Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
Sunday, 6-3-7
I came a week late to this party. We were in Disney when the movie opened and I had enough lines, I'm not standing in line for any damn movie anymore. Do you know how hard it is to sleep in a tent while dressed as a stormtrooper?
But in that week's delay I heard a number of things about the movie and I didn't hide from all the spoilers so I heard a lot about what people didn't like about this movie. I happen to think they are wrong, the movie is plot driven but it is very understandable. The only thing I didn't understand is why they kept introducing plot lines that they never fleshed out. With a fourth "Pirates" movie in doubt, I don't get why they introduced so much, just to let it fade away.
Curtain up on a precession of peasant men, women and children being led to the gallows where they are decreed as pirates or pirate conspirators and hung. A small boy starts to sing a pirate song just before he is put up on a barrel (to reach the noose) and the rest of the procession starts to sing. Apparently, this is a significant turn of events and signals to all nine of the "Pirate Lords" to convene and take action.
Our usual crew goes off to save Jack Sparrow. All for different reasons. One needs his ship, one wants to make up for killing him, but most of all because he is one of the pirate lords and failed to pass on this duty before he died. First stop is in Singapore where we find a very cool Chow Yun Fat all pirated up and ready to kick ass. But he never does. The crew steals a secret map that tells them how to rescue Jack but that is the entire significance of the Chinese pirates. As Chow Yun Fat dies, he passes on his pirate lordship to, of all freaking people, Elizabeth Swann! They pick up a Chinese boat and Chinese crew but nothing really evolves from the Chow Yun Fat storyline. And it could have been so good!
They sail over the end of the world and into the land of the dead. As they fall down the waterfall the screen goes pitch black and you hear three or four soundbites lifted directly from the Disney ride. Very cool for me being a Disney freak but I had to wonder what the hell everyone else that have never been on the ride thought. It was strange and out of place but I liked it because I'm a Disney geek.
Now that they have entered Davy Jones' Locker we finally see Jack Sparrow, and lots of him. He is on his ship in the middle of the desert commanding a crew of imaginary Jack Sparrows. A lot of critics saw this as confusing but I saw it as a portrayal of Jack gone mad while in purgatory or something similar. It made enough sense to me. So, the crew finds Jack and off they sail, trying to decipher the map to find out how to get back to the land of the living.
At this point I am troubled by the diminishing "coolness" of my favorite character, Captain Barbosa. In the first movie he seemed seven feet tall and unstoppable. Now he just looks like a humble drunk old man. Which is in fact, what he has become. There's no way to make it right in my head, they show him exactly as they should, exactly as I would if I were writing the script, but I didn't care for the fact that Barbosa is now a giant pussy!
Another character that is loosing cool points around this time in the movie is Tia Dalma. At the end of part two and even in the beginning of this one, she was a spooky voodoo mama. Now she looks like she's crying on Oprah's couch. I was hoping she'd stay dark and creepy but she turns emo just like the rest of the crew.
In a stroke of madness turned genius, Jack finally deciphers the map and they return to the living world again. We see the fabled "green flash" at sunset meaning that a soul has returned from the dead. We will see this green flash at almost every sunrise/sunset from here to the end of the movie. It is over-used and actually creates a bit of confusion because at one point they use it when someone is sailing off into the land of the dead, not returning to the living. I guess it could be said that it might be the opening of the door and it doesn't matter which way the traffic is moving BUT that's not what they say... Time to catch up on the plotlines.
Lord Beckett is the main bad guy, heading the East India Trading Company (who by the way, has a MUCH larger and more well armed fleet in this movie than in ANY reference I can find on line...) is trying to wipe out all of the pirates. The pirate lords are all heading to a conference to determine what to do. Will Turner is making any deal he can in order to get his father released from Davy Jones' cursed crew. Tia Dalma is actually the goddess Calypso bound in human form. Davy Jones is cursed because he abandoned his eternal post of ferrying the sea-dead into the afterlife after finding Calypso wasn't waiting for him on his once per decade shore leave. He now fights on the EITC side because the evil Lord Beckett has aquired the chest with his heart in it. We hear a reference to Beckett forcing Davy Jones to kill his "pet" and then much later in the movie we see the dead body of the Kraken lying on a beach. Elizabeth Swann (the least important character and the shittiest actress) has become King of the Pirate Lords. She is following Jack's lead of wanting to release Calypso from her human form and ask her to fight alongside them against the EITC. We finally see Keith Richards on screen as Sparrow's implied father. Richards played a very serious role and not the swaying drunk everyone expected. He did find his way to a guitar but it almost wasn't notable except for knowing who it was. Everyone lost? Okay good, here we go.
So they release Calypso and we are treated to a cheesy "Attack of the 50 Foot Woman" scene. She smiles, screams and then turns into thousands of crabs, falling into the sea. That's it from her. No cool plot twist, no cool action, no real reason for even entering this plot line. Lame. It is assumed that she is the reason for the giant whirlpool that shows up but is never actually named as the reason. Either way, it neither helps nor hinders either side so she isn't worth the mention. The maelstrom could have been attributed to any thing else. In the end, Davy Jones dies and falls overboard into the whirlpool so possibly he is reunited with Calypso? I think that is a bit of a stretch because nothing is ever mentioned.
Rather than have the nine (plus) pirate ships be torn apart by the ginormous EITC armada, the two flagships sail into the whirlpool and we get all of the action we were hoping for. It wasn't the explosive Michael Bay but it wasn't the delicate dance steps of Errol Flynn either. It was good. Lots of cannons and lots of sword play. I would have preferred more sword play but hey, I'm not running the movies (yet). In the fight, Will and Elizabeth decide to get married. Amusing little scene with Captain Barbosa swashbuckling in the rain while hollering out, "Dearly beloved..." It was cute and I get it, they thought they were going to die and wanted to die together. I get it but there was way too much romance and love plot going on in this movie already. With the whole Jones/Calypso stuff and the earlier scenes of Will being jealous of Elizabeth over Jack... Too much for my tastes but this movie plays well to all the women and little girls out there so I guess we get treated to the really cheesy scenes of Orlando Bloom holding on to the mast while the wind ripples his puffy shirt and blows through his hair. I swear I heard half the audience gag and the other half orgasm. It was a very polarizing moment.
Jack steals the chest with Jones' heart. Jack is intent on stabbing the heart of Davy Jones and taking on the role of ferrying the dead just so he can take on the moniker "The IMMORTAL Captain Jack Sparrow". Will wants to stab the heart and take over the role simply to release his father from service. Jack has the chest and Jones is cornered by Jack, Will and Elizabeth. In his last act of defiance, Jones runs his sword through Will Turner. Every girl in the theatre (and some of the boys) cried at this point. In what seems out of character and possibly his first noble action, Jack Sparrow brings the chest over to Will and uses Will's hand to stab the heart. Will is alive again but he is now cursed to ferry the dead for eternity with only one day ashore every ten years. A lot of people wanted to make this ending easier by saying that after the ten years he'd be released from his curse but Tia Dalma (Calypso) was very clear when she (repeatedly) said "One day of shore every ten years." Not after ten years but EVERY ten years. Will is forever cursed. UNLESS, they do a forth Pirates movie and I'm sure they'll find a way to lift the curse. And that little thought is provoked by the little clip after the credits.
Unlike the other scenes that were just cute and unimportant, this post-clip actually involves the plot. At the end of the film we see Elizabeth and Will screwing on the beach. He then sails off for his ten years of service (green-flash). After the credits roll we get a sub-title, "Ten Years Later" and that's a good thing because neither Will nor Elizabeth looked a day older. And that's a major sticking point for me thorough out the whole movie. Everyone looked like tired, seafaring pirates except Elizabeth. All of the actors were dirty and scraggly but in every close-up, Elizabeth looked like she had just put on make-up. Freshly powdered and ready to take tea. Not one weather-worn line in her face, not a blemish on her skin. They even make a point in the movie to point out that fresh water is a high commodity aboard a ship at sea and they had to stop and get a new supply. I guess so because Elizabeth looked like she was taking two baths a day! Even pretty-boys Orlando Bloom and Johnny Depp looked rough at times. But not Keira Knightley she's too good to lower herself to looking dirty. Fuck I hate her!
Okay, back to "Ten Years Later"... A young boy is walking out to a cliff singing the pirate song. We pan back and see Elizabeth Swann (Turner) put her arm around her and they look out to sea where they spot the returning Will Turner standing statuesque with the wind making him look like Fabio again and looking as out of place as the big Spiderman3/flag scene everyone is bitching about. The camera goes back to the faces of his wife and son and we see the reflection of the green flash in their eyes.
What does this mean? I don't know. I do know that Knightley and Bloom were making noise about not wanting to do a fourth movie. Maybe this is a way to introduce a new character that can carry the story line forward in the "Direct to Video" market without them. What the hell does Keira Knightley have on her plate that is so important that she doesn't want to get type-cast? "Domino 2"? She is a horrible actress, stiff as a board and completely unlikable. I've disliked her in all three of these Pirate movies, Domino sucked and her Pride and Prejudice was awful. I've never seen her big soccer movie and I heard that was a big success but really, how can she say she wants to walk away from the only thing keeping her from slipping into obscurity?
Bloom on the other hand has a valid point, he certainly doesn't want to be type-cast. It would ruin his other roles if all he were known for was brandishing a sword aboard a pirate ship. I mean, look at the wide range of characters he's played; Lord of the Rings, Troy, Kingdom Of Heaven, Pirates of the Caribbean, now Pompeii. Yeah, I guess it would hurt his career if he were to take on a fourth Pirates film and got to be known as a time-period actor with a sword... "Elizabethtown" was such a spectacular hit after all.
I had my own problems with this movie. ILM did the CG but some of it looked unfinished or rushed into production. I expect better from a big time movie like this. Most of the complaints I heard about were nominal at best and over all I'd say it was a pretty good movie. It was long and because a lot of it was pointless plot and wishy-washy dialogue, your ass felt every minute of it. Not as good as the first but better than the second. If you're a die-hard "Pirates" fan, nothing will live up to the first one for you. I'd like to see them make another one of only to wrap up a lot of the unexplored plots they introduced here. One such point would be, did Beckett make a deal with Jones or Turner in the name of the EITC? In the final battle, Beckett's ship has five million cannons poking out from each side. The Flying Dutchman and the Black Pearl flank him and tear him apart. After repeated requests, he never gives the order to fire. We see him just smiling as if in disbelief that the Dutchman is now on the pirate's side again but I think there was more to it than that. He uttered the line (repeated by him throughout the movie as a euphemism for a double cross) "It's just good business" as his ship is being torn apart. He walks (slo-mo) through the disintegrating ship without a scratch. When the final explosion comes we see a body land in the water on top of the EITC flag but we never see Beckett's face. Something to pick up on in part four? Barbosa has the Black Pearl and he's looking for the Fountain of Youth. Sparrow has the map to the fountain but he's looking for Barbosa and the Black Pearl. We are introduced to the ten year old spawn of Elizabeth and Will and the Calypso/Jones plot was never really closed. I think they could pull off a fourth but only if they return to the formula that made the first one so good. More action and comedy, less seriousness and romance...
Tuesday, 5-22-7
I watched "Fargo" for the first time tonight. I got it for free so I figured I'd watch it. It was part of a 2-pack when I bought "Raising Arizona". The 2-pack was the same price as the single DVD of "Raising Arizona". That means, free "Fargo" for me and I guess it is about time I check it out.
I am disappointed in myself that I haven't seen this earlier. It was a really good movie. I don't know what took me so long but I'm glad I finally saw it.
It was an exceedingly simple plot. A guy gets into financial trouble and can't find a way out. His wife's father is loaded so he hires some guys to kidnap his wife and hold her for ransom. The kidnappers will get $40K, he'll get the rest and his wife will be returned unharmed. Sounds easy doesn't it? Trouble is, this takes place in real life, not in some fantasy realm where movie plots come off without a hitch. One of the kidnappers is a loudmouth (Steve Buscemi) and the other is driven by violence. The husband (William H. Macy) is a bumbling nervous wreck and the father-in-law is too involved. The real star of the movie was Frances McDormand as the pregnant cop who solves the whole thing as just another day on the beat.
The kidnappers head in to town to do the deed. Along the way, they are pulled over because they forgot to put the license tag on the car. The violent one kills the cop. While loudmouth is dragging the cop body off the road, a passing car sees him. Violence boy drives off and follows them, killing them too.
The husband finds a way to come up with the money and tries to call off the kidnappers but now they want all of the money because of the deaths. They go to kidnap the wife, she fights back and ends up dying. The cop is investigating the deaths alongside the highway and ties them to the car dealership where the husband works. The husband is flaky and ends up bringing on more suspicion to himself. The ransom drop was supposed to take place between the kidnappers and the husband but the father-in-law goes instead and ends up getting shot. Before he dies, he shoots the kidnapper. Buscemi drives off bleeding with the money, burying most of it along side the highway. He returns to his violent partner in crime and hands him the original ransom money. His partner now kills him and feeds him into a wood-chipper. The cop discovers him just as he's putting in the last leg, sneaker and all. The husband is discovered holed up in a hotel room and that's the end.
Lots of blood and lots of death. Lots of exaggerated accents, lots of "Oh ya, sure, you betcha!" It was funny but it was interesting because these were "real" looking people. If this movie had been done starring Brad Pitt as the husband and Angelina Jolie as the cop it never would have worked. The fact that these people were normal, every-day people made the idea seem real. There was some unresolved plot like, why the hell was the Asian guy from school in the movie at all? But for the most part, it was all the little nuisances that made it work. The cop's husband showing up and having lunch, falling asleep at night with the TV still on. That's real life. We don't all drive Ferarri's and wear $500 sunglasses. Was it a simple film? Oh ya, sure. But it worked for me because it was the kidnap/murder plot that could happen next door.
Sunday, 5-20-7
Last weekend Teresa and I watched a few really easy movies. Simple enjoyment from the 70's and early 80's. In fact, after watching them, I am having difficulty in remembering what was so funny about them. It's not just a simple passage of time, several "simple" movies from that era still hold weight with me, it must be that I have grown a bit and that I have come to expect more out of a movie. In either case it was nice to see a movie where color was symbolic, where a silent panoramic of the horizon was a narrative.
Kagemusha is a historical piece depicting the battles of the Japanese clans and leading up to the unification of Japan under one Shogun. It is a movie about death. On the surface, it is about the death of a clan leader. Looking at the big picture, it is about the death of the Japanese samurai ways. And under it all, it was the turning point and the beginning of the end of a brilliant film-maker's career.
We open on the simple throne room of the Takeda clan where Lord Shingen is taking audience from his double/brother about a thief that was caught but also looked more like the lord than his own brother. Japanese Daimyo often employed doubles as decoys in dangerous situations. He decides to keep the thief alive and to have him trained as a secret double. Everyone knows the brother serves as a double, this thief will be a secret double. Soon after, Shingen is shot by a sniper and is dying. His final command is to cease the march toward Kyoto and to fall back and protect their own lands. They are to conceal his death for three years when the clan will be strong enough to stand again. The thief is placed on the throne and the brother serves as the double as usual.
We are introduced to Lord Shingen's son Katsuyori who is upset that he is not heir and makes trouble for Kagemusha at every turn. Kagemusha is trained in the ways that Lord Shingen lived and fills the role quite nicely. His recent wound is blamed for why he does not visit his mistresses. The real reason is that Shingen received a horrible scar in a famous duel years ago and of course, Kagemusha does not have this scar. In the day to day life of the clan, he is merely a figurehead and all of the decisions take place by his advisors. When he is stuck and on the spot, he improvises exceptionally well and makes decisions just as wisely as the deceased leader. He seems to be better loved than the dead lord and everything goes smoothly for two years until he tries to ride Lord Shingen's horse. The horse senses the difference that the people around him could not and refuses to allow this stranger to ride him. After being thrown to the ground, it is revealed that he does not bear the scar and that he is an imposter. He is thanked by those who knew, threatened by those who didn't and rebuked by those that had come to love him. He is dismissed from the castle and while he is given money, he doesn't wasn't it. He wants to be part of the clan, something he can not have.
Katsuyori is now in charge and the brash young warrior immediately takes off to war. He is warned that his father wanted the clan to refrain from attacks and simply defend their borders for another year. The son disregards the advisors and marches into battle. The final scenes are some of the most disturbing yet most beautiful depictions of battle in that era. Historically accurate in many ways but so very inaccurate in others. The final scene is the famous Battle of Nagashino. There have been many battles at this place but this is the final one that led to the demise of the Takeda clan and the rise of the Oda clan and their eventual unification of Japan. Now I know I don't hold a degree in Japanese history but it is one of my loves. I watched this movie and recognized names and emblems from the real life battles. The Takeda clan was famous for their cavalry. They were the best at deploying heavy horse troops and overtaking enemy armies in no time. The Nanban traiders (Portugese) introduced light guns to the Japanese years back but were considered nominal on the battle field because they took so long to reload. This battle changed that. Oda set up wooden barricades and had three lines of riflemen on the front lines. They shot in rounds, reloading while the other shot giving an almost continuous volley of gunfire. Another warfare change made by Oda was the order to shoot the horses first. The Takeda cavalry is nothing without their horses. And sure enough, he proved correct. The movie shows wave after wave of Takeda horsemen being mowed down on the field. Kurosawa's use of slow motion emphasizes the death of the horses as much as the death of the men. This battle is often referred to as the first "modern" battle in Japan in which the ways of the samurai sword/spear melee combat gives way to the gun. The final scene is Kagemusha who has been watching the battle jumping to his feet and charging forward even though he is alone and ostensibly the last of the clan. He is gunned down and he falls into the river where his dead body flats by the clan's battle flag.
In reality, this was a drastic defeat for the Takeda clan but it was not the total annihilation of the clan as depicted in the movie. True life battles aside, the point in this film was life and death. Shingen's brother lived his whole life as his brother's shadow out of duty and honor. Kagemusha lived as a thief but never truly lived until he stepped in as Shingen's shadow. He felt the giddiness of power at first but over his two year masquerade, he learned compassion and love. He felt as though he were a father to the clan and even after his dismissal, he wanted nothing more than to protect, to belong to the clan. He picked up the clan's battle flag and went to his death on the battlefield as a dirty beggar and thief but in his head, he was the last of the clan. Did his death mean any less than Shingen's brother, his son or even Shingen himself?
Kurosawa would only give us one more samurai film before he died. Luckily it was one of his best. "Ran" is his "King Lear" and another of my favorites but it would be the last. "Kagemusha" and "Ran" are the last two of the samurai films that he was so well known for and at this point he hadn't done a samurai era film in fifteen years. His final three films were interesting and worth seeing if you are a fan of his but "Kagemusha" was the beginning of the end. In some places it was said that "Kagemusha" was a dress rehearsal for "Ran". It was long and drawn out and could be considered dry in the middle too. As much as I enjoy the historical aspects, I believe he over did it a little and lost a lot of people along the way because it almost seemed as if we were living out the final days in real time. The Kurosawa samurai films were over but what a way to go out. Two movies with epic battle scenes and "Kagemusha" depicting the last of the old samurai ways.
Sunday, 5-6-7
I wanted to like this one. I'm still not sure if I did or not. Hugh Jackman is alright and you already know I love Christian Bale. Throw in a cameo from Ricky Jay and I was really wanting to like this.
Two turn of the century (1899/1900, nor 1999/2000) stage magicians are obsessed with outdoing one another. At the start, we see that they are both the plants for a magician and that Jackman is married to the magician's assistant. Bale is in charge of tying her knots. She insists she can use more difficult knots, Bale ties a more difficult know, she dies. Did he kill her? Not really. But it served as a significant plot point that drove these two friends to be enemies. Jackman shoots Bale in the hand and Bale exposes Jackman's tricks... It is all about rivalry. Bale comes up with an exceptional trick. He transports himself across the stage instantly. Jackman is obsessed with finding out how he does it. When he can't figure it out, he duplicates the trick by using a double. Bale sabotages the double and the rivalry continues. The two men are both reading stolen journals from one another. Jackman goes to America to visit Nickola Tesla. Bale's notebook says he had Tesla build a machine for him. Tesla creates the machine and is surprised when it works. It creates perfect duplicates, 100' away. So, Jackman begins to plot revenge on Bale. He sets up shop again and begins performing the new and improved trick. He walks into the electricity and reappears behind the audience. He makes sure that word gets out to Bale. Sure enough Bale shows up and forces his way below stage to see how the trick was done. As he walks into the electricity, he falls through the trap door into a water tank and drowns, every night. His copy shows up behind the audience and replays the trick the next night. Once Bale sees him drowning, he tries to get him out. The copy hears the struggling and does not reveal himself tonight. Now Bale is set up for murder. In prison, a strange benefactor offers to save his daughter from the workhouses if he will give him the secret of his tricks. Jackman eventually reveals himself as the benefactor but allows Bale to hang for his murder. Bale relays this information to his assistant who it turns out is his identical twin. He did the trick the same way as Jackman did (without the machine) He's just dedicated enough to live his entire life as part time star, part time assistant because the twins alternate. As Jackman is locking up his last performance, Bale surprises him and kills him. In one of movieland's longest dying-gotta-tell-it-all scene, all the secrets I just told you are revealed. See, in the movie, they play with the timeline Tarrantino style. They keep switching from past to future to present. So much so that it had Becca in tears because she couldn't keep up. Lots of bad accents and lots of shadows, add in a warped timeline and I completely understand why she had trouble following it. Unfortunately, it held no surprises for me. With Bale's erratic behavior, some of the intentionally obtuse dialogue and with the early scene showing an elderly Chinese magician who acted frail but was actually strong as an ox, I knew what was going to happen from the very beginning. The only thing that threw me was the Tesla Coil actually reproducing human clones. I kept waiting for that to be a ruse and I wanted that explained away. Unfortunately, it never was exposed as a hoax and indeed, if he drowned himself 100 performances in a row, it had to create the clone.
It was good. It was long though. Especially if you saw everything coming. It wasn't good enough to be this long. If it were shorter, it would be better. If it were better, I wouldn't mind it being this long.
Monday, 5-7-7
Yeah, just as I finished typing on the forum board that I had to quit and get some sleep, I saw HBO was starting a movie. I had just bought a new external hard drive for work so I ran the format while I waited to see what the movie was and then I was going to go to bed. The format took longer than I thought and I got sucked in to the first ten minutes of this movie. By the time I watched the ten minutes, I went ahead and performed the entire system backup because I was hooked in and watching this whole movie...
I don't know why I liked it. I didn't want to. I'm not normally a fan of these types of movies but it was funny right from the start. They start out showing a typical work day at a Best Buy/Circuit City type of store. The main character is the loner-geek type that everyone else at work is polite to but mocks behind his back. One day, the guys are shorthanded for their poker game and they invite him to play. The conversation turns to outrageous sex stories and he talks like that kid in Jr. High that never had sex but talks the talk. Everyone picks up on it and discovers that he's still a virgin. From there, it becomes a quest to get him laid. Drunk party girls, transvestite hookers, nothing works. Something always keeps him from closing the deal. In the midst of all this, he meets a nice woman and starts to fall in love with her. The other guys are still teaching him all they know about women and the whole point is that they know so very little. They ransack his apartment to make him look like a grown man. His place looked like a lot of people's rooms looked like in their parent's house, just much cleaner. Mint, unopened collectibles/comics, the ultimate video game system, everything a teenager could want. I still know people like this. So he falls in love and they decide to wait for a while before they have sex. The wait is over and she starts thinking that he doesn't want to have sex because he doesn't like her or that something is wrong with him. The standard plot line takes over here. They argue, they push each other away. He loves her, she loves him, they run back to each other, they get over their problem and they live happily ever after. And that is exactly what happens.
I fell for the simple gags and actually laughed at them. There was one scene where he was going to have sex with his new girlfriend. She's in the bathroom getting ready and he's trying to put on a condom. He's never done this before and he's breaking them. So there's like twenty mutilated condoms on the floor now and she comes to bed just as her kids open the door. The daughter is horrified but the son just sees the multitude of condoms and says, "Dude, teach me!" Stupid little bit but I laughed. I don't remember if the son even made another appearance in the entire movie. He was obviously there just for that gag, but it worked for me.
It was a simple little movie. I miss the days when I had a group of friends like that. Everyone has that "good old days" memory and I'd never want to go back and relive it but it was nice to recognize some of my "good old days" in this movie. Nothing deep or interesting and not exactly a monumental comedy but an excellent diversion if you just want to sit and enjoy a funny little movie.
Thursday, 6-22-7
I saw a partial of this a few weeks ago and when it came on at a convenient time in the hotel, I decided to watch the whole thing. I should have left it alone at the partial. When I saw bits and pieces of it, I liked what I saw. When I saw the whole thing put together I didn't like it any better. It was cute but it was the same Owen Wilson plot. If they had put Vince Vaughn in place of Matt Dillon, it would have been a bad "Wedding Crashers" reunion and more appropriate because Vaughn and Wilson had a nice chemistry on screen in that one.
Matt Dillon is getting married to Kate Hudson and his best friend is Dupree (Owen Wilson.) Dupree loses his job because he took the week to go to Hawaii for the wedding. Dillon and Hudson take him in for "a week". The wacky house-guest issues ensue and on top of that, Dillon is being hassled by his new father-in-law at work. The pressure is driving Dillon and Hudson both nuts, they kick Dupree out, she feels bad for him and invites him back. Dillon is starting to go crazy because he is working all the time and this leaves his best friend alone with his new wife, both of whom are upset that he never has time for them. They commiserate, the father-in-law bonds with Dupree and all of this pushes Dillon over the edge and he attacks Dupree. Everyone gets back together, the daughter sees that her father was instigating a lot of the trouble and the three of them are happy again.
Boring. There were very few entertaining moments that stood out and I even had a hard time writing this up. The "whipped married friend" played by Seth Rogan was funny for the few seconds he was on screen. The fantasy scene of Kate Hudson in a bikini and high heels was worth the entire movie.
It was alright to watch but I wouldn't go so far as to even put it into my Netflix queue.
Sunday, 6-25-7
Another good samurai film. This one stars Toshiro Mifune but he did not appear to be the same Mifune I had seen in all of the Kurosawa films. This was a Kobayashi film and Mifune's acting was different in this than in most of the Kurosawa epics.
A man is a respected leader in the army and he is looking for a wife for his son. He wants to find a good wife because his marriage is horrible and he doesn't want his son to endure the trials of having such a horrible life.
The clan's leader (Daimyo) sends his men to Isaboro to inform him that one of the lord's mistresses has offended him and he is dismissing her but wants to keep her from the peasants by marrying her to his son. She has born a son to the lord but her attack on the other wives and on the lord himself has dishonored her. Because her son is not the direct heir, she is deemed "dismissible from the court".
Isaburo's wife is upset with the prospect of the "tainted" daughter-in-law but she is looking to climb the social ladder and she thinks this gives her family a little step up. Isaburo is upset because his son deserves more than the lord's second-hand wives. After stalling as much as possible, they accept the proposal (which was never really a proposal in the first place) and the girl arrives. She is quiet and demure and falls in line with family life right away. The son takes a liking to her and soon the family accepts her wholly. Isaburo likes the new daughter-in-law so much, he retires and makes his son Yogoro the head of the family. By doing this he also removes his own wife from a position of power and puts his son's wife in charge of the household.
A year goes by and the new family welcomes a baby daughter. In that year we learn the nature of the offences Ichi committed in the castle to be dismissed from the lord's court. She was in love with a boy when the order came for her to report to the castle. She agreed to go only if her lover would agree to it. Under pressure from his family and the court, the boy abandoned her and she went to the castle. She was upset with the ease at which the lord could "kidnap" any young woman he wanted and after resisting, she gave in to herself vowing that she would bear the lord many sons so that she would be the last girl pressed into service like this. She would sacrifice herself to save other girls. After bearing the Daimyo her first son, she was ordered to a spa to recuperate. When she returned a new woman was in her place and her sacrifice meant nothing. She attacked the woman and even scratched the Daimyo. With this story, the family becomes even more attached to her.
Terrible news comes from the capital. The lord's heir has fallen and died. This puts Ichi's son into position as the direct heir. Word comes from the lord that all is forgiven and that Ichi is to return to live in the castle as mother to the lord's heir. The family refuses to allow her to be torn from her husband and new daughter like this. In direct defiance to the Daimyo's orders, they take their stand and prepare for battle. In a trick, the younger brother delivers Ichi to the castle and he returns with a nurse-maid for the baby. Isaburo is told that he is to write a request to the lord asking him to take Ichi back in to the castle, just to make things official. It is now clear to them that the lord's behavior is not only wrong but also illegal. He writes the letter but it is an indictment and a request for Ichi to return home. The lord is incensed and sends troops to compel Isaburo and Yogoro to write the proper request. The lord sends Ichi along with the troops to have her plead for her family to comply with the lord's wishes. When confronted by the troops, Ichi sees no way out of the situation but to kill herself. She impales herself on the spear of one of the soldiers and in the battle Yogoro also dies. Isaburo gathers his grand-daughter and hits the road headed for Edo to tell the Emperor of the cruelty of his clan's Daimyo. At the border he is confronted by his old friend, still on duty as a guard. He can not allow Isaburo to pass. Isaburo says that he will pass or die trying. The two old friends agree that they must duel to the death as there is no other honorable way to resolve this conflict. They walk out to the field where they both comfort and feed the baby. Isaburo appoints his friend as guardian of the child should he lose in the duel. They agree that it is time and they draw swords. In the duel, the friend dies and in his final breath he tells Isaburo that there was no way he could have won this duel with a clear conscience.
Isaburo starts to walk back to the baby and is shot by the troops that have shown up during the duel. He gets back up and stumbles to the baby. He is shot many times crawling toward the baby and dies crying out the baby's name just feet from her. The final scene is the nurse-maid picking the baby out of the grass and walking away from the border gate back toward home.
The acting in this film was more traditional Japanese acting. I'm not saying they were all Noh Theatre types, just that the expected archetypes were noticeably missing. I waited for it but Mifune never scratched his chest or head even once. I guess that's what I get for narrowing my scope to just the few Japanese directors I know. This opened my eyes to a wonderful story and some fantastic scenes. I look forward to seeing more films by Kobayashi.
Wednesday, 6-27-7
A few weeks ago Heffner and I were sitting around and drinking and he was flipping through the pay-per-view channels in the hotel. He asked if I wanted to see this movie and I said I really didn't think so, it's a kids movie. Last night we were drinking again and he asked about this movie again. I said I had no intention of seeing it but if he insisted, I'd sit through it. After we watched it, he hollered at me for not stealing his remote and throwing it out the window when he asked about it.
It was a very boring attempt at displaying the imagination of children. I young boy is an artist, that is, he draws all the time. He is picked on by the bullies in school just like everyone else. The new girl shows up and they become friends. She is the writer type and they have fun running around in the woods. They swing on a rope across a creek to get to their kingdom. She insists on imagining everything in the woods is alive and part of their invisible kingdom. He has trouble seeing it but eventually she gets him to see it to.
They never really create a new world and it is never implied that the kingdom exists anywhere but in these kid's heads. There are very few special effects and those that are there look crude and rough, just like a child's drawing would be.
They have trouble with a female bully, she becomes a giant troll in the woods. He bully breaks down and they befriend her, the giant troll becomes their friend. Not much to go on here.
So one weekend, a teacher he's had a crush on asks him out on an impromptu visit to the museum. He wants to ask his friend along but he also wants this for himself so he never asks her along. When he returns home, the family is crying. The rope swing broke and the girl hit her head and died. The boy feels guilty because he feels that he should have invited her along. His little sister almost falls into the creek trying to follow him to the woods. He yells at her to stay out because this was only for him and his friend. After accepting his friend's death, he builds a bridge over the creek and invites his sister to share the kingdom with him. She has trouble seeing it at first and eventually she starts to believe and the only decent imagery in the entire movie shows up and for a second I start to think that if they had incorporated any of this anywhere else in the movie it would have been better.
As it stands, it is a shallow impression of some writer's true-life childhood tragedy and a nice little tale about friends and death and the power to imagine. I liked the fact that the little girl died and they didn't have her miraculously appear at the end or anything so predictable. She died, she's gone. Nice. The trailers had more special effects than the entire movie did. If you watch this looking for the effects you saw in the trailer, you are going to be disappointed. If you watch this for a heartwarming story about friends that live in a make-believe world, you are going to be disappointed. If you watch this looking for a story about a lonely little boy who experiences minor happiness and then great loss as well as ambiguous questions about "does the father abuse the boy" or "why would a beautiful young teacher ask her young-teen student out on a Saturday? Is she molesting him?" then the story will make a little more sense. He's withdrawn, he's shy, he's pouring all of his time into a make-believe land... I think he is just a sequel away from hanging himself from the Bridge to Terabithia. So if you liked "Simon in the Land of Chalk Drawings" or the After-School-Special "Good Touch-Bad Touch" then you might like this.
Sunday, 7-1-7
This one was another disappointment for me. I saw the trailer for it and it looked decent enough. In the trailer they played the entire cast singing "In the Sweet By and By" and it sounded great. I put it on top of my Netflix queue and couldn't wait to see it. I got up Sunday morning real early and couldn't sleep so I popped in the movie. It was good but it wasn't what I wanted to see. Moreover, it didn't seem "put together" right. There was a lot of star-power in this. Tommy Lee Jones, Woody Harrelson, Kevin Klein, Lily Tomlin, Meryl Streep, Lindsay Lohan, etc... There was a lot going on and there was even a subplot but it just felt like they dropped all this in a blender and hoped for the best.
"A Prairie Home Companion" is a radio show that belongs in the 40's and 50's but somehow survives into what looked like the 70's or even early 80's. I know in real life the show lived and died long after these periods but I'm talking about what the movie shows... It has the feel of "The Grand Old Opry" meets "Our Town". The show is having its last performance because another company bought the theatre and is shutting them down tonight. The MC of the show is Garrison Keillor playing GK and acting very much like himself. The acts include two singing/joke telling cowboys, a band, an old crooner and Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin as the last two sisters in a famous family known for singing mountain gospel ( a la the Carter family?) Streep has a daughter (Lindsay Lohan) who has almost no interest in her mother and aunt's act and no knowledge or respect for the radio show. She sits and writes suicidal poetry the whole time. He character is pointless and I don't understand why she is there. You could remove every scene she's in and you would never have to edit anything else to clean it up. Kevin Kline is the security agent who is watching a mysterious woman in white who turns out to be the angel of death, there to collect the old crooner. The security agent talks the angel into collecting the company axe man as well, hoping to save the show. Nothing changes and after the show the theatre is demolished. We see the main acts gathered together in a diner and by the talk going around the table; it is a year or more after the final show. Lindsay Lohan shows up in a business suit, has her mother sign a "power of attorney" for her financial records and leaves. For some reason, everyone is still in costume. The singing cowboys show up (in costume) and there is a short discussion of a reunion show. Just then, the diner door opens and in walks the mysterious woman in white. The end.
Wow, I really would have liked some better music or some more movement on the plot. I got precious little of either. The MC announcing the acts and promoting the sponsor's products was the best part in the movie. He kept telling old stories the way stories used to be told. You couldn't tell where the truth was but you could never identify the lie. Lohan was superfluous; the singing sisters were good but never really developed. The cowboys were just cowboys, no development there. The feel of the whole thing was just experiencing the last night of the radio show. If that's what they wanted, they should have thrown in a lot more good music. We didn't need the angel of death showing up and we really didn't need Lindsay Lohan. Or, put them in there and have a plot happen. Either way, do something!
Monday, 7-2-7
I was listening to the band "The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black" and started thinking about this movie. She's been in several other movies and most of them are better than this one but this is the movie that gets her the most recognition. And of the three parts of the movie, it's only the last segment that anyone actually remembers. Teresa hates this movie and for her own reasons. I'll let her tell you why if you really want to know... But I tried to watch this while she was in Pennsylvania but she had the mail stopped while she was gone so when she got back it was right here waiting for her.
This is a compilation of short horror stories. "Julie", "Millicent and Therese" and "Amelia". These are also the leads in each story, played by Karen Black.
"Julie" is about a campus stud who suddenly finds himself attracted to his drab looking teacher. He pursues the shy woman and insists on dating her even though she resists. On the big first date, he drugs her and takes compromising photos of her. He uses them to get her to do anything he wants. After a while, we see Julie is bored with the situation and tells the boy it is over. He is choking to death as she explains to him that this was all by her orchestration and that she planned it all out. Now that he is no longer very creative in his depravity, she is moving on. She sets his apartment on fire and we see her clipping the headline to add to her scrapbook of other student deaths. There is a knock at the door and the next victim arrives.
"Millicent and Therese" is about an older woman named Millicent who is quiet and reclusive. She lives with her younger sister Therese who is outgoing and obnoxious. She listens to loud music and has male visitors at all hours much to the chagrin on her sister Millicent. They argue with each other and Therese takes great joy in antagonizing her older sister. One day, the family doctor comes by for a visit and finds Therese dead. He calls the police and as they are loading her into the ambulance he states her full name as "Millicent Therese Larimore, the most advance case of multiple personality syndrome I've ever seen" and then her takes off the wig and wipes the lipstick off to reveal the plain face of Millicent.
"Amelia" is the story everyone remembers. Based on the short story "Prey" it is about a woman who is alone in the city. She is trying to break free of her Mother's domination of her life. She buys a Zuni Warrior Fetish doll as a present for her anthropologist boyfriend. She is on the phone with her mother telling her that, although she normally visits every Friday night, tonight is her boyfriend's birthday and wants to go out with him instead. The mother throws guilt and shame, the tears follow. She slams down the doll and goes to take a bath. As she leaves, the protective gold chain falls from the doll's waist, releasing the spirit held in the doll. The rest of the movie is Karen Black screaming and running away from the doll. In the end she kills it but the spirit of the warrior does not die. She calls her mother and apologizes for her selfishness. She tells mom to come by the apartment and they'll go out from there. She hangs up, walks over to the hallway where she haunches down and waits for mother while pounding the knife into the floor. The camera zooms in as she smiles revealing the sharp, jagged teeth of the doll.
Simple stories each of them. Nothing we haven't seen a hundred times before and since. I hear a lot of the same storylines in fiction being written today. In fact, I've written several versions of the first two stories myself. Is it cryptomnesia? Is it plagiarism? Is it inspiration? Or is it just a very simple plot that strikes the lot of us to our core? It's just good stories being told in new ways through the ages.
I watched this movie and saw a lot of things I never saw in the first few times I saw it from years ago. I was thinking that the music and camera work reminded me of "Dark Shadows" but then when the credits rolled I saw it was by Dan Curtis, the guy who did "DS". The way the stories were told was interesting. Each of the stories was written by Dan Matheson and he's an interesting guy. I read an interview with him and he hates to be called a "Horror" writer. But if you ask any writer/editor to identify his work, they will ALL put him in the horror genre. What constitutes horror and what differentiates horror from fantasy and sci-fi? Everyone will give you different answers to these questions. Many will claim that horror requires blood, guts and gore. I disagree. I think that horror writers that rely on gore are strictly unimaginative and showing their severe lack of creativity.
Coming back from my digression, "Trilogy of Terror" was a good anthology of three interesting stories, each of which has its own place in the human psyche to stalk and haunt us from.
Last Updated: 07/04/07 09:56 PM