Godfather of Funk

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Last night we watched The Godfather Part III, for completeness’ sake. When I first watched it, I’d been prepared for something abysmal, so I ended up thinking it wasn’t very good but neither was it that bad. Rewatching it, though, I hardly could believe that it was made by the same people who’d worked on the first two Godfather movies.

Enough has been said about Sophia Coppola’s horrible acting in the film, and it’s a good thing that she’s decided to continue her movie work on the other side of the camera. What struck me this second time was how un-cinematic the film is. Both The Godfather and its first sequel are beautiful films to behold. They have an “Old Masters” glow to them. They look like they come from Hollywood’s glory days.

The Godfather 3, by comparison, looks dowdy. They’ve got some nice sets (or they were allowed to film in gorgeous interiors) – but they’re all presented very flatly, and this flatness is heightened by the often pedestrian editing. Granted, there are scenes that look good and that are edited well, but then there are so many others (especially in the half of the film before they go to Sicily) that feel like ’80s television. Especially dialogues are edited with no feel for tension or flow: character A has a line, finishes it, cut to character B doing his or her sub-standard line, cut to character A again. Yup. Bad television editing.

Checking out IMDB, I find it amazing that the film was nominated at the Academy Awards for its cinematography and editing, and I can only believe that the nominations were the Academy’s form of commiserating what had happened to the venerable series and the equally venerable craftsmen working on it.

But I have to wonder: what happened to the Francis Ford Coppola who directed the first two Godfather movies? Or Apocalypse Now? Or The Conversation, a masterfully told tale of paranoia?

P.S.: I don’t get the praises and nominations for the writing either. If the previous Godfather movies were Shakespearean, this one was largely day-time soap… and its attempts at political intrigue were muddled, implying larger schemes but ultimately feeling like so much sound and fury signifying nothing.

Twins 2: Starring Martin Scorsese and Woody Allen

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I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a bit longer ’till I start going on at great length about the films that didn’t click for me. You have my sympathy, though; it can’t be easy waiting even longer for something that highly anticipated… (On a related note: Amazon recently sent off my copy of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen: The Black Dossier, according to the Moore-man “not my best comic ever, not the best comic ever, but the best thing ever. Better than the Roman civilisation, penicillin, […] the human nervous system. Better than creation. Better than the big bang. It’s quite good.” Sounds like something to look forward to.)

Anyway, the reason for today’s delay is this:

(Note: I’m afraid the YouTube video is in Spanish – here’s a link to the English video.)

While it’s probably a bit too precious for its own good, it’s still an amazingly well done advert. But what really throws me every time I see (and hear) Martin Scorsese is just how much he looks and sounds like an Italian-American, less neurotic though just as fidgety Woody Allen. And they both love New York.

Hmm.

Twins, separated at birth? Or are they actually the same person – i.e. Woody had better acting skills than we’d thought, and he’s been working on his Brooklyn accent? My guess is that this is just another one of those Hollywood mysteries that will never be solved. Like Ben Affleck’s success. Or William Shatner’s hair.

Spooky, huh?

Films that didn’t click – the introduction

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No news on the game front, really; I’m still playing Stalker (pure nukular goodness!), Neverwinter Nights 2 (it’s okay, but I still don’t get the enthusiastic reviews), Anachronox (slowly getting to the end) – and a rallye game called Colin McRae DIRT, best proof that the streets are safer with me off them.

Don’t drink and drive. Or, in my case, don’t drive.

I also haven’t watched any new films (or rewatched old ones), so I’ll take this opportunity to write about films that I expected to like – but didn’t. Usually when that happens, it’s that I like the director’s previous work a lot, but then fail completely to connect with the film. Or it’s that a reviewer I like gives the film a glowing review that I fall for. By the way, I don’t share the dismissive arrogance many people have when it comes to reviewers – good critics don’t necessarily share my opinions 100%, but 1) they have to recognise what a film is trying to do and 2) I have to know where they’re coming from after reading the review. What I do hate is critics who pan a genre film, for instance, because it isn’t Truffaut, critics who mistake their dislike for a certain kind of story or storytelling for its inherent unworthiness. And with a good reviewer, it doesn’t really matter whether they liked a film or not – I will have a good idea from what they write and how they write it whether I’m likely to enjoy the film.

Before I get started on this in earnest, though, I’ll have to come up with a list of films that fit. I’ve got a few ideas: Punch Drunk Love, for one, and my own favourite, Russian Ark. (Okay, technically that latter one is a “Film that this blogger hated with a vengeance”, but more of that later.) So, tune back in very soon!

P.S.: Films that – ironically, predictably – didn’t click for anyone, part 1:

It’s called Deadwood… What did you expect?

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Okay, I know that there’s at least one reader out there who hasn’t seen Deadwood season 2 yet and is planning to do so. This is where I tell you, very politely, to come back tomorrow, lest ye read a spoiler.

Still there? I’m warning you, there be spoilers!

Well, that’s about all I can do. If you’re still reading, well, I won’t take any responsibility. So there.

Yesterday evening, after two middling episodes of House, M.D., we watched the pen-penultimate episode of the sophomore season of Deadwood, aptly entitled “Advances, None Miraculous”. In it, we were reminded (after several episodes that seemed to suggest differently) that Al Swearengen can still be the scariest mother****er in the Valley of Death, if he wants to be. And all without drawing a weapon.

We were also shown that when he needs to be, Sol Star is just as much of a badass. After seeing Al frighten Mrs Isringhausen – not exactly a shrinking violet herself – into signing a piece of paper, accepting $10’000 and getting the hell out of Dodge in a brilliant piece of Al-manship, we get Sol telling him in his face that he won’t stand for bad Jew jokes. Now that takes a pair… or stupidity, but I’ve always thought of Sol as the intelligent one in the Star-Bullock friendship. (Except occasionally, when he’s led by his privates rather than by his brain.)

None miraculous

However, the emotional centrepiece of the episode was the protracted death of William Bullock. It was quite heartrending to see Sheriff Bullock face a crisis that he can’t beat down with his fists. William’s dying was a moving counterpoint to the political wheelings and dealings about the coming annexation of Deadwood, affecting everyone in their own way.

Talking about affecting: I’ve gone on at great length about The Assassination of J.J. by the Coward R.F. before. Yesterday I made the mistake of checking out the Nick Cave/Warren Ellis soundtrack of the movie on Amazon.com. The dark, subtle elegiac tunes (or rather the 20-second clips that Amazon plays for free) got to me to the extent that I felt the pull of the movie all day afterwards. Tunes like “Rather Lovely Thing” or “Song for Jesse” wormed their way into my heart, making me feel sad for semi-fictional characters long dead for hours.

P.S.: When I read who’d composed the music together with Nick Cave, I had this momentary vision of the writer of Transmetropolitan scribbling darkly sentimental tunes on some sheets in between writing another tasteless, hilarious, biting chapter of his near-future satire. For all I know, it is the same Warren Ellis. Then again… No. Probably not.

The best laid plans of machines and men

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I’m sure there were blog entries like this one back when Battlestar Galactica season 3 premiered in the States. So, once again, I’m a year or so late with my reactions. Well, you know what? If you’re looking for cutting-edge reviews you’re in the wrong place anyway. Sorry… should’ve told you earlier, I guess.

Together with Firefly, it’s Battlestar Galactica that has revived my interest in sci-fi. After an overdose of bad Star Trek spinoffs, I’d really given up on the genre, but these two series show that there’s interesting stories to be told in outer space. What I like especially about BSG is the ambivalence of its characters – and that has never been as plain to see as at the beginning of season 3. The references to Iraq are obvious – lines about “insurgent uprisings” and “capturing their hearts and minds” are almost a bit too in-your-face – but the interesting thing is that it’s our protagonists who are strapping on bombs, killing the enemy as much as their own people.

And what other series could manage such a sick, compelling “Honey, I’m home!” moment as when Leoben is stabbed through the neck by Starbuck, only to come home a little later, freshly downloaded, telling her that it’s her choice whether she wants to sleep in the bedroom – but either way (nodding towards the Cylon corpse on the floor) she’d be spending the night with him.

Almost feeling a bit sorry for Gaius Baltar…

I must say I’m even feeling a bit sorry for Gaius. He’s in a situation where he can either do the wrong thing or get a bullet in the head. He’s never been heroic, exactly, but he’s in a place where he’s screwed, no matter what he does. It’ll be interesting to see where the season will take these characters. But I’m sure that wherever we’ll end up, it won’t be predictable.

Birds, rats and iron giants

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I like Pixar movies, by and large, but I’m not as over the moon with them as many others. For one thing, I got extremely annoyed with John Lasseter when I got the Studio Ghibli films on DVD and had to sit through his patronising “My dear friend, Miyazaki-san…” and “You are very lucky…” intros; but also, I felt around Monsters Inc. and especially Finding Nemo that they were getting way too sentimental for their own good.

However, I loved The Incredibles. Yes, it also had that “family is the best” vibe that Nemo had, but it was done a lot less sappily. It was sweet but stayed quirky at the same time – and it was a lot darker in parts than Nemo – which basically did the Bambi thing by killing off Nemo’s mother, but apart from that there was little to no edge to the film. The Incredibles, on the other hand? Remember the scene when Mr. Incredible finds out what’s been happening to all the supers? Or the one where he almost kills Mirage? Also, there’s something very real about Mrs. Incredible’s fears that her husband is cheating on her – which is a fear you won’t find in many movies produced by Disney, I’d wager.

I also liked Ratatouille a lot – and there’s a subtle, quiet scene late in the film that brought a lump to my throat. I remembered that lump from another film by the same director: The Iron Giant. More than most directors of animated movies, Brad Bird is a deft hand at mixing the sentimental and the funny, real pathos and sheer goofiness. While Ratatouille is a very different film from The Iron Giant and indeed The Incredibles (the latter two go much more for the iconic, namely ’50s cold war paranoia and superheroes), all three of these films show a subtlety that is rare in American animation, so that a short, simple scene can break your heart.

The Iron Giant

I also liked Lifted, the Pixar short that was shown before Ratatouille. I hadn’t been that mad about For the Birds (shown before Monsters Inc., I think) or the jackalope one (Boundin’), since both of these got on my nerves after roughly one minute (they weren’t quite as clever or loveable as they thought they were, as far as I’m concerned), Lifted had a simplicity of story and design that worked very well for me. So, courtesy of YouTube, here’s Lifted:

In which I revise my opinion on Hollywood’s favourite stick insect (slightly)

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About a week ago I was informed by my love that we’d be watching Pride and Prejudice on Friday. Not the BBC six-hour extravaganza – that’s still on the menu for later – but the recent film version with Keira Knightley and Matthew “I’m an MI5 agent – get me out of here!” MacFadyen. Since I’d heard good things about the film, I resigned myself to my fate with rather less grumbling than might be expected. After all, I’m secure enough in my sexuality to watch a Jane Austen film without fearing to catch “the gay”.

No, no, no… It’s not what you may be thinking now. I wasn’t secretly thrilled at the thought of 2+ hours of Keira Knightley being all witty and sarcastic and sexy. Thing is, I don’t find her very sexy at all. She’s not ugly, but a) she’s too girlish and b) she’s too thin. Back when I saw Bend It Like Beckham, I thought that there’s a very attractive woman in this film, and her name is Parminder Nagra. Keira? I wouldn’t mind cooking a proper dinner for her, but that’s about as far as my feelings towards her go.

C’mon… which one would you go for?

Also, I never thought that she was a great actress. All the films I’d seen her in, she was basically the same character: feisty heroine/modern grrrl who can hold her own with the boys. I mean, like, hello! Boring! (Or something to that effect.) However, I must say after watching Pride and Prejudice that there’s more to her, provided that the director and cinematographer and make-up artists and producers don’t keep telling me, “You must desire this woman! If you don’t, there’s something wrong with you!” Her Elizabeth Bennet was far more interesting than any of the other characters I’d seen her as.

In general, the film was surprisingly good. Now that I’m no longer teaching at an English Department, I can perhaps confess that I’m not too keen on Jane Austen. Sure, she’s witty, but I wish she’d written only one novel or perhaps short stories. Admittedly, I’ve only read Emma, but with the Austen film adaptations I’ve seen I always felt déjà vu. The 2005 P&P film has its faults: the pacing is off, with the beginning feeling rather rushed and the middle too leisurely; some of the more modern camera moves and edits fail because the film tries too hard to be “contemporary”; and there’s entirely too much giggling! But at least in the European version, there was something nicely understated about the romance: as a matter of fact, many of the romantic couplings are less about brainless passion than about a mutual liking combined with a sense of pragmatism. Or, in one case, about stupidity. And the film doesn’t try to gloss this over.

Finally, talking of gloss, or lack thereof: while the film looks lovely much of the time, it doesn’t go for the Heritage look where even dirt is disconcertingly clean. There’s mud, there’s geese and pigs (with big dangly man-bits – what a strange scene!), and things aren’t antiseptic. The film didn’t have the picture postcard look, the “Wish you were here in the 19th century with us!” feel that so many costume dramas insist on, and it was all the better for this.

What do you mean, I’m a funny guy?

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Okay, lots of work today, so this blog entry will be short on me and long on my favouritest Internet video service ever – YouTube!

Just a couple of clips you may or may not have seen – but if you’re into films, subversion and felt puppets, give these a try:

Or how about this one – computer-generated misery, courtesy of Pixar and Darren Aronofsky:

(If the embedded video doesn’t work for you, try the direct link.)

And thanks to these crazy kids I can pretty much take the day off from blogging – and do the heaps of work that need to be done… Bye!

Quick P.S.: I got a kick out of reading The Onion‘s AV Club blog entry on the Madonna sex vehicle Body of Evidence. (It’s part of their “My Year of Flops” series.) Here’s a quote to get you all wet (why do I think that I’ve just lost 3/4 of my readership?):

”[Madonna’s character] is a beautiful woman. But when the trial is over you will see her no differently than a gun or a knife. Or any other instrument used as a weapon. She is a killer and the worst kind—a killer who disguised herself as a loving partner,” Mantegna thunders to the jury. Now, far be it from me to challenge the veracity of anything said by a character played by Joe Mantegna, but I would argue that the worst kind of killer is one who wears a necklace made out of puppy skulls and a rain poncho made out of the stitched-together torsos of murdered kittens. That, to me, is worse than a killer disguising herself as a loving partner.

Hellboy is other people

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Pamcakes

I like Mike Mignola’s Hellboy – both the comic and the character. I like the audacity of having a character called “Hellboy”, because most people wouldn’t dare… They’d be afraid of looking silly. Mignola doesn’t seem to be afraid of that. In fact, he embraces the silliness that is in the concept, and he turns it into an asset – by making Hellboy a fascinatingly human character. One that struggles with the knowledge that he’s the key to the Apocalypse, but by and large Hellboy is more concerned with things like pancakes.

More pamcakes

Mignola loves his mythology, folklore and the supernatural – but he’s not infatuated with it, to the point where he can laugh about it. To Hellboy, agent of the Bureau for Paranormal Research and Defense, the supernatural is mainly an annoyance: daemons with ancient grudges, monstrous creatures, insane immortal monks and hags in huts on chicken legs are all in a day’s work for the guy, and one gets the feeling that he’d rather sit down and have a beer with most of the goblins and ghouls he encounters… but no, they choose to misbehave, so it’s clobberin’ time. Because if you sit around twiddling your thumbs, before you know it, some wolf decides it’s about time to gobble down the moon, and all that jazz.

Even more pamcakes

Yesterday I got the latest Hellboy collection, The Troll Witch and other stories. It’s entertaining, but like all of the short story collections it lacks the punch of a sustained narrative. It doesn’t show us any new sides of the big red guy with the filed-down horns. Instead, it sometimes feels a bit like an indulgence by Mignola. It’s like he’s recently read about this cool character from Malay folklore, so he does a little vignette: Hellboy meets (and fights) the Penanggalan. However, even if the story was just about Hellboy sitting around, reading the funny pages and watching TV, I’d read it – because I’ve fallen in love with Mignola’s expressionistic, woodcut-like drawings. They may take some getting used to, but I find they add both to the humour and to the ominous and eerie elements. But enough talk – more pamcakes!

Yum!