Quadrophenia (1979), directed by Franc Roddam

R.I.P. JJ Cale.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Quadrophenia", by The Who

     Most people probably know who The Who (heh) are, even if you don’t like or listen to their music. Composed of vocalist Roger Daltrey, guitarist Pete Townshend, bassist John Entwistle and drummer Keith Moon, The Who were the most successful band to come out of the 2nd wave of the British Invasion. Known for their extravagant clothing (copped directly from the British mod subculture that ran around at the time) and their notoriously destructive live programs, The Who quickly rose to fame on the power of singles like ‘My Generation’ and ‘Substitute’. After the release of “Tommy” in 1969, billed as the first ‘rock opera’, about a deaf, dumb and blind boy who is somehow abnormally good at pinball and eventually becomes a religious leader through shenanigans (you know, that old chestnut), The Who officially graduated from rock band to full-fledged rock stars. “Tommy” would prove to be so popular that it would eventually get its own movie, which would star Elton John for some reason.

     The whole pinball thing was only added in to score brownie points with a influential critic, by the way. It holds no intrinsic value beyond that.

     Seeing the success of the rock opera format, The Who attempted to replicate that success with their next album. The first project, called “Lifehouse”, ultimately failed to take form, but several of the songs ended up on the incredibly well-received “Who’s Next”, released in 1971. The next Who rock opera would actually come into the world two years later, with “Quadrophenia”. While not the firebrand that “Tommy” turned out to be, “Quadrophenia” featured some now-classic songs from the group, and is considered by some (me) to be the altogether better album. Does that mean that, like “Tommy”, it needed to be made into a film as well? Even though “Tommy” was a nonsensical album, and made for an even more nonsensical movie? Yes, says the Who circa 1979, and so here we are today.

     Presented by The Who Films, Quadrophenia revolves around the life of Jimmy Cooper (Phil Daniels), a young mail clerk living in the heart of swingin’ 60s London. Jimmy and his friends are mods, their crazy nights spent taking amphetamines, riding scooters, dancing to top 40 hits, and beating the ever-loving shit out of any ‘rockers’ (also known as ‘greasers’, another youth subculture revolving around the aesthetic of the 1950s) they happen to find. Jimmy is a teenager who craves his own identity (that’s why he joined a group that all dress alike, you see), as well as large supply of pills and the beautiful yet elusive Stephanie, a mod girl of fairly easy virtue. Little does he realize however, that such a hedonistic existence is practically made to fail, and Jimmy is on a collision course with harsh reality. Set to the music of The Who, of course.

     It’s a similar plot to a movie we’ve already seen before in 1995’s The Basketball Diaries, where teenagers who like to take drugs just end up in a spiral of shit. In TBD it was a bit on the nose, but you could see the arc rather clearly: Jim has a life and takes drugs, he can’t cope with school life and his friends death so he takes harder drugs, we see Carroll’s life and we can see the linear downward progression. I’m finding it difficult to articulate what I’m trying to say, but in Quadrophenia you don’t really get the sense of action/consequence. Every significant negative event except one happens near the end of the movie, to the point where it doesn’t feel like a natural reaction to what Jimmy has done over the course of the film. Rather it’s all piled on at the tail end of the movie, as if they spent so much time filming people dancing to all the happy 60s music that they forgot this was supposed to be a depressing movie. I could be exaggerating or biased towards TBD, but if you’re trying to condition the audience to feel sympathy for the character, shouldn’t you make a character you can feel sympathy for? The Jimmy you see at the beginning of the movie is an obnoxious pissant, and that’s the Jimmy you see for the rest of the film. There’s no character growth as there is in The Basketball Diaries, Jimmy doesn’t seem to learn anything from his experiences, so what’s the point? If Shakespearean tragedies have the cathartic moment of release, this one has the apathetic shrug.

     The thing about operas is that the story portion is generally not the important part of the production, but rather the music/singing (lookin’ at you fat ladies in metal bras). That being the case, I don’t think there’s anything the movie provides that listening to the album would not, aside from Sting as Ace Face I guess. I don’t believe you even get to hear one song from the “Quadrophenia” album in its entirety, so why would I even watch this movie if I was interested in that album? You’re left with an approximation of the opera story, which I mentioned is the least important part of an opera, and who really cares about the story in “Quadrophenia”? It seems like they were banking on the name recognition of The Who to carry along a plot that reads like a snuff film and makes up for likable characters with gratuitous dick shots, but it doesn’t work for me. Everything this movie pushes I’ve seen before in A Clockwork Orange, The Basketball Diaries and others, and while that isn’t bad in and of itself, it doesn’t quite set itself apart from the others in a way that makes it interesting to watch.

     While there are a few redeeming moments (I do enjoy the Brighton scene), overall this movie felt overly long with no real payoff. If you’re interested in the Who you’ll do best sticking with their albums, preferably the ones before Keith Moon’s death. If you want the Who on film, just watch the footage from Woodstock and the Monterey Pop festival instead, which are both pretty damn entertaining to watch. It will help you get some idea of how The Who became so big that, like the Beatles, they could afford to make a boring movie without it affecting their legendary status.

     The power of fame, baby, the power of fame.

Result: Not Recommended

White Sun of the Desert (1970), directed by Vladimir Motyl

Anyone else find it hard to write in long stretches? This entries would take half as long to write if I didn't feel the need to screw around every 5 minutes. Anyway, here we go.

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Tundra/Desert", by Modest Mouse

     The other day I was talking with a good friend of mine, J. Fortune, and I remarked how strange it was that a significant amount of my pageviews was actually coming from the Ursa Major itself, Russia. It was strange yet pleasant surprise, as I have held a fascination with the Russian people and their culture ever since I was but a young Prince Thunderbird. Hell, I was even majoring in Russian for quite some time during my years in college, although I ultimately decided to switch when I failed to progress in the language as quickly as I wished (Russia, your history is way intriguing but why do you make me study like 8 grammatical cases gurl? Also your R is backwards). So as a small way to honor my very special Eastern demographic, I decided to do an entry from the heart of the Motherland itself. Maybe if you spent more time reading FRANCE, and less time with your blancmange, you could get your own dedicated entry one day. We’ll see, we’ll see.

     For those of you who remember Rocky V, Russia was at one point known as the U.S.S.R., or the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (Soviet Union to its friends), a Communist Bloc that stretched over a large portion of the Asian continent. The West (and most likely modern Russians) remember the Soviet Union to be a harsh and restrictive country, and there’s no doubt that the government came down much more aggressively on its citizenry than what we are used to, unless you happen to be not white. Stalin’s era was a time of strict censorship (big surprise), and films of that era tended to gear towards ‘courageous and dutiful worker extols the virtues of labor and communistic lifestyle’, or at least heavily implied it. The only person who was really into the Stalin method however was Stalin himself, and after his death Russian filmmakers were granted a great deal more freedom, not total freedom but hey, all that grant money has to come with some caveat. As it turns out, giving filmmakers the ability to make the films they want can lead to some good films, and wouldn’t you know it, the Kruschev to Brezhnev saw several critically acclaimed films of Russian descent (I have yet to see it, but Height is apparently considered one of the best films of the 1950s on the Russian cinema wikipedia page. Also the Russian cinema wikipedia page seems severely underwritten). The 80s and 90s continued with this trend of liberalization of films, probably because the Russian government had bigger problems to worry about what with their economy collapsing and everything, but the film we’re dealing with this time was right on the cusp of the 70s, 1970 in fact. It’s a little film called White Sun of the Desert and it’s what happens when Russia decides to take Italy’s advice and make their own spaghetti westerns.

     That’s right, it’s Commie Cowboy day here on the Thunderbird Ranch.

     White Sun of the Desert begins in the harsh and arid dunes of some unnamed desert in the Orient (specifically in what is now known as Tajikistan, if my findings are correct), as our protagonist Sukhov (Anatoly Kuznetsov) beats a path across the burning sands with nothing but a tea kettle of water and an all-purpose utility dagger at his side. Sukhov, it turns out a bit later, is a soldier, one of the best that the Revolutionary Army has to offer (equal to 300 men, I believe it is said) constantly journeying out into unforgiving environments at the behest of his country. Fantastic fighter though he may be, the only thing on Sukhov’s mind is getting back to his verdant home and his beloved wife Katerina (who kind of looks like a matryoshka doll). Sukhov’s narration of his letters to Katerina are a significant portion of the movie, and while I believe it’s a good way to remind the audience of our protagonist’s motivation, it’s done a bit too much for my taste. Leave ‘em wanting more Fyodor, that’s what I say.

     After rescuing Said (Spartak Mishulin), who had been buried in sand and left to die, Sukhov is contacted by his fellow soldier by the name of Rakhimov. Rakhimov explains that during a raid on the hideout of bloodthirsty bandit leader ‘Black’ Abdullah (Kakhi Kaysadze), his forces had been able to capture Abdullah’s harem in the aftermath: Dzhamilya, Zarina, Gyuzel, Saida, Khafiza, Zukhra, Leila, Zulfia and Gyulachatai. As he is unable/unwilling to watch over these women, and knowing that Abdullah will no doubt stop at nothing to either retrieve his harem or murder them to remove the problem, Rakhimov implores Sukhov to transport the former wives to the nearby village/museum of Penjikent, and ensure their continued liberation until his forces can return to and transport them out of the country/satellite. Sukhov agrees, and thus the series of events that can be called a movie is set into motion.

     While I did say that this movie was the Russian equivalent of the spaghetti western, that is not to say that White Sun of the Desert is ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly but with Russians’. Think of it more of an interpretation, taking things like the barren landscapes and classic archetypes (Said is the man searching for his father’s killer, Abdullah is the unredeemable villain, Vereshchagin (Pavel Luspekayev) is the old drunk obsessed with his long past days of glory, etc) and placing it within the Russian perspective, rather than trying to emulate the American West as the Italians did. It’s unique, from a Western perspective at least, to see how foreign countries transform elements of our culture in strange new ways, especially in things that you wouldn’t expect. Russia has just as much, if not more large untamed frontiers than the United States, the biggest surprise is that they didn’t start making their own gunslinger movies years before. Cossacks were practically nomadic cowboys, it totally could have worked out.

     Similarly, while we do see Sukhov blast some fuckers away with some hot lead, he is not the stoic protagonist that Clint Eastwood made into a amazing career. Sukhov is a likable, sometimes comical character (his daydream of how his life would be like with a harem seems more from a comedy film than a serious drama), who seems to use his mind as much as his weapon when it comes to taking out his enemies. ‘The warrior who doesn’t seem like a warrior’ is not an uncommon thing in fiction, but I think Anatoly walks the line between unassuming and serious quite well.

     The only major complaint that I have, and it might not be a legitimate one, is that there isn’t as much of the culture clash as I would have liked to see. It’s touched upon a little, such as when Abdullah’s former harem assume that Sukhov is their new master, unable to understand the concept of monogamous marriages despite their newfound liberty, but that’s about it. The women, despite acting as the driving force of the plot, aren’t really fleshed out as characters, Gyulachatai being the only one of the women to to hold any sort of significant role. There’s no real sense of conflict in being a stranger in a strange land, and I feel like it was a wasted opportunity to showcase the merging of mainland Russian culture and those of its satellite nations. Of course, given that the Soviet government’s idea of unifying disparate cultures under the Russian umbrella seemed to follow the policy of ‘wipe out foreign lifestyle and beliefs, replace it with Russian lifestyle and beliefs’, it’s possible that what I’m seeing is what was a huge leap forward at the time. If only the Polish were so lucky, eh?

     King Thunderbird: The most up-to-date references possible, all the time.

     In summary, those interested in old-school foreign cinema or the cinema of Russia in particular would do well in checking out White Sun of the Desert, throwing it in between their copies of Brother and Battleship Potemkin (not alphabetically though). For those who are actually Russian, hopefully I haven’t proven myself to be an ignorant dumbass in regards to your history or ways of life or anything, and you continue to read and enjoy this stupid little blog of mine. Oh, and watch the movie if you haven’t already. You won’t even need subtitles or anything.

Result: Recommended

The Living Daylights (1987), directed by John Glen

watched ParaNorman recently. Not gonna make an entry about it, but it was an alright movie. I love stop-motion animation, as I've mentioned before, although the movie itself felt kind of light. Not nearly as much paranormal activity as I expected, but then I was expecting Night on Bald Mountain kinda shit.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "The Living Daylights", by A-ha

     I wish I knew the right way to start off this entry, but I've never been that much of a James Bond kind of guy. Not to say that I haven’t enjoyed some 007 movies in my time: Skyfall, Casino Royale, From Russia With Love, Goldfinger, all enjoyable films, all what I would say are good films...but I don’t connect with them as strongly as I do with other movies. James Bond is supposed to be the male fantasy, super suave, travels all over the world, has sex with hot chicks, drives cool cars, etc. I enjoy that on the basic level that was undoubtedly intended for, but when it happens every single movie, doesn't that get old after a while? Even the supposedly more realistic film of the Craig Bond films fall into this repetitive behavior, changing the ancillary characters around a bit but not really changing anything truly meaningful. Maybe that’s what has helped James Bond remain a franchise for so long, the allure of status quo with a new coat of paint every few years, like a multimillion dollar production of Gilligan’s Island where all the spy gadgets are made of coconuts. Is it too much to ask that a James Bond movie have an attractive woman who a. is not ‘the chick minion’ and b. doesn't immediately have sex with some British dude she’s known for like 2 days? 

     Anyway, The Living Daylights begins with Bond being ordered to protect one General Koskov, a potential defector from the Soviet Union from an assassination attempt. Bond does so (by disarming a suspiciously over attractive sniper), but Koskov is recaptured several days later seemingly by KGB agents. All the evidence seems to point to the actions of one General Pushkin (a perfectly reasonable Soviet beforehand) who has formed a kill list of American and British secret agents in order to escalate tensions to the point of nuclear war. 007 is ordered to execute Pushkin while he’s at a conference in Tangier, but James has his doubts; about Pushkin, about Koskov, and especially about that attractive sniper, who didn't even know how to use a rifle. It’s just the kind of combination of events James Bond needs in order to have a rip-roaring adventure, and adventure he does.

     The is the first James Bond film to star Timothy Dalton in the tux, taking over the role after Roger Moore. You don’t often hear much talk about Dalton Bond, perhaps because he was in only two films, but I think he slips into the role just fine. He’s perhaps a muted version of Connery’s Bond, if you can understand my meaning, or perhaps a proto-version of the Craig Bond; a suave gentleman when need be, but analytical as well. Dalton’s Bond feels like an assassin as well as a secret agent, like he spends his days straight up killing dudes rather than saving the world from evil plots, which makes him rather more a real secret agent than any other Bond that had been done previously. Unless you count Roald Dahl, who was apparently a huge poon hound when he was in the secret service.

     Maryam d’Abo plays the Bond girl this time around, a Czech cellist by the name of Kara Milovy. She looks lovely, aside from the fact it almost looked like she had a unibrow, so I suppose she earned her paycheck this time around. I wasn't really taken with her character (the ‘girl is in love with a guy who’s actually a villain’ angle has been done before) up until the end, when she began to do things by herself rather than wait for Bond to do things for her. Other than that though, she wasn't all that remarkable. A solid C at best.

     The Living Daylights also suffers from a lack of a strong antagonist. Goldfinger, Dr. No, Blofeld, fantastical near super villains are the cornerstone of the James Bond franchise (even if you count the down to earth From Russia With Love as the greatest James Bond film, you have to admit it’s in the minority in terms of content). TLD’s main villain, such as it is, is a black market arms dealer by the name of Whitaker, played by occasional MST3K subject Joe Don Baker. Whitaker has an interesting enough gimmick, a pretend soldier completely obsessed with warfare to the point he keeps wax warlords in his house, but he’s barely in the movie at all, and most of the antagonist screen time is given to his subordinates. It’s like if in Goldfinger if James Bond fought Oddjob the whole film, and Goldfinger only showed up a couple of times to make gold-based puns before he died. Not only that, but the minions who do most of the antagonizing aren't that interesting either, just some assassin and a Russian general, and neither of them have a razor sharp throwing hat. I know that asking for camp might be a bit antithetical in these modern times, but if the best serious villains you can make are ones that don’t feel threatening then it doesn't matter how much more realistic they are, because they’re interesting to watch. I will give them points for the exploding milk though.

     So who does the main theme in this entry into the James Bond franchise, which has featured songs by such figures as Paul McCartney, Carly Simon and Sheena Easton? a-Ha. Yes, the Norwegian new wave band a-ha does the main theme for The Living Daylights, the appropriately titled “The Living Daylights”. I’m a fan of the new wave sound, and I think a-Ha puts in a good performance, but it doesn't really feel like a Bond theme. There’s no sense of grandeur, none of the larger than life feeling that truly brings the mind the character of James Bond, it just feels like a song playing at the beginning of a movie. Hell, Live and Let Die is supposed to be a particularly shitty movie from what I've read, but that theme! That’s a theme so good it gets played on the radio with no context at all and it still rocks the house every time.

    If your local radio station doesn't play “Live and Let Die”, request it as soon as possible. Your listening area will be a better place because of it.

     The Living Daylights seems trapped within its era, stuck between the tired Moore Bond movies and the soon to be awful Brosnan Bond movies. This movie feels like it might have been trying to emulate FRWL, and Dalton could have pulled it off, but then he ends up sledding down a hill in a cello case and watching scientists trying out ‘the ghetto blaster’. The uneven feeling of mood whiplash and lack of remarkable villain make this an unfortunately average movie, but it’s still got a lot of that Bond feel to it, and those interested in seeing an oft-forgotten James Bond (not as much as Lazenby, but still not well known) might like to check out the differences. Better luck next time, 007.

     James Bond will return in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. But that might be a while.

Result: Tentatively Recommended

The Basketball Diaries (1995), directed by Scott Kalvert

Sorry this a bit late. Sometimes I'm afraid that my excessive computer use is ruining my already shit vision, so I tried taking some time away from the internet. I think the damage is already done at this point.

The Trailer

and

The Appropriate Tune: "Dizzy", by Green Apple Quick Step

     I didn’t know who Jim Carroll was until his death, way back in 2009. Which sucks I suppose, as his work is now something I have to experience in hindsight, just like with so many other things I’ve grown to enjoy. Music, literature, video games and especially movies, they’re all part of some foundation of experience and culture I had no hand in building. Maybe they combine in some unique way to form my personality, my sense of self. Nature vs. nurture, right? My environment is an equal or greater influence on who I am than my genetics, correct? Do I form a greater attachment to things I seek out, or things that I experience as they occur? I assume there must be some difference, I’m just not sure exactly what.

    Metaphysics: My go-to way to start an entry.

     Jim Carroll’s most famous work was his autobiograhical novel The Basketball Diaries, released in 1977. Compiled from his childhood writings, Carroll describes in vivid and often poetic detail a life of basketball and a descent into a life of theft, prostitution, and drug addiction. It’s certainly a powerful read, as a 15 year old boy writing about his shooting heroin and selling his body to gay men in the heart of New York City would be, and one that I felt drawn to. Maybe because I find myself drawn to the underbelly that formed the basis for punk music and the post-60s counterculture, or possibly because I saw in that book a much more interesting and worthwhile youth than I considered mine to be. Not to say that I wanted to be a junkie, of course, but when the people you read or listen to all have some sort of drug habit, the social taboo of drugs means less and less to you. Especially in the case of people like Jim Carroll, where his use of drugs was in part why he become as vaunted as he is. But I feel that going on in that direction would go further into metaphysical questions, so let’s just talk about the movie.

     The Basketball Diaries focuses on the life of 16 year old Jim Carroll (Leonardo Dicaprio), one of the star players in a Catholic boy’s basketball team. Jim’s days are spent playing ball, writing in his notebook, and getting high with his friends Mickey (Mark Wahlberg), Pedro and Neutron. Such a life of rampant hedonism has a way of catching up with you however, and Jim and his friends find themselves falling away from school, sports and responsibilities and further into the degrading lives of junkies and thieves. We know Jim Carroll makes it out in one piece, we just watch to see how far he falls when he hits rock bottom. And spoilers, it’s pretty damn far.

     For a film adaptation, I think The Basketball Diaries does a decent job of capturing the snowballing feeling that was in the book, albeit in an abbreviated manner. It makes sense, although you see a lot more of Carroll and his friends on the streets than you do at home or school, so you don’t really get the feeling that what they’re leaving is really that much better than where they end up (there are pedos on either side of the societal fence it seems), although that might have been the intent from the start. Dicaprio puts in a good performance, though I can’t say I’ve seen a bad Dicaprio film so far, and Mark Wahlberg seems to have barely aged since 1995. The time shift from the 60s to the 90s seems to be nothing more than an excuse to make Terminator references and pad the soundtrack with Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, but it doesn’t detract from the movie.

     Not as entertaining as the book, but I say still worth a watch.

     Oh, and Ernie Hudson is totally in the movie too. So fucking awesome.

Result: Recommended

Trailer Park Boys (1999), directed by Mike Clattenburg

Sometimes I'm fast, sometimes I'm slow. When the next entry will be posted I don't really know.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Liquor And Whores", by Bubbles

     I mentioned previously in my Coffee & Cigarettes entry that I was actually introduced to Jim Jarmusch with the Neil Young rock-doc Horse, which I saw at the home of my friend Big John. Big John, besides being a fantastic friend, has really helped to to expand my horizons past what my normal limited viewpoint would allow, and gain a newfound appreciation for the Macho Man Randy Savage, the music of Pentagram and hard liquor. Occasionally we disagree on things (I’m still not a fan of Limp Bizkit, for example, and he really doesn’t like Primus), but a person who shares every one of your interests and opinions is more a living mirror rather than a real friend, wouldn’t you say? Of course I can’t speak for him, but I’d like to think he feels the same way, and that my constant fear of one-sided friendships is all in my head. Like most of my problems.

     Please note other friends that you are all awesome as well, but far less relevant to the story at this time.

     One of the best things that Big John has ever introduced me too, what has become one of my favorite TV shows ever, is a little program called Trailer Park Boys. Birthed from the mystical fields of Canada , TPB is a comedy series that follows (in documentary form) the trials and tribulations of childhood friends and career criminals Ricky, Julian and Bubbles as commit various illegal money-making schemes in Sunnyvale Trailer Park. Featuring a motley crew of comical characters and a ample bounty of alcohol, marijuana and guns, the TPB franchise has spawned 7 seasons (soon to be 8!), 3 films (soon to be 4!), and a recently launched website (swearnet.com), and it just gets more extraordinary the longer it goes on. I love everything about the show, even that drunk bastard Lahey, so I decided to do something to spread the word about this show I’m so fond of. This being a blog geared towards first impressions rather than Ebertsian criticism, and I having already seen Trailer Park Boys: The Movie and Countdown to Liquor Day some time ago, I either needed to wait what could be months for the new movie to come out, or pull out something I’ve been meaning to watch for a while and get another entry out of it.

     I am not a patient man.

     Trailer Park Boys was the first entry into the TPB franchise, a pilot for a potential series which was originally pitched to Comedy Central but was eventually picked up by Showcase. The film begins by introducing us to Julian (John Paul Tremblay), who has hired a film crew to document his life, in the hopes that he can ‘help people’. Julian is a gruff yet otherwise composed man, a frequent criminal, and a heavy user of alcohol, cocaine and firearms. Julian’s only source of income, aside from selling drugs to his fellow trailer park residents, is a business that can only be described as ‘pet murder’. Literally people put hits out on pets, either their own or someone elses’, the pets are shot in the head and disposed of. Which is pretty fucked, when you get right down to it.

     His partner in these animal killing escapades is the sideburn sporting Ricky (Robb Wells), Julian’s childhood friend. Ricky is rather unintelligent and immature guy when compared to the calculating Julian, but he’s also a loving partner and father to his fiance (former ‘trailer park ho’) Lucy and daughter Trinity (presently 6 years old and on the nicotine patch). Once a trailer park boy himself, Ricky has since moved himself and his family into a new non-mobile home, thanks in part to a lucrative drug deal and Julian. Supporting a family takes money however, and as much as Ricky would love to stay home and spend time with his future wife and kid, he has no choice but to go along with Julian and pop a cap in Rover’s ass. A seemingly foolproof plan, but when you’re a trailer park boy, there’s no such thing as ‘foolproof’.

     There are couple differences between Trailer Park Boys and the show it inevitably spawned. Firstly, most of the characters that appear in the show do not appear here; We have Ricky, Julian, Corey & Trevor, Lucy and Trinity, and that’s it (Patrick Roach and Sam Tabasco also appear in this film, but not as their respective character in TPB). Also the drug of choice here is not weed, as has been so prevalent as the years go by, but good old-fashioned cocaine (Julian especially loves sniffing coke, but Ricky and even Corey & Trevor get in on the action). Obviously the cocaine use wasn’t something that would would carry over to TV, but it’s interesting to see the a proto-TPB world with such a limited cast. Most of what you have to work with here is the relationship between Ricky and Julian, and it works because Tremblay and Wells have a fantastic chemistry together. In hindsight it feels a little empty without Bubbles filling out the ranks, yet if there was nothing comedic there in the first place it would not have reached the point of having characters like Bubbles or Phil Collins in the first place.

     Those of you coming into this blind will find a black comedy about, as I have mentioned, a couple of guys who do coke and murder pets for a living. It’s an outlandish premise, but the characters are always played straight, so that it almost feels like Ricky and Julian actually are real people acrually doing this stupid shit. I may not describe it that well, but if you’re a fan of character-centric comedies, check this one out. Or if the idea of poodlecide gets the bile rising in your stomach, try a couple episodes of the tv show. I can guarantee that you might enjoy it. Maybe.

Result: Recommended

Jesus Christ Savior (2008), directed by Peter Geyer

I do take recommendations for films, by the way. Although I have a long list of potential films to watch, I'm always on the lookout for interesting movies, so suggest away!

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Jesus, Etc.", by Wilco

     The first film that I ever saw Klaus Kinski in was a little picture called Timestalkers, stumbled upon while dredging through the cesspool that is the hulu free movie library. Timestalkers was a terrible turd of a film, having something to do with time travel, the old west and other such bullshit, better served as material for Rifftrax or Cinematic Titanic rather than something people actually paid to see. The name of Kinski literally meant nothing to me at the time, but the name wedged itself into my consciousness for some unknown reason, thankfully the only distinct memory I have from that film. It wasn’t really until I watched My Best Friend, the documentary by Werner Herzog recounting his working and personal relationship with him, that I understood that Herr Kinski was in point of fact an incredibly accomplished and well respected stage & screen actor. And also a bit of a psychopath, which is exactly the kind of thing I needed to perk my interest and seek out one of his motion pictures to see for myself.

     I think you can see where I’m going with this.

     Jesus Christ Savior, or Jesus Christus Erlöser for our more Germanic readers, is a recording of a one-man show Klaus Kinski performed in Berlin November 20th, 1971. As you could imagine, the performance (a monologue done on an elevated platform on stage, a ‘sermon on the mount’ if you will) was about Jesus. Not the Jesus that the church and society have pushed upon us, the Jesus that is merely a symbol carried upon an ‘infamous cross’, but Kinski’s vision of the Messenger of Peace: Friend to the prisoners, the orphans, the anti-social, hippies, bums, junkies, the ‘screaming mothers in Vietnam’, etc. Half a story of Jesus being persecuted in modern society, half a diatribe against society in general, Klaus Kinski rails against the bankers and lawmakers of the world and demands that people love their enemies. Not suggest, DEMAND. Kinski’s Jesus is a figure, but he don’t take no wishy-washy bullshit. It’s his way or the highway.

     If you think that a play entirely focused on the actor saying that talking about how everyone else’s interpretation of Jesus is totally wrong would not go over well, you’d be right. The Saxon equivalent of Statler & Waldorf turns out to be a large and vocal part of the movie, from simple heckling to people actually going up on stage and stopping the show entirely. Klaus takes the criticism about as well as he seems to take anything negative against him, meaning he goes completely apeshit. Every time it happens there’s just an incredible feeling of tension yet at the same mesmerizing, because Kinski’s meltdowns are such grand gestures that you can’t help but get swept in this avalanche of emotion that he’s throwing at anyone and everyone within range of his voice. In Klaus Kinski’s theater he’s the Sturm und the Drang, if you get what I’m saying.

     It’s that energy that somehow keeps 90 minutes of a guy doing nothing but talking so engaging. Klaus Kinski has an incredible stage presence, this masterful use of quiet intensity that draws your full attention to him no matter what he’s doing. The closest approximation most people would know would be Christopher Lee, but Lee’s presence is that of the classical Englishman; cool, composed, imposing but in a more passive manner. Klaus is much more the aggressor, through sheer force he gives you no other option but to watch him. Observing such a mastery over the art of speaking is truly fascinating, in truth I had to pause the video several times just to give myself some breathing room. Metaphorically speaking.

     Maybe I’m hyping up this film a bit too much, but if the pro-Jesus anti-Christianity message doesn’t turn you off, then you might be interested in seeing this. Klaus Kinski was definitely a prima-donna, but that excessive pride was tempered with an equally excessive dedication to his craft. Watch a Muhammad Ali fight to see a man who understands boxing, watch this film to see a man who understands acting. And don’t watch Timestalkers at all.

     At. All.

Result: Recommended

The Seduction of Dr. Fugazzi (2007), directed by October Kinsley

For some reason there's a bit of a problem when it comes to the year this film was released. The year stated on the video (from the youtube channel tromamovies, for all your troma movies needs) is 2007, but the year given on the trailer and Ms. Dunaway's wikipedia page gives it as 2009, while the wiki list of Troma Video Titles lists it as being released in 2008. I will be using 2007 as the year of the movie's release in the title and the following entry, simply because that was the first year I saw and I don't feel like rewriting anything. Enjoy.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Sex With Me", by Rihanna

     Jesus fucking Christ, this movie. 

     I can’t figure out how to do a damn entry because of this movie. I know I originally had something about the history of Troma (the distributor of this particular film) in here, and how I had a great respect for Lloyd Kaufman and Michael Herz for doing so much for the art of independent filmmaking. Then I was going to describe the nature of Troma movies; the outlandish plots, the cartoonish levels of ultra-violence and sleaze oozing from its greasy orifices, the actors who can’t act, the best special effects 30 bucks can buy, etc. I was then going mention that this joy de vivre was actually a bit endearing, that if Rocky and Charlie Chaplin and pretty much every sports movie is anything to go by we love cheering for the underdog, and Troma is the Benji of moving pictures (which is just Benji, I guess). Finally, I would throw out my endorsements for The Toxic Avenger, Killer Condom, and Class of Nuke’em High, Troma films that I consider the cream of the crop.

     However, not all Troma movies are Benji, folks. Some Troma are Zuul and Vinz Clortho, vicious hellhounds spawned from ancient gods , that leap out from the inky black shadows of the night to rip your throat out and terrorize Rick Moranis.

     Also I just reused the opening from my Easy Rider entry without meaning to. Shit.

     The Seduction of Dr. Fugazzi is directed, produced, written, AND stars October Kinsley, which is what I like to call ‘a bad sign’. Ms. Kinsley portrays the titular Doctor Anna Fugazzi, an abnormal psychiatrist and therapist who looks a bit like a gremlin and dresses as if she were birthed from a My Chemical Romance music video. A college graduate at the age of 15 (right), Dr. Fugazzi runs a successful practice treating ‘crazy’ folks, including a pedophile who carries his dog Adolf around with him wherever he goes, an agoraphobic fortune teller who believes her neighbour is the devil, and a hip young kleptomaniac. Oh, and everyone likes and respects her, and she totally has tons of kinky sex with her super cute boyfriend and all her cool sexy friends, presumably on a picture of Tim Burton’s face.

     But not all is well in the House of Fugazzi. It seems that Anna has been suffering from horrible headaches as of late, headaches accompanied by bizarre visions of bloody floors and strange leather-wearing men in white rooms. When her patients begin to mention men in black hoods, seemingly representations of Death itself, those same figures begin to appear in her dreams as well, thrusting Anna Fugazzi into a mind bending psychosexual thriller. Or October Kinsley’s attempt at one, which turns out is absolutely not the same thing.

     You might think I’m being glib because I obviously didn’t like this movie, but everything I just wrote is exactly as it is presented. I would say this is what 16 year old girls who identify themselves as ‘vampires’ on myspace think life should be like, but I honestly can’t remember if myspace was still alive back in 2007 (I’m surprised I remember myspace at all). Taking on multiple roles in a film’s development is not an uncommon thing, but the reason it’s not standard practice is because it’s actually really fucking difficult to split your attention across several ways and still make something that’s halfway coherent. Sure, Mel Brooks and Christopher Guest and I’m sure a few others pull it off, but they are obviously more the exception than the rule. Watching The Seduction of Dr. Fugazzi is like reading a really bad fanfiction (so an average fanfiction), where a new girl is admitted into Hogwarts and somehow she’s already a master wizard who Harry and Draco fall in love with at first sight. And also she’s part fox for some reason?

     For a film puts so much emphasis on sexuality, this film doesn’t feel that much more racy than something you would see on cable TV. Sure, I guess there’s whipping and chains and such, but is s&m really the scandalous fetish that it was decades ago?Hell, you could turn on Comedy Central on right now and there’d be someone in a gimp mask on TV, just hanging out. You don’t even get to see a bare breast but for a few scant seconds, in a movie where the whole fucking image is built around sex, and that’s goddamn ridiculous. Naked breasts are a cornerstone of the Troma entertainment empire, and yet the movie that has someone getting a whip lashed across their chest is too modest for nudity? Seriously?

     The only positive thing I feel about this movie is the fact that they got Faye Dunaway, who is fucking awesome, to play a detective reminiscent of Jack Nicholson’s character J.J. Gettis from Chinatown, which is an awesome movie (Faye Dunaway played the leading lady in that film). Watch Chinatown, watch The Toxic Avenger, avoid this movie. I wish I did.

Result: Not Recommended

Jabberwocky (1977), directed by Terry Gilliam

those of you who have't seen the Police Squad television show should get on that. Only 6 episodes, which is a shame, but so damn good.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Jabberwocky", by Branford Marsalis Quartet

     Terry Gilliam might one of my favorite director when it comes down to it. Up until I started writing this blog I never really put much consideration into the idea of favorite directors, a misguided attempt to avoid bias when it came to recommendations I suppose. He’s got a fantastic track record though: Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Brazil, The Fisher King, 12 Monkeys, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, all of them great films (in my opinion of course), all of them interesting films, and ones that I would heartily recommend when asked. Okay, The Brothers Grimm was a particularly fetid turd in the ‘make stories and people who aren’t that cool into super cool badasses’ action subgenre, (which I believe began with the ungodly awful League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie yet still clings to to its wretched life like a half-drowned rat) and I don’t know what all could have been done to keep it from being Van Helsing-but-with-fairy-tales (fire, possibly). Certainly a misstep, but it hasn’t ruined my appreciation for Terry Gilliam films, and I haven’t been discouraged from eventually completing his filmography.

     Only a few more movies left to go.

     The movie takes place in a realistically filthy medieval kingdom (It’s always the Welsh who end up filthy) currently being besieged by a man-eating creature known as the Jabberwock. It’s a horrible looking beast, despite the fact that no one knows what it looks like, which consumes every part of a human, except for his bones and face for some reason. Gilliam seems to be implying that this creature is the same jabberwocky from the Lewis Carroll poem, not only with the name but even placing voice-overs of the poem throughout the film, occasionally acted out by a Punch & Judy show. I’m not entirely sure the reason, maybe because of the recognizable name, because there seems to be little relation to the events of the movie and what happens in the poem. Unless, as I now wonder, Mr. Gilliam’s purpose was to subvert the story in much the same way as he helped to subvert classic British literature in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, which wouldn’t surprise me at all if that was true. There is a distinct lack of momeraths, in any case.

     Enter Dennis Cooper (Michael Palin), apprentice/son to the village barrel maker and consistent fuckup. Although Dennis has philanthropic ambitions, his constant mistakes have cause almost everyone he knows to viciously hate him, especially his father. When his father suddenly passes away (after telling his son on his deathbed that he hated his guts), Dennis decides to move to the city in order to make his fortune. Armed with only a half-eaten rotten potato and the ambivalence of his rotund lady love Griselda Fishfinger, Dennis Cooper is thrown a series of events that are as numerous as they are coincidental. Will Dennis win the heart of Griselda? Who will slay the fearsome jabberwock? You’ll have to watch to find out.

     Jabberwocky is a movie of reaction and coincidence. Nothing that happens to Dennis throughout the story is due to his own actions, and everything he tries to do ends up being a colossal failure. Stumbling through an adventure is not an uncommon thing in comedy; Arthur Dent helped save the galaxy several times by just existing, after all. When you make a character completely subject to circumstance you can’t go far into the extremes: If the only things that happen to them are good, then they are viewed as unrealistic and boring. In the same vein, a character who is beset again and again by misfortune is also considered unrealistic (or perhaps too realistic) and eventually boring. I feel that Gilliam finds the right balance, having Dennis achieve success without meaning to but having him suffer for it as well. Because he’s a nice guy, and we want to see him have something after being like dirt by the rest of the world, but we need to see that dirt being thrown to keep us interested.

     There are way more scenes of Dennis getting urinated on than I expected. I was expecting none at all.

     If you can imagine Monty Python and the Holy Grail with less emphasis on breaking the suspension of disbelief, or perhaps The Princess Bride with Stan Laurel, and you might get an idea of what Jabberwocky is like. It’s not really a movie that generates a large amount of post-movie discussion like 12 Monkeys or Brazil can, but it has that mix of the real and the fantastical that I can’t help but identify with Terry Gilliam’s work. For those interested in some British-style comedy, or are otherwise looking to branch off from Monty Python’s Flying Circus, I direct you here.

Result: Recommended

Easy Rider (1969), directed by Dennis Hopper

One week later. I've almost used up all my prewritten entries, so daily entries are an unlikely possibility. Doesn't seem to matter that much though.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "The Pusher", by Steppenwolf

     The paragraph I had originally wrote to begin this entry was a lot more impassioned than I had anticipated. In that paragraph I decried the tendency in our society to reduce pieces of our culture, or counterculture in this case, into stereotypes and pastiche in order to more easily consume and dispose of it. We are so happy to listen to ‘classic’ rock and wear tye-dye shirts, but we dismiss their dreams and ideas as ‘hippie ramblings’. True, I conceded, that their goals were a bit lofty, and maybe the majority of what we call hippies were simply going with the, but couldn’t we at least acknowledge them. Do we have to so fervently dismiss every idea that we deem as strange? We may be set in our ways, and though it may feel at times that we are irrevocably bound by them, that doesn’t mean we are. It just takes a bit of effort.

     That’s what I first wrote as the opener for this entry, before I decided to erase it. Try as I might to reach a higher standard for myself, I’ve been guilty of the same consumerist behaviour I had attacked other people for. Maybe it doesn’t really matter, since so few people are going to read this anyway. Maybe all the things I’ve said up to this point don’t make any fucking sense to anyone but me. I don’t know.

     Those are the thoughts running through my mind after watching Easy Rider, that I’m viewing a culture quite similar yet foreign to my own. The film tells the story of two L.A. bikers, the introverted Captain America (Peter Fonda and the extroverted Billy (Dennis Hopper), as they travel to the East Coast in the hopes of retiring after a particularly lucrative drug deal. After being jailed for ‘parading without a permit’, they meet up with a quite drunk George Hanson (Jack Nicholson), who joins them in their mission of going to Mardi Gras, home to some of the finest whores around. A great idea, but how well can you do when everyone you meet hates your fucking guts?

     The shortest summary I’ve written so far right there. Soak it in.

     Freedom, that’s what this movie is about. The freedom to dress how you like to dress, to do what you like to do, and live how you want to live. Easy Rider makes it a point to to state that those who preach the virtues of freedom the most are the most fearful of it, and I can’t say that’s an inaccurate way of looking at it. If our heroes Captain America and Billy aren’t causing others to suffer, does it really matter if they like to smoke marijuana and ride motorcycles? We are shown very clearly that no, it doesn’t really matter at all, except to the uneducated and the authoritarian (the film takes place entirely within the South, which I doubt was unintentional). Yes, freedom is the key word here, whether you’re living in a commune in the desert or in the heart of the city. I’d keep my eyes out for the mime troupe though, if I were you.

     You can’t have a motorcycle in a movie without having someone ride it, and a significant portion of Easy Rider is dedicated to Captain America and Billy driving through the American countryside. Some truly amazing countryside, if I do say so myself. My favorite traveling scenes in the movie have to be near the beginning of the movie when they’re going through the Southwest, you take in these absolutely gorgeous red hills and clear open skies that stretch out as far as the eye can see and it makes you happy to know that this beautiful imagery is real, it has form and substance away from the painted backdrops of the Hollywood backlot. I was so intrigued by the locations used by Easy Rider that for a while I wished to visit a place like Texas or New Mexico, just to get a glimpse of that near-mythical landscape. It’s the first time I’ve genuinely wanted to go to the Southwest of my own volition, which speaks of the power of this film to provoke such a bizarre reaction.

     Coming into this film, I expected guys driving around on motorcycles, and I expected rock ‘n’ roll music. Easy Rider has motorcycles and rock music, certainly, but the overall tone of the soundtrack is much more mellow and less ‘classic rock’ than I had anticipated. Of course you have Steppenwolf’s “Born to be Wild”, the song so intricately connected with this movie that Dennis Hopper abruptly cuts it off before it’s even finished. Also making an appearance is the Jimi Hendrix Experience, the Byrds, Roger McGuinn (former member of the Byrds), with some unknown-but-appreciated groups like the Holy Modal Rounders rounding out the cast. As someone who bathed their minds in 60’s rock music for several years I might be a little biased in saying this is a great soundtrack, but it does exactly what I want a soundtrack to do: Helping to set the tone for the scenes being presented, making average scenes more appealing, and transporting me into the world of the film. There’s much more a soundtrack than just taking cool songs and throwing them without thought into the gumbo that is the movie. In that metaphor, the film soundtrack is represented by the shrimp. Cinematography is the dirty rice.

     There’s plenty of times in my life that I’ve hungered for escape, to toss away responsibilities and to live a life of quiet comfort. That’s the appeal of Easy Rider really, that deep down we wish we could be Captain America and Billy; men who live by nobody’s rules but their own. Hell, I guess that’s what everything’s about, isn’t it? Movies, music, television, video games, art, it’s all about getting the fuck out of our own lives without actually doing it.

     The point is that I liked the movie, everything else I’ve written is tacked on bullshit.

Result: Recommended

Godzilla vs. Destoroyah (1995), directed by Takao Okawara

you ever feel like you have no real skills or talent, and that you were better off dead?

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Metal Meltdown", by Judas Priest

     It occurred to me recently that, despite all my love for giant monsters, I don’t think I ever actually grew up watching that many kaiju movies at all. Aside from America’s overall poor 1998 adaptation of Godzilla and I guess the Mighty Morphin’ Power Rangers movie, the strongest memory I have of giant monsters is of a film called Godzilla vs. Megalon. The story is a blur to me now, involving a subterranean race of people who worship a gigantic ugly stag beetle known as Megalon, which eventually teams up with Gigan to fight Godzilla and the Ultraman ripoff known as Jet Jaguar for some reason I don’t care to remember. The movie is pretty damn bad, so much so that it even received its own episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 (you can also see the iconic scene of Godzilla somehow sliding on his tail in the opening credits as well). I’m not sure how I didn’t completely lose my kaiju fascination after watching that film so many times, but over a decade later the announcement for a new Godzilla movie next year has me over the damn moon. OVER. THE. MOON.

     And what better way is there to follow a movie about giant robots than with a movie about giant monsters?

     First appearing in the 1954 Japanese film Gojira (known to Americans as the re-edited Godzilla, King of the Monsters!, according to ye olde wikipedia), Godzilla was originally created to be a symbol representing the dangers of nuclear power. The film was a success, and Godzilla went on to star in over a dozen subsequent films, totally winning over that punk ass turtle Gamera in the process. Sometimes he destroyed Tokyo, other times he destroyed Tokyo while fighting another giant monster that was trying to destroy Tokyo, and there were several occasions where he teamed up with giant monsters to keep other giant monsters from destroying Tokyo. He’s had a son, he’s had a son, and he once beat up King Kong. With so many storylines and character changes, ol’ Gojira here more closely resembles a pro wrestler than he ever did an actual lizard.

     Godzilla vs. Destoroyah brings the King of the Monsters back to his roots as a unstoppable force of destruction by making him about 100 times more dangerous than he ever was before. When the movie begins we are told that Godzilla has survived a ‘pure uranium fission’ type explosion, which I’m going to assume happened in the previous film, regenerating his body using the massive amounts of radiation as fuel. Unfortunately Godzilla absorbed too much radiation in the explosion, to the point that his body has become a dangerously unstable nuclear reactor. Every second that Godzilla is still alive is counting down towards his inevitable meltdown (which will annihilate the planet), and any attempt by Japanese forces to assault the monster risks causing a massive nuclear explosion (which won’t destroy the planet at least, but still a big fucking problem to all life on it). A pickle if I’ve ever seen one.

     Mankind’s last hope lies in figuring out a way to somehow kill Godzilla in a way that doesn’t set off a nuclear, and lo and behold someone actually does in the form of ‘micro-oxygen’. Used offensively, the results mirror that of the awesomely named ‘oxygen destroyer’ created by Dr. Cerizawa to kill the original 1954 film (they actually show the scenes from Gojira in the movie itself, which I think is a nice touch). It seems like a dream come true, but what happens when some leftover oxygen destroyer residue from the 1954 incident mixes with some prehistoric shrimp somehow?

     Hint: Destoroyah happens.

     The Notorious G.O.D. has had several different designs over the course of his storied career, but hip 90’s Godzilla is easily the best looking version of the monster I’ve seen so far. The design team really succeed in making Godzilla look and feel like an actual monster again, as opposed to the tail-sliding dumbass from Godzilla vs. Megalon. The suit seems sleeker in this era as well, which would allow for better freedom of movement and more realistic movement, but when you have massive kaiju thunder-thighs no movement is all that free. Oh, and on top of everything, Godzilla is fucking GLOWING WITH NUCLEAR ENERGY HOT ENOUGH TO MELT THROUGH THE GODDAMN EARTH. That’s so badass it makes Schwarzenegger look like some Eurotrash nerd by comparison.

     Not to be outdone, Destoroyah has rocks the mic with two powerful forms, conveniently named Destoroyah I and II. Version II looks exactly as Godzilla enemies should: A gigantic hellspawn with spikes jutting every which way but loose, that’s as big or bigger than Godzilla, and who could fuck up the world way worse if he won the final battle. Version I is a smaller, insectoid form, which seems to take several visual cues from the Alien franchise (small mouth hidden within larger mouth, anyone?). I prefer Destoroyah I, not only in terms of design, but because his smaller size allows him to terrorize human beings. Sure Godzilla and the kaiju destroy cities and the military all the time, but because you only ever see buildings and vehicles blowing up, it allows audiences to emotionally disconnect from the devastation. Here you have Destoroyah stalking and killing soldiers and citizenry directly, making us invested in the film’s non-huge characters. Also he moves about on wiggly puppet legs, which is just adorable.

     The hardest part of any Godzilla movie, kaiju movies in general, is the ‘movie’ part of the movie (movie movie movie). In a good kaiju movie, the ‘human’ portion of the film engages the viewer and either builds up or else doesn’t hinder the monster combat portion that people paid money to see, a good example being Godzilla vs. Monster Zero as compared to Ghidorah the Three-Headed Monster. Godzilla vs. Destoroyah, with it’s callbacks to Gojira and visual evidence of human peril, got me interested more interested in the characters and their fate much more than normally would, earning itself a ‘good kaiju story’ ribbon in my book. The book is a book of monsters, by the way.

     If you have a friend who hates Godzilla for some reason, and you need to blow his socks off (with or without atomic fire), this would be a good place to turn. There’s some action, some horror, even a bit of tragedy mixed in for good measure. Not only does it touch upon Godzilla’s humble origins, it’s also a touching tribute to his then 40+ years on the big screen. Hail to the King, baby.

Result: Recommended if you like kaijus, sick flames, or scared Japanese people

              Not Recommended if you hate rubber suits, monster fights, or happiness in general

The Transformers: The Movie (1986), directed by Nelson Shin

Pacific Rim is currently out in theaters. Since I can't afford to see it, I went with a close approximation.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "The Touch", by Stan Bush

     I’m a fan of animation. Stop-motion, claymation, old-fashioned hand drawn cartoons, it’s the more the merrier in my opinion. One of my favorite cartoon series when I was a kid (which I still enjoy today) was a show called Beast Wars, which ran for a few seasons in the mid 1990s. It was an action show, done entirely in early CGI, which detailed a war between two opposing factions of a robot race who could transform their bodies into animal forms: The good hearted Maximals, lead by Optimus Primal, and the devious Predacons, lead by Megatron. The show has been praised for its writing (rhinoceros farts notwithstanding) and, like Disney’s Gargoyles and Warner Bros.’ Batman: The Animated Series, is seen as a model for Western animation that effectively walks the line between serious storytelling and entertainment. The fact it was part of the Transformers didn’t really mean much to me at the time, no episodes on VHS to instill their image onto my mind during my formative youth like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. For a 7 year old, knowing there was a badass robot who could turn into a badass velociraptor was all I needed to know.

     The original Transformers series, known to those ‘in the know’ as Generation 1, debuted in America in 1984. As with many cartoons in the 80s, Transformers was made in order to market toys, in this case several different Japanese toy lines, to children. What the kids of ‘84 knew as Transformers were, according to the show, robotic aliens from a similarly robotic planet known as Cybertron. For millennia the population of Cybertron has been in constant war between : On one side the peace loving Autobots (led by Optimus Prime) and on the other the power hungry Decepticons (led by Megatron). The endless war has resulted in draining Cybertron almost completely of its energy (in this case energon) and in a desperate search for more accidentally crash land on energon-rich Earth, where the conflict begins anew. Despite some frequent and obvious animation flubs, Transformers was money in the goddamn bank. Two years later, Hasbro decided to cash in that money in the bank with The Transformers: The Movie.

     And the world was never the same.

     The Transformers: The Movie takes place after season 2 of G1, as near as I can figure (I gave up midway through season 2, Starscreams constant bullshittery having become too much). Many years have past since the pilot episode, and Cybertron has fallen under the rule of the Decepticons, who you might remember as the guys who lost every episode.The Autobot forces have been split into three: Two bases on the Cybertronian moons, run by Jazz & Cliffjumper and Bumblebee & Spike Witwicky (a.k.a. the 2nd worst named human in history), and main base on Earth. Megatron’s ambition has not been sate with the capturing of his homeworld however, only the complete and utter destruction of Optimus Prime and the Autobot forces will do. The penultimate confrontation is set to begin, and when Laserbeak (a robo-bird who’s also a cassette tape, obviously) receives Autobot intel revealing Optimus is going off-world, Megatron leads his forces in a furious attack on the Autobot base.

     Little does anyone know that, deep within the infinite reaches of space, there lies a threat greater than anything the Decepticons have attempted. His name is Unicron, the consumer of worlds, and his dark power is unlike anything either the Autobots or Decepticons have ever seen before. Unicron seeks the destruction of the Matrix of Leadership, a mystical device passed on from robo-generation to robo-generation of Autobot supreme commander (which apparently also changes their name to something-imus Prime, so there was some fucker named Opt running around at some point). The surviving Autobots must then travel to the far reaches of the universe, not only to keep the Matrix from Unicron’s clutches, but hopefully to distract the evil god from setting his sights upon Cybertron as well.

     As would be expected from a move to the big screen, The Transformers: The Movie is a lot damn smoother graphically compared to the television series. It may be just me, but things appeared to not only have a greater amount of detail, but of depth as well. That may be an effect of the shading or perhaps the limitations (technical or financial) of television, but I seem to recall the tv series having a sort of dulled, flat brightness to it. The virtues of being a movie also allow a greater degree of fluidity, characters and objects can move in more complex ways, etc. The best advantages of one movie over 20 or so episodes is the larger budget and thus larger workforce, and it pays off in this case.

     I’m not sure I feel as strong about the music as I do of the visuals though. The most popular/pop culturally relevant song on this 80s rock soundtrack is easily Stan Bush’s “The Touch” a purely 80s arena rocker that plays during the epic confrontation between Optimus Prime and Megatron. It’s an incredibly cheesy song, but it serves its purpose into getting you fucking hyped to see this fight. Every song in this film is trying to be “The Touch”, but the movie itself is not actually 90 minutes of that one fight, so why is there a super-hype song playing during the ‘Hot Rod is stuck in robo-seaweed scene’? I lost my shit when Weird Al Yankovic’s “Dare to be Stupid” started playing during the junk planet scene (I love Weird Al more than a man should love another man who plays accordion, you see), but was that really the best song they could have chosen for that particular scene? The kids who watched this movie probably didn’t know or care about anything besides the robot toys on the screen, but the only thing hearing Weird Al singing about squeezing Charmin does it take me out of the film.

     Using celebrities as voice actors for animated movies has become a quick and easy way for studios to generate buzz and hopefully more cash for their movies. Occasionally it works out (Toy Story, Shrek), and occasionally it doesn’t (Home on the Range, anyone?), but it’s not a practice that shows signs of stopping. The Transformers seems to go for the ‘quality over quantity’ approach here, bringing in some unique names rather than marquee talent, and bringing in what I believe is most of the original television cast. Our celebrity cast consists of Judd ‘top of his career’ Nelson as Hot Rod, Eric Idle as Wreck-Gar, Robert Stack as Ultra Magnus, John Moschitta as Blurr, Leonard Nimoy as Megatron’s digivolved form Galvatron and Orson Welles as Unicron (Welles’ last performance before his death, a role which the legendary actor/director described as “being a large toy which terrorizes smaller toys”). They all put on respectable performances, with the weakest arguably being Leonard Nimoy. I think Mr. Nimoy is fantastic (so don’t disembowel me Star Trek fans), but to me a voice that exudes wisdom and refinement like Mr. Nimoy is not compatible with a character that has been shown across two seasons to be about one step above Cobra Commander. Perhaps if Galvatron had been written as a more distinct character than his previous self it might have worked out, but as it is Spock sounds like he’s about to be foiled by the fucking Superfriends.

     The biggest incentive for kids to see this movie in 1986 (aside from the the light profanity, truly a world-changing event when you were a kid) was the fact that shit. went. down. Characters fucking died in The Transformers, and I’m not just talking about the random robot they showed off for two episodes that one time, some important/popular characters were bumped. This movie was something that Saturday morning cartoons never got to see: a shift in the status quo. Having no idea that G1 would continue for two more seasons after this, those kids were left with the knowledge that sometimes things don’t go back to normal at the end of the day. And even if it wasn’t a sobering reflection on the impermanence of life, no kid would want to be out of loop when Transformers did come on air and there were all of these new characters they didn’t recognize. It was a do or die situation, really.

     People who love or loved the original Transformers have probably already seen this movie, and people who don’t have more reason to watch the Michael Bay Assformers instead. Those of you in the middle will find an enjoyable animated action film, and a piece of the amorphous blob known as 80s nostalgia. Watch the first two seasons of G1 if you want to understand the storyline up to that point, or rush into it like a badass. It’s your call.

     Until all are one.

Result: Recommended if you like Transformers, robots in disguise, and Autobots waging their battle to destroy the evil forces of the Decepticons

              Not Recommended if you hate 80s cartoons, giant robots who turn into   small hand guns, or John Bender

Coffee & Cigarettes (2003), directed by Jim Jarmusch

come watch my inevitable decline

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Cigarettes and Coffee", by Otis Redding

     The first thing I ever saw by Jim Jarmusch was Horse, a concert film/documentary of the great Neil Young and his band Crazy Horse, in case you were wondering. I was hanging out at the home of my friend Big John, a rock star in his own right and major Young fan, drinking and smoking as hip college goers are known to do. Through the chemical haze, I decided that Horse was actually a pretty good concert film as it turned out, featuring vintage footage of the band combined with present day concert performances. The name Jim Jarmusch got stuck in my head that day, just waiting for a time that it could bust out and convince me to finally see one of his movies. Biding it’s time, like a tiger on the prowl.

     That time is now.

     Coffee & Cigarettes was an independent film directed by Mr. Jarmusch in 2003. The movie is presented in a series of vignettes, each featuring different actors, with no overarching narrative. In all but two of the stories, a characters enters the scene, somebody consumes some coffee and cigarettes, an awkward, vaguely hostile conversation is held, and then a characters at the end of the scene (the only differences, by the way, are in the one instance where the characters drink tea, and another where no characters enter or leave). The title of the vignette reveals to us the nature of the story, “Twins” has twins for main characters, “Delirium” has a conversation relating to delirium, and so on. It’s not a bad way to do things, and using coffee & cigarettes as a connecting theme is as good as any, but there’s a distinct lack of weight in these vignettes. Why are these people so passive-aggressive? Is it the caffeine/nicotine? The the scene ends, and I’m wondering how I just spent several minutes of my life.

     I will give credit to Jarmusch in grabbing some damn interesting talent for his movie, which leads to some amusing situations. Who hasn't wanted to hear Steve Buscemi talk about Elvis Presley’s evil twin, or Jack White operating a Tesla coil, or RZA and GZA discussing alternative medicine with Bill Murray? Not to mention Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Cate Blanchett...Folks who I would love to see converse with each other (perhaps over some coffee & cigarettes?), without all the meandering bullshit that’s been tossed in. Would I like to hear a conversation between Iggy Pop and Tom Waits? Abso-fucking-lutely. Did I like the scene in which they conversed in Coffee & Cigarettes? Not particularly.

     Not much to say this around, or perhaps more appropriately not much I feel like writing. My first non-Horse experience with Jarmusch has become the least enjoyable movie I've done so far, which admittedly isn't saying much at this point. It’s possible that I just don’t ‘get’ the message he was trying to put out here, if there was even a message to get in the first place. It’s also possible that the film sucks, and he would've been better off just making a documentary. Obviously Jim Jarmusch and I have things we need to work out together, with the film and with our relationship.

     Perhaps over some hot chocolate and hashish?

Result: Recommended if you like coffee, cigarettes, coffee & cigarettes, people talking about nothing for 90 minutes, or Bill Murray gargling oven cleaner

          Not Recommended if you like narratives, action, clean lungs, or Ms. Cate Blanchett

The American Astronaut (2001), directed by Cory McAbee

      What was to be, now is. A blog post I mean.

The Trailer
and
The Appropriate Tune: "Sandman", by The Billy Nayer Show

    I use netflix a lot. It’s a convenient website, chock full of TV shows that everyone I know loves to talk about, like Arrested Development and Breaking Bad and Arthur (15 seasons, man!), which I still need to catch up on at some point. There are also movies on it, which happens to be relevant in this case. Perhaps too many movies. Oftentimes when it comes to deciding on a film to view, not necessarily to write about, just to view, I become paralyzed by indecision. The fear of having too many options is what I imagine is the quintessential First World problem, but it’s happened to be a few times. You can’t let fear rule your life though, especially not on some movie shit, so I throw caution to the wind, strap my ass in, and just watch a fucking film.

     Here’s what I ended up with.

     The American Astronaut begins with our hero, astronaut and space adventurer Samuel Curtis (Cory McAbee), landing his space-train outside the Ceres Crossroads bar. Humanity, in this strange future or maybe past, has spread out amongst the solar system, building strange new societies in the process. Venus has become a planet of all women (and the only time you actually see women in the film) for example, while Saturn has transformed into an all male slave planet, and never the twain shall meet. Ceres Crossroads is located on a rock on the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It’s just a bar.

     After delivering a cat to the bar owner, getting a picture of him taking a shit, and winning a dance contest with his friend the Blueberry Pirate, Samuel Curtis is roped into series of incredibly creepy interplanetary trades. Johnny R, the only man on Venus, has recently passed away, and his relatives want his remains returned to Earth. The Venusians, being a bunch of horny bitches, won’t part with Johnny’s body until they get a hot young replacement. Saturn happens to have such a replacement, The Boy Who Saw the Breast, but they won’t part with him unless they get a real life girl for their bizarre sexual bullshit. So Sam has to trade a real life girl he got from the bar owner in exchange for the cat to the Saturnians to get The Boy Who Saw the Breast to trade to the Venusians in order to get Johnny R’s body so he can get it back to Earth. This is all explained to you at the beginning of the movie, in case you were wondering exactly how the movie is supposed to play out I guess.

     Everything’s not coming up roses, however, as Sam is being pursued by the villainous Professor Hess (Rocco Sisto), who may or may not actually be a professor. He’s the Joker to Sam’s Batman, with a double helping of that subtly implied sexual tension they’ve got going on. Armed with a good old fashioned disintegrator pistol, he only kills people that he has no reason to kill, so don’t mess with him. Or do mess with him, because then he’d have a reason to kill you, and thus wouldn’t kill you. It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

     The American Astronaut is also a bit of a musical as well, because B-movie style space western wasn’t good enough. The music is done by the Billy Nayer Show, fronted by lead actor and director Cory McAbee, because having your names in the credits twice isn’t enough for some people. I enjoy the the score, it sounds exactly like a crazy space western should sound like, a bit of Butthole Surfers maybe, perhaps some Primus style, nice to listen to. The musical numbers are interesting as well (who doesn’t love songs about girls with glass vaginas?), but they feel short to the point that I wonder why they included them at all.

     The main positive this movie’s got going for it are the visuals. I mentioned B-movie style previously, and that’s definitely true, specifically the golden age sci-fi and film serials from the 50s, perhaps mixed with bit of the ol’ steampunk for good measure. I love the way that McAbee show space travels by using still photographs of Sam’s space train interacting with objects in the solar system, a small thing that stuck with me for some reason. McAbee uses shadow real well too in my opinion, especially in the space barn scene (to clarify, it’s a barn in space. Not to insult the writer, but you could turn the volume all the way down, and I could enjoy it all the same.

     Surreal is the right term for this movie. ‘Lynchian’ was being bounced around at the beginning, but I’ve trotted out the David Lynch comparison for ‘strange dreamlike films’ too often for my tastes. About 7/10 times it hits the mark and you’re transported into this bizarre world of space trains and also space barns, and then something comes along that fucks it up. For example, there’s a scene near the beginning of the film at the Ceres Crossroads where a bar patron is warming up the fellas for the upcoming dance contest. Having previously been shown as a joke teller, he launches into a ‘Hertz Donut’ bit: a man performing cruel acts throughout his life, with the punchline being “Hertz Donut?” each time. I can see what they were trying to do, trying to build up that sense of unease with this guy’s monotone delivery of a rambling joke while the audience flips from brooding silence to side-splitting laughter a few times, and that it could have worked. But it doesn’t, at least for me. Even if it was meant to be an overly long and pointless, which it might’ve been, for the purpose of building atmosphere, that does not suddenly make it a good scene. My reaction isn’t so much “Wow, this is one wacky joke this guy’s tellin’, have I somehow gone beyond the looking glass?” as it is “Ugh, time to check if TBFP have uploaded any new videos”.

     I feel like this movie is very light, which might be the surrealism talking. Once it gets started this movie seems to fly by, places and characters are explained but not really explored in too much depth. Which might be good or bad, depending on your preferences. For my (lack of) money, it wasn’t a bad way to spend some time. Nice design, nice tunes and average everything else.

Result: Recommended if you like space western musicals, 50’s super-science, and Eraserhead.

 Not Recommended if hate movies where guys dance together, things that don’t make sense, or space barns