Category: Movies

Damn, that Sarah was hot. For a puppet.

The night’s second Gary Cooper film, 1931’s Fighting Caravans, depicted a young (and by young, I mean a year younger than my present age) Gary Cooper as a young ne’er-do-well scout on the trail from Independence, Missouri, to Sacramento, California, as part of a large wagon train beset by Indians.

Not too many comments, but:

• Lili Damita is way hotter than Helen Hayes, and I can even forgive the French accent since she wisened up and moved to America. Also, at 5′ 3″, she seems to have a couple of inches on Ms. Hayes, using the relative Cooper scale for comparison.
• Like the cantankerous scout Bill Jackson, I too have grown quite fond of a Kickapoo girl.

Still, as I delve more into these older films, I have to admit I prefer color films to black and white, unless they’ve been lovingly restored by gentle, adulating acolyte hands. But that’s a matter of taste.

Also, I hope that I am like Gary Cooper. Although I am a stunning example of manhood in my thirties, I hope to get sexier as I near the midcentury mark and beyond. I’m still hoping to dodge the whole lung cancer thing, though.

So tonight’s first movie is the 1932 rendition of A Farewell to Arms starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes. Here are my thoughts:

• Man, Helen Hayes was kinda cute, but she’s like, what, 4 foot tall?
• Good to see Gary Cooper was as cross-eyed as I am.
• You want to know a secret about the quality of DVDs you get when you buy a classic double feature for $10? Man, it’s authentic. I got every pop and his in the soundtrack in surround sound, baby. If only I had HDTV, undoubtedly it would be as pixelated as playing Doom on an Atari 2600. Which I think was called Gunfight, by the way, but that’s neither here nor there.
• Some people, particularly academics (especially those attending Colorado universities) would say that one could not truncate or chop up a Hemingway novel, but this movie indicates that you can. It’s not a bad movie, but it’s just a shell of what the book was.

  Of course, some would continue to cast aspersions on Hemingway’s novels, instead preferring the continental confuance of James Joyce. When I encounter these people, I prefer to engage them in a rigorous drunken brawl. I know that’s what Papa would have wanted.

So I pardon me if I get a little, how do you say it, upset. As some of you know, when my beautiful wife leaves town for business or biking, I take refuge in DVDs to kill the long, lonely hours without the fuego de mi corazon, la luz de vida, and the woman who represents even more foreign language sayings with more italics.

So this evening, when my beautiful wife has gone to a tropical location without me, I watch An Affair to Remember, not because I like chick flicks recommended by the Meg Ryan character in Sleepless in Seattle, but because I am researching the requisites for being a sensitive guy (please don’t beat me up, Tap City codrinkers).

Little did I know that the whole point was that the musically-minded, auburn-haired babe was travelling in a tropical location when she encountered a sharpie like Cary Grant, whom she decided that, as a non-practicing painter who could do the cha-cha and who had a grandmother in France with a good spread, was worth more than her faithful man at home. Pardon me if I take some offense.

Mr. Grant (and his sharpie ilk), I have a pen right here with which I have practiced the particular angle that I can use to drive its blue ball point through your Xyphoid Process right into the lower quadrant of your left lung, so if you even dare start circling my wife in a stairwell, prepare for your lower tracheotomy, do you know what I am saying?

Sure, the movie tried to make me forget my point by detouring into some musical sort of bits through the first part of the third act, with all those damn urchins singing, but I remained undeterred. No matter how many times they ran that damn “Affair to Remember” song through its various interpretations, I could hear nothing but “The Long Goodbye” playing on the car radio, do you get my drift?

Criminey, this brings to mind several things:

• I miss my wife.
• I should lower my caffeine intake.
• As shidoshi said, practice the upward strike by dropping rear leg and pivoting 45 degrees, blocking with left hand and jamming pen into craw with right hand.

I got an opportunity this weekend to see I, Robot, the 2004 film starring Will Smith and “suggested by” Isaac Asimov. In between shots designed to remind us that Will Smith has been working out, it wasn’t a bad film. Not even a bad story. I don’t remember if I’ve read the book–I remember mistaking it in my memory for Caves of Steel, which means I’m ultimately as reliable of a narrator as anything you’d find in a Philip K. Dick novel, but that’s neither here nor there.

Regardless, I thought I might comment upon those people who often unfavorably compare a movie to its source novel or an Alan Dean Foster novel compared to the original movie. Crikey, people, understand that the two are different media, with different ways of presenting a sometimes common story, which might differ in incidents and characters.

I mean, let’s face it, when you’re arguing about which presentation is best, you’re arguing about whose translation of The Iliad is best. Lattimore? Lombardo? Presented with the choice, undoubtedly an ancient Greek would shake his fist at both books and say that either one ruins the story because the dry text removes the storyteller’s inflections and ability to alter the content for the audience.

So yeah, although I think the original Battlestar Galactica was a triumph of storytelling and mythmaking, I won’t automatically discard the new rendition because Starbuck’s a hot chick, and I wasn’t prejudiced against I, Robot the movie simply because it wasn’t faithful to the Isaac Asimov original.

And I don’t want to ruin it for you, but don’t remember early, as I did, that Deckard was a replicant.

Not only is it purportedly the President’s favorite movie, but Big Trouble in Little China attains legendary status because it combines the prodigious talents of Al Heong and James Hong….not to mention Gerald Okamura, best known for his turn as the master in 9 1/2 Ninjas (which is unbelievably not yet on DVD!)

Face it, the movie depicts the lampooned American hero, out of his depth and slightly inept in the face of the world, but with a good heart and good reflexes, he manages to save the day. Conservatism at its best. You hear Rush Limbaugh doing his radio show tongue in cheek, lightly mocking himself….you hear Al Franken doing that? Perhaps I would, if I listened.

I watched this movie over and over on Showtime when I was in high school, and over and over on VHS taped from Showtime when I was in college. As a matter of fact, for my Scriptwriting class, when our group was assigned to create the pitch for a television series, I dominated the group into producing Tales from the Pork Chop Express. And now I have shared it with la luz de mi vida.

And she said it was okay.

James Lileks follows in my footsteps and watches the movie This Gun for Hire.

Veronica Lake was sompthin, ainna?

Heather and I just watched The Last Samurai, which many have taken at its face value as an anti-Western message. Well, if you want to look at it that way, take whatever lesson you want from it. I, on the other hand, prefer to take these messages away from it:

• An all-volunteer army is better than a conscript army. Ergo, it’s against the mock draft proposal being floated around by those who want us to fear the militarization of the Republican police state.
• Apparently, Sun Tzu was not translated into Nihongo until sometime after 1877. I mean, when you’ve got 500 men with swords and bows against two regiments with cannons and machine guns, Sun Tzu would have pointed out that narrow mountain passes that completely block in winter might present better terrain to your strengths than open fields.

I could write a paper on either of them. The benefit of an English degree, donchaknow.

Friends, I ask you to let me break this news to my beautiful wife when she returns from Buffalo tomorrow. I don’t want her to hear it on the news, and I don’t want someone else to mention it in an offhand e-mail or phone conversation. I know what it will mean to her, and I want to tell her in a safe place for her, where she’s surrounded by cats.

When we saw Spiderman 2 last week, I got out all of my comic books, four boxes’ worth, and showed them to her, and she showed me her smaller collection, which included a bunch of DC stuff and one fairly complete set of a single Marvel title. Dazzler. That mutant chick must have served as some role model for my wife as she grew up, and undoubtedly Heather will feel some deep connection to Dazzler, perhaps even a sense of protectiveness to Dazzler and what Dazzler meant to her.

So I just want to be there to comfort my beautiful wife, to hold her if she needs it, and to have some Puffs with lotion nearby, when I tell her that Jessica Simpson will play Dazzler in the next X-Men movie.

Intermittent Pseudo-Bachelorhood, Day 2, wherein our hero watches Beat the Devil (1953) because it’s got Humphrey Bogart in it and he got it as a Christmas gift from his wonderful mother-in-law (hi, ML!). Upon reviewing this black and white piece filmed in Italy, which modern DVD technicians have not spent any time at all restoring, our hero muses that only 11 years passed between John Huston blowing a lot of budget in Europe on froo froo drinks for Truman Capote, the screenwriter, and another seminal film shot in Italia: A Fistful of Dollars.

I mean, jeez, man, the shift from black and white to color was huge, man, but that’s not all that changed. I mean, look at story pacing and film making conventions and see how they change in that decade and a tenth.

By way of comparison, look at how slowly things evolve after that. For example, the differences between Dirty Harry (1971) and The Dead Pool (1988). Minor. Between Dirty Harry and any of the others in its ilk. Sure, more stuff explodes now, and studios spend more money on fake-looking CGI, but you know, you could watch something from the 1960s and something from 2003 and not feel too out of place.

Crap, I think I had a point when I started this post. I forget it now. Perhaps it was merely to confirm to our hero’s wonderful mother-in-law that her Christmas gifts are going to good use–filling those awful, empty hours until her daughter returns.

Oh, yeah, and memo to Hollywood. Explain this to me: Beat the Devil is available on DVD, and The African Queen is not. What are you people doing out there? Hello?

Alternate Title: Embrace Your Mythology, America!

So let me get this straight, again: In The Magnificent Seven, Americans ride in to save a Mexican villiage from bandits, who happen to also be Mexican, and they ride out with fewer than the advertised seven. What propoganda! Forty-some years later, “sophisticated” Americans would appreciate no such venture.

Meanwhile, leftists diminish the sacrifice contained within this American myth by saying that:

• White men oppressed red men
  Of course, ignore the fact that some white men and one partially brown man (Bernardo) saved brown men (and women and children) from oppression from other brown men.

• Americans fight for their own interests
  Well, these seven Americans got twenty dollars, a low sum by the standards indicated within the film, to protect oppressed Mexican farmers.

• Americans always win, and their heroes never run out of bullets.
  I know it’s out of fashion, but let’s run the numbers through this little bit of reality we call arithematic. Seven gunslingers, including those portraued by Charles Bronson, Robert Vaughn, James Coburn, Steve McQueen, and Yul Brenner ride in. Three ride almost out, but one decides he likes a Mexican babe and stays. Frankly, a less than fifty percent survival ratio is pretty low, even for realism circa the late 1800s that a Western embraces. Particularly that 22.2% returns to America, after defending the foreigners.

Pah, you all can guess what point I am trying to make. I am no Edith Hamilton or Joseph Campbell, but I understand the power of the stories we tell each other about our common heritage, and brothers, Abu Ghraib ain’t it.

P.S. In the arithematic of American mythology, the The Dirty Dozen (-11) and The Magnificent Seven (-4) do not yield the same actor in the role of survivor. Just in case you damn kids watched one, I wanted to inspire you to watch the other.

Alternate Title: When Was Hollywood Ever the Friend of Capitalism?

So let me get this straight: In This Gun For Hire, which “introduces” Alan Ladd and co-stars Veronica Lake, the “good guy” is an product of child abuse, and the “bad guy” is an old white guy who’s selling poison gas chemicals to the Japanese.

Hey, I appreciate the film as a story, but the theme indicates that Hollywood was not always in favor of capitalism. Remember that heyday of propoganda around World War II? A by-product of the future history, wherein the box office victors, which is to say the American people select those movies which represented John Wayne and company whipping the Axis, represent the remembered movies, and other films which presented a “nuanced” vision of America find themselves, 52 years later, represented by a single copy in Best Buy snapped up by an Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake fan. Undoubtedly, this Best Buy store sighed in relief and ordered an extra copy of The Transporter to cover the shelf space.

P.S. Note to studios: Alan Ladd. Veronica Lake. Raymond Chandler. For the love of all that is holy, release The Blue Dahlia on DVD.

Wouldn’t this be a more appropriate entry for Farenheit 9/11?

Click for full size

Spiderman 2 review:

Now this is what a superhero movie should be. “Spider-Man 2” believes in its story in the same way serious comic readers believe, when the adventures on the page express their own dreams and wishes. It’s not camp and it’s not nostalgia, it’s not wall-to-wall special effects and it’s not pickled in angst. It’s simply and poignantly a realization that being Spider-Man is a burden that Peter Parker is not entirely willing to bear.

He gives it 4 asterisks, which I assume is good. Unless they’re less than ampersands.

From a CNN review of the movie White Chicks:

From 1986’s “Soul Man” to last month’s “Soul Plane,” racial stereotypes have been the backbone of comedies good and bad. Makeup-induced transformations are nothing new, either, whether in 1964’s “Black Like Me” or Murphy’s phlegmy turn as an old Jewish man in 1988’s “Coming To America.”

Although Black Like Me was made into a movie, it was not a comedy; as a matter of fact, it was a “based on a true story” thing, based on John Griffith’s book of the same name. It wasn’t humor.

To include it in a list of comedy movies denigrates what Griffith did and the sacrifices he made to experience the south as a black man–ultimately, his treatments to darken his skin might have contributed to his death later.

Ah, the beauty of blogging: I can focus on a throw-away line with an intense lens to show its flaws. It’s just a throwaway line, but much of what people retain from reviews and other articles are the throwaway lines, which often Gestalt into an incomplete and inaccurate picture.

Joe Williams, of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, wrecks his brain on Farenheit 9/11:

I wracked my brain for a clever way to introduce this fiercely entertaining documentary. But instead I’ll begin with a straightforward appeal to see this film – and do it quickly.

Before most Americans get a chance to judge the film for themselves, they will be overwhelmed by counterspin and noisy attacks against Michael Moore, the director of this openly partisan document. But the smart-alecky fellow, who has often offended his own supporters by wielding his camera like a squirt gun, has his own ammunition ready.

Because the consumer will be overwhelmed by counterspin to the “documentary” before he or she can see the movie, Williams launches some preemptive spin. Because the message of the movie is more important than its artistry, beauty, or truth.

Everybody’s a critic, except for Joe Williams.