Category: Film

Dir. Edgar Wright
2004
After many a year of bad, bad, bad zombie films (running zombies=wrong! Resident Evil=where’s the gore?), “Shaun of the Dead” gets it so right, and understands its genre so well, that I immediately want to put it up in my list of Top 10 zombie films (including the first two Romero films and Jackson’s “Dead Alive”).
The key is that the filmmakers aren’t making fun of the genre–they’re placing characters from another genre (slacker comedy) into a zombie film. Big difference. I don’t usually like comedy in my horror, but here it works, because the makers are sniggering “Aren’t horror films stupid?”
Shaun (Simon Pegg) and his useless friend Ed (Nick Frost) spend most of their days lounging about the house they rent, playing XBox, going down the pub, assaulting each other with farts. Shaun has a dead end job in an appliance store, at least, and has a girlfriend, Liz (Kate Ashfield), but his idea of a good time is…taking her down the pub. With Ed.
No time is wasted setting up the zombies–taking his idea straight from Romero, the zombies are activated by a satellite re-entering the atmosphere–and much of the pleasure of the opening third is seeing how long it takes this workaday drone to cotton on to the fact that the dead now walk the earth. (“Sorry mate, I don’t have any change”) he says to one young flesheater as he walks home from the shops. Anyway, Shaun is too wrapped up in his heartache from being dumped to notice.
The rules have been studied well. There’s a rescue attempt (girlfriend, her friends, his parents), a journey across familiar-now-hostile territory, then refuge in a safe haven (the pub) that slowly turns into a trap. Members of the team get bitten, and slowly turn into zombies. There’s a finale of humans vs. overwhelming numbers of zombies.
The television acts as a reality check and a framing device for the horror elements, like in the original Night. There’s a nice scene where they channel surf and we get to see all the cable channel logos, all with the same “standing by” message. In the end, television culture turns out to be as resilient as the humans.
There’s no holding back on the gore in the latter half of the film, and we get a nice homage to Day of the Dead’s stomach-buffet scene. Thank goodness for that–I had nearly given up all hope.
Apparently, Romero loved the film enough that its said the lead and his writing/directing partner will appear in the upcoming fourth installment of the director’s series, called Land of the Dead.
For sheer pleasure and laughs, you gotta go see this.
(If you have a multi-region DVD player, you can already buy this from Amazon UK. I doubt if the American release will retain its many extras.)

Dir: Hayao Miyazaki
1979
Though I am very much against bootlegs, I couldn’t say no when this box set fell into my hands. Originating somewhere in China, this 14-DVD set contains all of Studio Ghibli’s work. That means not only all of Hayao Miyazaki’s films up to Spirited Away, but works by other directors such as 1994’s “Pon Poko” which I originally caught in its theatrical release in Japan all those years ago.
This is over $350 worth of DVDs here, and rumor has it that the box only cost $9. Yep. (I already own ‘Mononoke’ and ‘Totoro’ on DVD).
So, I’ve decided to watch all of these films in order, starting with this one from 1979, the first film that Miyazaki wrote and directed for the big screen. The director had already been directing episodes for the TV series of this very popular character, and this feature is not the first to feature Lupin III.
But a lot of Miyazaki’s future style can be glimpsed here. While this is mostly a rock’em sock’em adventure tale, with the Bond-like Lupin III rescuing a princess from a evil count, there are moments when the movie pauses to take in the countryside and you can feel Miyazaki’s love of nature.
A lot of “The Castle of Cagliostro” turns up in his later “Castle in the Sky: Laputa”: the same princess, a powerful trinket (a pendant in the latter, a ring here), a post-lapsidarian Eden-like castle, a dizzying habit of setting action sequences high above the ground; flying cars.
The film itself is a rollicking good adventure, with several great scenes. I especially liked how Lupin gained access to the castle through the water supply, and the final fight inside the machinery of the tower clock would have made Disney’s clock-cleaners proud.

Prod. David Chase
2002
The fourth season is the first Sopranos to be written in the shadow of 9-11 and brought home those feelings of doom and anxiety that accompanied the months following. Now, of course, we’re so used to living in this world that we’ve become used to it. This season Tony tries to circle the wagons and just rely on “blood,” that is, his immediate family, but as the season progresses it shows even this is unreliable. Chris, his nephew is addicted to heroin. Uncle Junior is under house arrest and facing his RICO trial. And domestically, bonds start to fray and break, as Carmella asks for, then secretly takes, more control over the household finances. Tony directs his affection to all the wrong places–Ralphie’s goomah, Ralphie’s horse, his ex-mistress’ cousin. And one by one, he loses these things too. It’s a very sad season, and probably my favorite so far.
Part of the reason that we like gangster films is that we like to see a subculture much like our own but with strict, old fashioned rules. In this way, the way of the Mafioso crosses paths with Asian ideas of “saving face” and “honor”. We feel these things are missing somehow, yet our true delight comes out of seeing how these rules are broken and punished, not how they are followed. One of the plot threads of Season 4 involves Johnny Sack and how he seeks justice for a fat joke Ralphie has told about his wife. The idea of besmirching a woman’s honor marks this plot as almost medieval, and much of the tension of this storyline comes from Sack’s intractability in the matter. We like our codes of honor, but this is getting too fundamental.
This medieval way also plays out in Furio’s unrequited love for Carmela, which costs him much heartache, not unlike the traditional romance. When he returns to Italy for his father’s funeral, he is told that in the old days, such a predicament would mean that he’d either have to kill the woman’s husband, or exile himself (as memory serves). And he does think about doing the deed at one point.
These medieval storylines are contrasted with the more modern threads–Bobby Bacala’s grief, Janice’s manipulations, Paulie’s divided loyalties. So, in a way, the whole season gives us both glimpses of a post 9-11 world without being didactic about it: the hard, fundamentalist way (and not in a Islamic sense), or the equally painful, soul-searching modern way. (Note that the female characters have to ask this a lot: Carmela choosing self-respect over marriage, Adrianna choosing a law-abiding future over the crime family).
Favorite episodes: “Christopher” (for the final scene in the car), “Whoever Did This” (so many great images: the wounded child, the bloody dispatch of Ralphie, Tony’s solitary walk through the Bada Bing, empty and hollow inside and out), and “Whitecaps” (nothing sums up a breakup like watching the inflatable mattress go up.)
Now we’ve exhausted all the Sopranos DVDs, we can now get back to watching anything and everything else. Phew.

There’s a lot of essays out there on the Sopranos, but like a lot of pop criticism (and academia in general), there’s so little substance to these essays that, once you get past the paragraphs name-dropping theorists and philosophers, past the paragraphs that awkwardly sum up the film/tv show for those who’ve never seen it (but are snoozy to those who do), and finally past the references to the other books and films the author has read, there’s very little analysis. I spent a little while looking around the web for some good reading on The Sopranos, and while Salon has a few good articles, this one by Martha P. Nochimson is one of the best: Tony’s Options: The Sopranos and the Televisuality of the Gangster Genre

When we first got cable in the early 80s, before HBO was an option to us, my dad subscribed to a channel called the Z Channel. I don’t remember too much about it except that everytime I tuned in they were showing one of two films: “Agatha” with Dustin Hoffman and Maggie Smith, and “The Great Train Robbery” with Sean Connery. If you made it all the way to the end of one of these, there was a good chance you’d run into “Hardware Wars.”
Well, apparently Z Channel was much more important than that–an L.A.-based channel run by a troubled film buff who, ahead of his time, insisted on director’s cuts and restoration. Filmmakers like Verhoeven say it lead to their success by screening their early works. Tarantino got an education in foreign film.
Xan Cassavettes, daughter of John, now has a documentary that examines the channel and the fall of its owner Jerry Harvey.
Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession was the hit of the Los Angeles Film Festival is making the rounds soon.

Prod. David Chase
2001
Sins of the fathers…Season Three of the Sopranos (yes, I know we’re going at a bloody clip) is much stronger than its predecessor, almost as if the out-of-control Ralphie (Joe Pantaliano) was infecting the entire show. We have beatings, a grim rape, numerous bullets to the head, and plenty of people not thinking straight at all.
Tony tries to keep one son (his) out of the business, going as far as enrolling him in a military academy. Yet he fails to keep the son of his former boss–the drippy Freddie Prinze Jr.-lookalike Jackie Jr.–out of the game, despite numerous warnings and slappings about. The results are inevitable, tragic, and a waste.
Elsewhere, some of the episodes this season are some of my favorites. The premiere, Mr. Ruggeriostktktk Neighborhood, focused on a few days in the life of the Sopranos as the FBI try to plant a listening device in their house. It was a taught, time-specific episode, unlike the rather loose, rat-ta-tat plotting of a usual episode. Plus the use of the bootleg mashup of “Every Breath You Take” and “Peter Gunn” was hair-tinglingly brilliant. (The female tennis instructor who had the hots for Adrianne also tingled the body, just not the scalp.) I also liked the Blair Witch-meets-Joisy episode where Paulie and Chris get lost in the woods after being overpowered by a hardy Russian they have taken out to whack. Their fate juxtaposed with Tony’s problems with his hot goomah (Annabella Sciorra, oozing sex) brought out the black comedy this show does best.
Two missteps: the very awkward final Livia episode, where Marchand was pasted electronically into one last scene with James Gandolfini (memories of Bruce Lee in Game of Death!). It didn’t look right and it was obvious, awkward, and sad that Gandolfini was acting to air. The episode came back, though, and delivered a knock-out ending as Carmela lets rip at the wake and speaks what’s on everyone’s mind.
The other sour note was Chase’s attempt to universalize the sad song sung by Uncle Junior at the finale’s funeral. The soundtrack switched from the Italian song to a Chinese ballad, a Portugese fado, and beyond, a real jarring experience.
This third season ends with numerous loose threads, and the sense that the chaos hinted at here is one mistake away from exploding.

Dir: Thom Anderson
2003
On Thursday night I rushed down to L.A. after work to meet Jon for the one-time screening of Thom Anderson’s three-hour opus, “Los Angeles Plays Itself.” This film, made entirely out of shots from other movies, took something like ten years to make, and, like Fahrenheit 9-11, is so densely packed with information and ideas that it feels like a book. (Moore’s film has one central idea, Anderson’s has several).
Anderson’s main thesis–and as a professor of film at CalArts for decades (Jon took some of his classes) he thinks academically–is that Los Angeles has failed to receive the sort of representational respect that is reserved for cities like New York and Paris.
You wouldn’t shoot Grand Central Station in New York and then call it “Grand Central Station, Phoenix,” would you? But that’s what often happened through the years to many Los Angeles landmarks, as Hollywood seemed to use the city as one big backlot, cultural importance be damned.
In the first half, Anderson explores how architectural landmarks and modernist architecture in general are misused in the movies, and sometimes celebrated. Modern homes that were once examples of a bright future always seem to wind up cast as the lairs of villains and drug lords. To illustrate his points, Anderson has at his hands all of Hollywood’s output, copyright be damned (this may explain its small release, its succes as a film, and a case for ‘fair use’). It’s fascinating to watch the same interior pop up over the decades, sometimes as a hotel, sometimes as an apartment, set in the past, set in the future–like watching an actor’s reel.
Anderson also talks about “high tourist” and “low tourist” directors, the high ones being someone like Hitchcock, who, for example, created such a portrait of San Francisco for “Vertigo” that the city is a character in the film. A “low tourist” director avoids landmarks but tries to get the city right, and of these there are very few. Billy Wilder is one–Anderson lauds “Double Idemnity” and “Sunset Blvd” as being very faithful to the geography and feel of Los Angeles. He also praises the original “Gone in 60 Seconds” and “Kiss Me Deadly.”
The second half devotes itself to more indepth discussions, including the similar “secret histories” on show in “Chinatown” and “L.A. Confidential”. Not so secret, is what Anderson says of these histories, the issues were front page news, but Polanski and Towne’s film coincides with Los Angeles developing a self-awareness, and creating a “secret history” to please that which wants cynicism to rule is the order of the day. Finally, Anderson looks at the true “secret histories” of Los Angeles–representations of its Black and Hispanic populations, which are usually invisible.
Anderson admits in interviews to coming to favor a traditional Bazinian realism in his films, and it parallels his leftist leanings (the sardonic voice over–by Anderson’s friend standing in for the director–makes this clear almost from the beginning.) The film will make you appreciate architecture in film and have you glancing more at the backgrounds of films next time you go to the cinema. It will also be a must-own film when it comes out on DVD, for it can act as a reference work on top of a statement about representation. There’s even talk of an accompanying book to contain all the material the director couldn’t include.
Film fans will also want to debate Anderson’s omissions (no David Lynch? no Kenneth Anger? Only a glimpse of Tarantino?) and also hunt down some of the more obscure but intriguing films he shows (on the intelligent side, “Killer of Sheep” by Charles Burnett; on the dumb side, “Death Wish 5” and Stallone’s “Cobra”).
Made for peanuts, it’s no small irony that this is one of the most thoughtful and straight out beste films of the year.
Also: Interviews with Anderson here (with Steve Erickson)here and here (with Andrew Tracey).

Prod. David Chase
2000
It must have been hard to top Season One of the sopranos, and many episodes of Season Two aren’t as plot-driven as the first. If this was a symphony, season two would be the exposition part after the statement of the theme. The characters of Richie (David Provale) and Janice (Aida Turturro) are brought in and slyly dominate the season, rounding out their stories very neatly near the end (a big shock, too, in how they did so.) One thing the show reveals is how by toying with genre, the program becomes open to all sorts of experimentation. The show is able to contain realism and surrealism without feeling off. It’s that most magical of shows, one that creates an entire universe. You believe that anything can happen.
Violence is treated realistically here, with short, brutal beatings that don’t last too long, unspectacular car crashes, bullets dispatched without witticisms, and plain knuckle(head) punches. And by doing so, the show never glosses over its characters’ lives of crime. The finale montage, showing the happy extended Soprano clan intercut with shots of ruined lives and illegal schemes run their course (the trashed offices of the ‘boiler room,’ the bankrupted sports good store, reminded us in a lovely cinematic way of the exactly what we’re celebrating. This is capitalism, baby, as we’re often reminded.
And, criminy, what other show would use a Pierre Henri piece on its soundtrack?
Also: My wife has been studying Carmela for pointers. I’m in trouble, I think.
Favorite episodes: The D-Girl (mainly for Alicia Witt–oofa!–but also for the parody of Hollywood), Knight in White Satin Armor, and Funhouse (obviously).
Favorite line: Unrepeatable curse when Uncle Junior falls over in the shower.
And finally: Adrianna (Drea de Matteo) is hot. As is Oksana Babiy (Irina, the mistress).

Prod. David Chase
1999
It took something like seven episodes before my better half got into the Sopranos. (It took me three). That may be a long time for some, but understand that in learning English as a second language all those years ago, there was no week devoted to Italian-American Mafia slang and its sentence structure. Imagine getting your English down fluently and then encountering a line such as “For his mother a smoke he hires!” said in a rising tone.(Imagine you even know that a ‘smoke’ is a derogatory word ahead of time.)
No wonder she couldn’t get into Goodfellas a few years back…
So anyway, after years of people telling me that the Sopranos is essential viewing, the box set for Season One turned up at the library of all places, allowing us the leisure of watching all 13 episodes over the course of a week.
One of the great pleasures of the series is how it intersects with our shared cultural knowledge of previous gangster films. This intertextual referencing occurs within and outside the world of the Sopranos. While Tony Soprano’s crew talk about the Godfather and Silvio does impressions of Pacino, we also get a kick out of the fact that Christopher shoots the toe off a donut-shop vendor, replaying a scene from Goodfellas in which the same actor (much younger) gets his foot shot by Joe Pesci. Or how the attempted assassination of Tony is a homage to Don Corlione’s shooting in the original Godfather, with a smashed orange juice bottle alluding to Brando’s dropped bag of oranges.
That the Sopranos discusses all this marks the show as a major post-modern text, yet it’s a real drama, not diluted with snarky irony. James Gandolfini went from appearing in films as a heavy or a psycho (8mm for one) to appearing fully formed as Tony Soprano, simultaneously ruthless and vulnerable, with no winks to the audience, no grandstanding. These are the kind of breakthrough roles most actors never get.
The season arc–the taking over of Uncle Junior’s business and Tony’s mom’s plot against him–plays out slowly and satisfyingly. Once again the hour-long drama series shows itself to be the closest we get to a novel in film.
The finale sets us up for a Godfather-esque “massacre during christening” sequence, with Michael’s death in the woods, but then throws us a curve as Uncle Junior and crew are indicted. The closing scene, with the crew and family huddled inside Vesuvio during a storm was an oddly suspenseful way to round out the season, and keeps us on our toes for the next.
Favorite line: “Who do we blame for your hat?”–Paulie to Christopher, when the latter rushes in wearing a floppy fisherman’s cap.

In between feature movies (and Jessica just brought back a motherlode of them from Shanghai), we are currently stuck into the DVD box of The Sopranos, Season One. Yes, we’re finally getting around to watching it. Hey, don’t worry, we had never seen Sex and the City until earlier this year, and through the magic of DVD box sets, we’ve caught up (only the second half of Season Six to go). I prefer it this way too.