10 posts tagged “movies”
"Switchblade Sue Will Cut You" 8x10 inches, oil on board.
This is for the B Movie group show at Space Gallery in SF coming up in April. I've watched a lot of teen exploitation flicks from the 1950s involving girl gangs, or sorority girls who are just bad, so this character was just sort of inspired by those as a whole.
So I went and saw the Anton Corbijn movie "Control" based off the book, written by Joy Division singer Ian Curtis' widow. Everyone I know who read the book kinda was "meh" about it; I just went because I like Anton Corbijn, I had nothing else to do, it was my friend's birthday, and I had never been to the art school campus theater here in Cleveburgh.
It was very well filmed, despite the subject matter it had quite a few laughs in it, and I give the casting people credit for being able to find actors that look enough like the real people. Other than that...I found myself getting bored, a lot. The most interesting things are the riots at shows and the band manager Rob (he's quite a character in 24 Hour Party People as well). I know the movie was supposed to be centered on Ian Curtis' private life; what a nutty jerk he could be to his wife and daughter and why he probably killed himself. But I really, wanted to see more band related stuff. I guess his wife wasn't around for most of that.
I'm actually more interested to hear what his daughter thinks of all of this. She was born the same year as me, and it must be odd having a movie and books written about a parent you hardly knew. That there's a whole cult following and maybe you are expected to have some insight and be a certain way; must be strange having your dad be the godfather of goth! And yes throughout the movie my friends and I were making jokes about the birth of emo.
I guess the only thing that irritated me was the theater itself. I had never been to this particular art house theater -- it reminded me of why I don't go to both music gigs or regular theaters anymore. My god, as hubby said, "this is the hipster retirement home". I never knew so many people in Cleveland wore berets. The smug was outstanding, the seats uncomfortable, it smelled, and it just overall annoyed me. I thought I'd go out and try to be social, but wow, I much prefer sitting at home to watch movies. One of these days I'd like to get a big 'ole home theater built in my home -- that is the only way to go.
My verdict: a pretty good movie despite the many 'blah' moments. What I really would like to see is a film about Guns 'n' Roses -- now that would be entertainment!
I get a lot of stupid songs stuck in my head. Sometimes, it can be for years. Some drive me crazy, while others just kinda sit there and it don't bother me much. What bothers me more is that they can range from 70s rock to commercials. A list of some repeat offenders?
"Informer" by Snow
"Hair of the Dog" by Nazareth
the Charmin commercials with those damn bears.
This scene from Teen Witch, and it doesn't help that hubby and I sing it to each other all the friggin' time!
This piece from Esquivel
This song from the movie Team America, although any Trey Parker song I get stuck in my head easily.
and ever since I rented this movie Orchestra Wives, I Got A Girl in Kalamazoo has been stuck in my head for too long.
So what do these have in common? That's what I would like to know.
So, do you remember this song in Silence of the Lambs?
yep, it isn't on the soundtrack as far as I know, but there's more info here. Well it was written by my friend Bill Garvey. I first met Bill right when I moved to Cleveland, at the bar I worked/drank at, and we always had the funnest drunken conversations about art and film and rock 'n' roll...while I was on the job drinking of course. I miss it sometimes.
Anyways, Mr. William Garvey is also a really great photographer besides doing his music. I own two of his prints, one of a gun and one of Orson Welles, but both are distorted in interesting ways. Well, now he has a full blown site full of his wisdom, it is called www.LifeAt0.com On the subjects of rock and fashion, I particularly like this post and this one.
Miss 'ya Bill, and hoping we'll have cocktails real soon if I ever get to NYC again!
I have strange interests in actors/actresses past. Especially the kooky ones. Joan Crawford, Ava Gardner and Mary Astor are just some. My man now of many years has been Oliver Reed.
"The thing women will never forgive, is that men fuck them" -- Oliver Reed.
I hate to say it, but damn if that doesn't sum it up. Though it is sad he
died from basically being an alcoholic, chain smoker, and probably had
a number of STDs, he sure had fun doing it. To go on an intellectual TV show with feminist writers and say things like:
"No Bullshit, its
all down to whether she wants to get shafted"
"I'll put my plonker on
the table if you don't give me my mushy peas" and
"I've had more
fights in pubs than you've had hot dinners girl!"
I mean, that's just awesome on so many levels! Oliver Reed is in the same cannon of fucked up-alcoholic-messy-spitting-piss-off-where's-my-scotch-come-here-girl-give-us-a-squeeze actors such as Richard Harris and Peter O'Toole. He went from being a beautiful boy, to a complete mess over the course of his career. There were no rules for Mr. Reed; I'm always in awe of those people who are such a mess yet manage to get by and maintain a fabulous lifestyle, all while keeping a career going with comebacks.
My first intro to Oliver Reed was Zero Population Growth, a film that pretty much planted the seed of my population control stance as a youngster. That same year I saw him as Zeus in The Adventures of Baron Muchausen. Later in college I happened upon his first film in Beat Girl, he basically just dances and wears a flannel shirt that looks very out of place in the whole movie. I rented The Assasination Bureau, in which he stars, but it was a movie with promise that went to utter crap within 15 minutes. And then, I loved him in The Brood, the only movie to give me nightmares as an adult. I don't know what it is about Mr. Reed, but I love him so. Here are some clips that show him at his most gorgeous and then trailing down into drunken humiliation. There was a famous bit that's no longer on YouTube where Oliver Reed, dressed in biker threads and bare chested, sings "Wild Thing" to the audience. I think it may have been a Phil Donahue episode. One of his last films, was Gladiator.
I got on another kick recently where I rented a bunch of movies from the era where HBO just ran the same 8 bad teen films over and over again. You know, Alien from L.A., Lucas, Teen Witch, Solarbabies and so forth? Not to mention they ran the two Unico movies constantly for a while too.
Well one of those movies was The Wraith, starring Charlie Sheen. I forgot how short it is, almost like a made for TV movie but still kind of funny and good. So I make my husband watch it and he LOVES it. Like a child he keeps asking me technical and theoretical questions, trying to figure out if these people are supposed to be in high school and gets bent out of shape about certain plot holes. Mostly we are disturbed by the hair-do Nick Cassavettes is sporting.
The next day after watching it he did really good in a competitive road race. He thinks The Wraith possessed him and that helped him win. So we watched it again. The movie is only and hour and 20 minutes long, so no big deal. I just thought it was really funny.
Here's the trailor...
When I saw The Departed, I thought it was great, and especially loved Mark Wahlberg and his motorized potty-mouth. How appropriate I was visiting Boston when I saw it too. Then, I discovered it was a Hong Kong remake! I was miffed indeed (nothing original gets done in Hollywood it seems). So over the past week I've gone Hong Kong crazy with my Netflix service.
Infernal Affairs is the original, made in 2002. It is the exact same story down to the smaller details -- except with no sex and less potty-mouth language. The same yet so different. I like how in all bloody action films made Hong Kong, there is always some schmalzty sentimental music thrown in for the happier scenes that seems to come out of nowhere. Truthfully I liked this version better because the male leads were really hot. I just never dug Matt Damon or Leonardo DiCaprio at all, these guys on the other hand...yummy.
Next up was the John Woo classic A Better Tomorrow from 1986. Again, schmaltzy music is juxtaposed with blood at times. This film stars Chow Yun-Fat in your typical "one last score and then I'm out" gangster story. He and his partner are riding high on life until a youngster wannabe in their company betrays them in a deal gone bad. Chow Yun-Fat ends up a cripple while his partner gets sent away to prison for 3 years. When they reunite, the tables have turned and the youngester is now the leader -- and he isn't about to let them leave the gangster life just yet. Let's just say having a big ole leg brace doesn't stop Chow Yun from working some serious gun action.
Last night I was treated to Hard Boiled, made in 1992 and again starring Chow Yun. Again, a story as old as time, "You killed my partner, he was this close to retirement!" What can I say about this movie without giving too much away? Well, I don't think I've ever seen so many people die in a movie. For real. The Die Hard and Terminator franchises got nothing on this puppy! You know blood is going to splat anytime someone is wearing a white dress shirt or hospital gown -- it is a rule in this flick. Seriously has anyone done a body count for this movie? I'm guessing 300ish, but it is hard to tell. Chow Yun is a good cop but he's nuts; look at the DVD art to get an idea because I'm guessing he kills about 30-40 guys alone with this baby strapped to him:
Yeah, Chow Yun makes any Hollywood action star look like a pansey. I highly recommend it if you like guns and explosions and piles and piles of people getting blasted.
Movies have gotten better in the past few years, at least enough that I bother seeing one or two a year that are "new". I'm still really pissed that The Departed (which I thought was excellent) turned out to be a Hong Kong movie originally, thus re-enforcing my stance that NOTHING original is ever made in Hollywood.
I went to CalArts years ago and studied art, animation and film. To tell you the truth, I enjoy movies much more now that I'm not obsessing over technical aspects and various other art school bullshit. While there, I came across so many people with great scripts, just even in our script classes and meetings. Even more scripts were lining the shelves of the post-production office I interned at breifly (though I have no idea if any of them were good). Point is, there are tons of great scripts floating around that are original, but hardly anyone takes a chance on them. And when I say original, I mean that in they are not A. Predictable B. Trying to be quirky on purpose C. Revised from a book, foreign film or graphic novel and D. Not toyed with a rewritten by the Development Department. I considered at one time becoming a D Girl just because it seemed really easy for me:
A d-girl or development girl is a person in a film production company who is responsible for finding and identifying potential movie ideas for their development into a script. Also, they are responsible for writing script coverage for scripts that arrive at a production company. Typically, a d-girl is the entry-level position in a film production company.
But they don't pay shit, they don't care that you might have some insight, and really, just want to make sure you know how to operate a xerox machine. A degree from Harvard means nothing in L.A. unless you know how to work a xerox and three-hole punch. Those junior VPs who green light have a life span of two years in those production offices, they also do tons of drugs and get happy with the red sharpie even if their revisions make no sense. I don't like naming names, but I can think of quite a few instances where the senior person doing the revisions and production notes for book adaptations, never even read the books! Okay for instance, there was a guy doing character design and co-writing the script for what was to be an animated version of Moby Dick. He was doing all of this, having never read the damn book! Yesh.
Still, the fact that every movie I watch today it seems like I could have written it as a joke. Movies I have never seen before I can predict EVERYTHING down to when the "slow clap" will chime in. I stopped going to movies because so many are terrible, it is very hard to tell which ones to bother with even. How many more 70s TV shows will be churned out? At the same time, people still go to these things. Elsa Maxwell said, "No one ever went broke in Hollywood by underestimating the intelligence of America"
I prefer to stick to my pre-1975 format, it seems to work for me. Still, I'm renting the original Hong Kong version of The Departed.
I have a weird thing about the movie Roadhouse. I thought I was alone, but when some friends and I decided to have a Roadhouse Night, all the copies in ALL of the library branches and videos stores in Greater Cleveland had been stolen. Yes, stolen! I am not joking, we spent a month trying to track a copy down until finally my friend had to just buy it online. I also found out there was once a stage production of Roadhouse, I wish I could have seen that!
When it was discovered that Roadhouse 2 had been made last year, well, we just had to see it. This was supposed to be the Patrick Swayze character's son and his story -- also involving a redneck bar and fighting coolers gone bad. There are evil villans and a hot blond who we find out not only is a school teacher and was in the army, but she knows martial arts and doesn't drink alcohol or...know how to change a tire. And everyone actually knows martial arts at redneck bars in the South, that is just a given.
(forgive the screen capture quality, my camera sucks)
It doesn't matter that the movie stars that actor dude who is married to Christina Applegate and was in the movie Doom Generation; it doesn't matter that Will Patton is also in it -- and knows martial arts; it doesn't matter about the weak plot or predictable tie-ins with the original movie, what matters is that it has Jake Busey!
He plays a silly drug dealer ex-cooler, martial arts bad guy who hangs out in hot tubs with bi-sexual girls and can't dress to save his life. Hey, anything with Jake Busey is gold, and you know it. Just look at the opening credits that establish there are some drug dealers out in the swamps by day...
And you can't have opening credits without showing some tits at night...
This all takes place at Dalton Jr.'s uncle's Roadhouse called The Black Pelican. Notice how the Black Pelican logo looks a bit like Jurrasic Park?
Yeah, thought so. But what you really need to look out for is the Pelican itself. Will Patton likes to talk to it about the guys he kicks out of his bar ...
The same night, after eating a meat loaded pizza and drinking way too much beer, the Dirty Harry movie Death Pool was then popped in. This stars very young Liam Neeson, Patricia Clarkson and even a little known Jim Carrey as the rock star junky, Johnny Squares. I enjoyed Death Pool quite a bit, and look even when he plays a loser junky, Jim's face can be as expressive and elastic as ever...
I remember when I was 20 or so, a younger guy from my college says, "Have you seen, like, every ancient movie ever made before 1965?" Well, I haven't of course. But it is scary that I recognize and know the names of actors from before 1945 all too often. I even know who else they've co-starred with, what directors, who they hated, who they slept with and any possible scandals as well. Maybe I should have been a guide at the Max Factor Hollywood Museum afterall? Anyways, here some "Ancient" movies I dig, and maybe you will too.
She runs a car company, yells a lot at board meetings, sleeps with all her hot male employees and has a kick ass pad to boot. This movie is worth it alone for the art deco set design. As for the message that women should act like women and be soft and cuddly and not in any sort of power position that would make her husband feel inferior? Eh.
Warren William likes to play bad guy workaholics who do business any way they can. In this he plays a very driven Department Store manager; I've noticed men who have seen this movie just love his character. It is also very interesting to see how department stores used to operate, and all the jobs that no longer exist. Of course there's drama and suicide too. At one point Warren even gets Loretta Young drunk on champaigne and bangs her while she's unconcious. Again, worth it for the costumes and sets.
Are there any Warren William movies during this period where he didn't play a ruthless business man gone bad, who enjoys getting young girls drunk on champagine and banging them while they are unconcious? Well, I suppose "Imitation of Life", but that's gotta be some strong champaigne indeed! Anyways, here is a lovely pre-code film with all sorts of drama and suicide...again.
How can you look at this picture and NOT want to see it!? And mind you, Joan Crawford and Norma Shearer really did hate eachother that much -- they aren't acting! This movie is "all about men". There are no men in the movie actually, but you get enough catty one-liners and ridiculous costumes that they would look out of place. Joan Crawford and her bath tub are a hoot, and the movie actually goes into color for one segment: the fashion show. Again, I'm not too crazy about former playwright/congresswoman/ambassador Clare Boothe Luce and her message in all of this. Keep the husband at any cost, even if he is a lying, cheating, deserting son of a bitch.
