks was too good a deal to pass up.
When I cracked open the box, I noticed The Outlaw. I like Howard Hughes, or at least his legend, so I popped it in. I only expected a cheesy Western with a lot of Jane Russell. Imagine my surprise when I got a Billy the Kid played by a guy who looks like a fey Johnny Depp and more subtext than you can shake Lucy Lawless at.
“Doc, if you’re not already fixed up, you can bunk with me tonight.”
“No thanks, Billy, I’ve got a girl. She and her aunt just moved in town. You got a girl, Billy?”
“No, I ain’t got nothing, except that horse.”
“You can’t fool me, a good looking boy like you… you must have a girl somewhere.”
“No, I don’t trust ‘em.”
So the first act of the movie is about how Doc Holliday decides to partner up with Billy the Kid, deserting his old friend Pat Garrett. The second act is Doc and Billy arguing over the beautiful Rio (this is where Jane Russell comes in) and Doc’s strawberry roan; it’s unclear which is more important. The third act resolves it all.
Pat Garrett: “You and me never had any trouble ‘till he came along.”
Besides being charged with tension, it’s actually a pretty decent movie. The final faceoff sequence is about as good as anyone could want. The gunslingers use their weapons like the words they can’t always find, to argue and to sting and to wound. I gasped a couple of times, but then again, I’m suggestible.
The coda doesn’t work quite, but I imagine that’s what you get when you fire Howard Hawks as director and try to finish a movie yourself. I could have done without the over-aggressive score, too. Regardless, none of that stopped me from enjoying the movie a lot.
Tasty. See it if you get a chance.
If Kevin Drum can do it, I can do it. My cultural preferences follow; the preferred choice is enboldened. Sometimes I don’t answer because I don’t have enough experience, and sometimes I don’t answer because I don’t care. More the former, sadly.
So that’s settled, then; my pal Chris and I are venturing up to the Great White North (in the form of Montreal) the last weekend of this month to partake in movies. My schedule is basically the same one I outlined earlier, plus Saving Private Tootsie. I chose Hillside Strangler and Into the Mirror over my alternative choices in the end. I have tickets and I have a hotel reservation.
If anyone happens to be in Montreal that weekend, lemme know and we’ll have beer or coffee or something. My free time will be sparse for obvious reasons, but I imagine… maybe I should say “we’ll have popcorn.”
I’ll blog the whole thing, of course. I have already staked out wireless locations. Although if anyone knows anyone in the Concordia IT department who might be able to get me access to the campus wireless network over the weekend, that would be superawesome.
The Good Eats kitchen is up for sale, sort of. You get the kitchen, but not the utensils or the pots or pans or anything. But, you know, the stove is nice. And the house seems nice. It’s completely wired for Ethernet.
You also get a meal cooked by Alton Brown. I think the best line in the listing is this: “For the ultimate birthday or holiday gift just buy the home for the dinner and resell afterward!”
What Steven Spielberg movie? I’m all about the webs, baby. You’re either gonna see it or not so I’ll just skip the ooohs and ahhhs and cut right to the spoilers and commentary.
Oh, one thing. Step back with me to the halcyon days of 1994. Remember the guy who directed Dead Alive and Meet The Feebles, and the guy who directed the Evil Dead movies? They’re gonna be critically acclaimed directors who make billions of dollars at the box office. No, really.
Very funny old world.
Most of the movies which claim to be based on true stories aren’t. Odd, that the one recent work of fiction that really is rooted in fact doesn’t mention the true story at all. And now, over on IMDB, the commenters mock The Terminal for an implausible premise. Funny old world.
Anyhow: The Terminal is a really tasty eclair. It’s not deep but it’s awfully yummy and you can’t beat chocolate. It’s a very human movie, with a fine degree of attention towards choices and the difficulty of making them. At the heart, it’s about people caring about each other and it manages this without being schmaltzy. I smiled a lot, and I laughed a couple of times.
Tom Hanks pulled off a character with a heavy accent without ever seeming goofy, which is more than I expected, so I suppose now I have to admit he’s a good actor. Catherine Zeta-Jones was beautiful but — as usual — refrained from actually portraying a convincing connection to anyone else on screen.
If the pacing hadn’t collapsed at the end I’d give it four stars.
Of course, if I went to Fantasia for a weekend — say, July 30th through August 1st — I could still catch about a dozen movies and have a great time. Say…
Hillside Strangler for weird American avant garde serial killer cinema (or Heaven’s Seven for the Thai take on Vietnam, it’s a hard choice).
One Missed Call cause who doesn’t love Takashi Miike? This looks like his take on Ringu.
Deadly Outlaw Rekka. Two hours of Miike is good; four hours is superb! Um.
Porco Rosso, Miyazaki, yes.
Harry Knuckles and the Pearl Necklace, for cheap laughs.
Executioners From Shaolin, the classic Shaw Brothers movie.
Enter… Zombie King!, cause masked wrestlers and zombies can’t be skipped.
Toolbox Murders, because it’s the only thing in that time slot and I like to hurt myself.
Malice@Doll (or maybe Freak Out) — ooo, wacky CGI anime!
Red vs. Blue: The Blood Gulch Chronicles, classic machinima, and I would love to see this on the big screen.
Robot Stories makes a nice contrast to the machinima.
Into the Mirror — Korean horror is not always good but so far in my experience it’s been interesting.
The Bodyguard, cause I want to see more Thai martial arts action.
It would make me sad to miss 8th Diagram Pole Fighter and Ju-on and Battlefield Baseball and The Card Player and I could keep going. But some is better than none. The only problem is going to be finding a flight out of Montreal at 10 PM Sunday.
Anyone want to meet me up there?
Turns out that I’m not, in fact, going to be able to develop a time machine and go back in time and clear off enough of my schedule to make it possible to go to Fantasia Festival 2004. Which is a damned shame. The only silver lining is that I won’t have to make any choices about which movie to see, this way.
Pale lining indeed. Well, maybe next year I can arrange to take a month off.