Sunday, September 28, 2003
DEMONLOVER
Saw the new movie Demonlover. It's a French film by Olivier Assayas who also did Irma Vep with the amazing Maggie Cheung, who I also think he's married to.
The hype around this movie was that it was supposed to be "disturbing." I didn't know a lot about it going in, except that the soundtrack is by Sonic Youth (who have been heroes of mine for a long time) and it stars some good actresses, Connie Nielsen (the wife in One Hour Photo and I think she was also in Gladiator), Chloe Sevigny (who seems to be in every weird art film these days) and Gina Gershon (who continues to heat up every screen she's on). With all these pluses going for it, I figured this was worth checking out.
I was wrong. Demonlover is a boring, pretentious movie that had a few bits of potential but doesn't do anything good with them. The plot is a bunch of confusing claptrap about corporate espionage, company spies, and the purchase of a Japanese anime company (called Demonlover) that specializes in porn. There are a lot of twists and double-crosses that amount to a great big yawn. Had a hard time staying awake through some of it, especially the first hour. Once they introduce the "disturbing" torture website "The Hellfire Club" (couldn't they think of a more original name?), it finally starts to get interesting, but they don't do anything with it. The ending is okay - but it sure seemed to take a long time to get there, and it wasn't worth the trip.
In order for a movie to be truly disturbing, or just entertaining for that matter, it has to be coherent and keep your interest. This movie does neither. Afterwards, I left the theater pissed off. I really felt like someone had stolen $10 from me under false pretenses.
The Sonic Youth soundtrack might be worth checking out though. I think I'd like it a lot better if I listened to it by itself.
If you want to see a French movie that will truly make you squirm, I suggest you avoid this one and go rent the new DVD of Gaspar Noe's Irreversible. Now that's a disturbing movie! As they used to say in movie trailers: "Not for the squeamish!"
LOST IN TRANSLATION
Well, it may seem like most of the movies I've been talking about lately are horror flicks, but here's a nice change of pace. It's not a horror movie, but it's one of the best movies you'll see this year: Sophia Coppola's Lost in Translation . I saw this last weekend and loved it. Bill Murray is amazing in it - the guy has evolved into one hell of a character actor. I think it's gutsy that he's avoided making a lot more big Hollywood comedies and instead has been doing interesting indie movies like this one and Rushmore, another great flick.
This one has Murray as an aging American actor who goes to Japan to film a whiskey commercial. He doesn't speak the language and he doesn't know anybody there, so the time he is not working on the commercial, he's just killing time, being lonely, until he meets up with Scarlett Johansen (also in Ghost World ) who is also in a kind of limbo. She came to Japan with her photographer husband, but he's never around. Needless to say, they gravitate toward each other.
It's a quiet, low-key movie that probably won't appeal to everyone. But if this sounds like you're cup o' joe - you might just love it. So far it's definitely one of my favorite movies of the year.
Back when Sophia Coppola directed The Virgin Suicides, she really looked like a director to watch. Well, instead of falling victim to a sophomore slump, she's done the exact opposite, Lost in Translation fulfills the potential shown in her earlier film and runs with it. This time she's hit a home run.
As for Murray, I think his career has been the most impressive of all the original cast members of SNL (I know he didn't join til the second season, but I disliked Chevy Chase so much, I prefer to forget he was ever part of the show - lol). While I'm not as big a fan of some of the big comedies he did as some people are (Caddyshack, Ghostbusters, etc.) I do think that no matter what he was in, Murray just about always turned in a great performance and he always stole the show.
I'll always dig the old episodes of Saturday Night Live he was in, but as for his movies, I actually prefer the current phase of his career. I think he's doing some really understated, impressive stuff, and the guy is so damn likeable, no matter what he does. He can just make a short quip, or a face, and he can make you laugh. It's a rare talent. And he can handle the laughs and the drama with equal ease.
Lost in Translation is very minimal in a lot of ways, and yet Murray turns in a very human performance. I'd love to see him win the Oscar for this one, and I'll be really disappointed if he isn't at least nominated.
I also think that while some former comedians seem to be making a mistake by abandoning comedy - Steve Martin comes to mind, as does Woody Allen when he decided he wanted to be the American Bergman, Bill Murray never really abandoned it. There's always a sense of humor somewhere in his characters. But there's a sadness now, too. He just seems to be the most convincing of the lot in showing off his acting chops.
Back to Lost in Translation: it's got great acting, great cinematopgraphy (much of the footage of Japan is downright beautiful), and great direction. Hell, it's great filmmaking all around. If you haven't seen this one yet - what are you waiting for???
Friday, September 19, 2003
CABIN FEVER
Had a really mixed reaction to this one. Before I went to see Cabin Fever, I'd read some really positive reviews and was expecting to have a great time. The thing is, I didn't. Not a great time. Just an okay time.
Chances are you know the plot already. A group of five college kids go to spend a weekend or some vacation time, whatever, in a cabin in the woods. Once they get there, everything goes bugfuck. This time around the culprit is a flesh-eating virus that is introduced into the mix by some infected derelict type who comes to the cabin looking for help. When he tries to force his way in, and then tries to steal their truck instead, it leads to a showdown that includes baseball bats, a beebee gun, a guy spitting up a lot of blood, and this same guy getting set on fire. He runs into the woods screaming, but that doesn't solve the problem. His body rotting in the town reservoir stirs up all kinds of bad shit.
Like most of these movies, the kids suck for the most part. There's the cocktease blonde, the wimpy guy who wants to be a tough guy and impress her, the borderline retarded jock who likes to shoot squirrels, and the makeout couple who can't keep their hands off each other. The "makeout" chick, Marcy, as played by Cerina Vincent, is one of the pluses in this movie, though - she's hot enough to keep you distracted. But the rest of them are just casualties waiting to happen. You don't give a fuck about them, and that's a flaw.
The other flaw is that the movie goes for "weirdness for the sake of weirdness" in a few places, and it just brings everything to a dead stop. These scenes mostly involve a very annoying little shit named Dennis who sits outside his redneck daddy's general store and makes a habit of biting strangers on the hand for no apparent reason. Why sometime doesn't bitch slap this kid early on is a wonder to me. I guess he's supposed to be a spooky crazy kid (and he looks like a little girl, too, which makes it even stranger). In one scene little Dennis even goes apeshit and starts doing a bunch of karate kicks and spins like he's some pint-sized Billy Jack or something. Seeing him spin around in slow motion like that just made me realize how sometimes shit that belongs on the cutting room floor gets salvaged and you wonder if directors are immune to the smell and can't tell the difference.
That said, there are some good things in the movie. Like I said, the girl who plays Marcy is one of them. The other good things are some nudity, however brief (still more than you see in most horror movies these days, which are mostly PG-13 wimpfests) and lots of nice bright red gore. Gotta give a horror movie points for that, I guess. In this day of sanitized, commercial horror, that's a good thing.
There's not much suspense though. In the hands of a better director, there might have been. But here, nothing is suprising and nothing is creeps you out that much. Maybe if the villian was a real bad guy who could grab you and shake you up a bit it would be more suspenseful, but you can't blame the lack of scares on the killer virus. In real life, a virus that eats you up like this would scary as all hell.
There's also Deputy Winston (Giuseppe Andrews) who comes calling at one point. He's a dumb stoner guy in a uniform and all he talks about is parties. He sure doesn't seem interested in upholding the law. And I have to admit, I found him to be pretty funny. He's so useless and stupid, while he pretends to be cool, that he at least keeps your mind off the other dumb fucks.
The ending almost saved the movie for me. It's that good. And you won't really dig it unless you get a lot of the little jokes, and unless you're well-versed in horror classics like Night of the Living Dead and Two Thousand Maniacs. The way the redneck locals take care of the situation, and what happens next really reminded me most of the Herschell Gordon Lewis classic, and that's always a good thing. There's even a banjo band at the end, but they aint' playing "Rolling in My Sweet Baby's Arms." That would have been the capper!
So I wanted to like this movie, a lot. I wanted to be able to sit here and praise it. But I can't. It's flawed. It's got some stuff in it that ruins things, and some stuff that almost saves it. And when the two balance out, we've unfortunately got a movie that's just so-so.
I've read some interviews with director Eli Roth, and he certainly sounds like he's got his head on straight. He thinks horror should be disturbing, he thinks that being an actor/actress means that you shouldn't balk at doing nudity if it's in the script. He thinks gore is a good thing. And he bemoans the cinematic ball-lessness of the PG-13 horror movie. After reading his thoughts, I really wanted to like Roth's movie and say, this guy is the real deal.
What can I say? Maybe NEXT time....
BEYOND REANIMATOR
Well, I recently saw BEYOND REANIMATOR, the second sequel to the original REANIMATOR, a fucking classic! Once again, Jeffrey Combs plays Dr. Herbert West, the demented scientist whose main goal in life is to reanimate the dead!
This one was directed by Brian Yuzna, who produced the original REANIMATOR and who directed the previous sequel BRIDE OF REANIMATOR. Right off the bat, it's safe to say that Yuzna's sequels are not in the same league with the first movie, which was directed by Stuart Gordon. The original REANIMATOR is one of my favorite horror films of all time - a demented, full speed rollercoaster ride with lots of humor and plenty of gore. I think H.P. Lovecraft (whose story the first film was based on) would be appalled, though. Let's just say the original movie took a lot of liberties with his story. The sequels have nothing to do with Lovecraft, really, except for bringing back his character of Herbert West for more crazed adventures.
This one is "Herbert West in Prison." It starts out where one of his reanimated dead guys breaks into a house and kills a girl. Her brother, who she was babysitting at the time, witnesses the murder, but also finds a vial of the glowing green fluid Herbert West uses to raise the dead. The kid grows up to become the prison doctor at the institution where West is serving time. He wants to follow in West's footsteps and does everything he can to help West to further his experiments (I guess it doesn't matter than West was responsible for the death of his sister).
This one was a lot of fun. It's always great to see Jeffrey Combs on film, especially when he is playing his most famous role. And he's as deadpan funny as ever (although there didn't seem to be enough of him this time for some reason). This time around, West has figured out a way to save the electric spark which is the soul leaving the body, and he's found a way to put that spark back into the reanimated dead - the idea being to give them real consciousness again instead of just being mindless zombies.
Dr. West's experiments lead to a prison riot, during which dead prisoners, guards and the warden himself are all reanimated by West's famous green fluid. It's total anarchy by the end, including a man who's missing from the waist down, a (living) prisoner who mainlines the green goop until it rips him apart (and he still wants more!), and a reanimated penis being chased around the prison by a reanimated rat! Also, the prison doctor's girlfriend, a newspaper reporter, gets raised from the dead with the soul of the sadistic warden inside her (it gets real messy from there).
Like I said, it's not in the same league with the original, but it's fun on its own. And the cast was pretty good, despite that fact that the movie was made in Spain with mostly unknown (to us) Spanish actors. Obviously this was done to save money. But Yuzna (who also directed another favorite horror film of mine, SOCIETY) does a servicable job here, and I enjoyed this movie throughout. It's not brain surgery, but it's an enjoyable way to spend an hour and a half. This movie is in limited release (where I am it was just playing in one theater, out in the middle of nowhere), so it might be tough to catch. But if you're a Jeffrey Combs/Herbert West fan, it's just cool to see this on the big screen, before it goes to DVD.
Next up: A review of CABIN FEVER
CHUCK PALAHNIUK LIVE!
Well, as I mentioned before, Laura and I went to see Chuck Palahnuik do a reading at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, MA. He's been doing a book tour for his new novel, DIARY.
He packed the fuckin place - there were crowds waiting outside who couldn't get in, and the theater itsefl was full to capacity! You don't see that kind of turnout for a writer very often! He read some crazy story that will be in an upcoming short story collection of his. He swore us all to secrecy about the story - so let's just saw some people might be a bit disturbed by it. Chuck said that, at other readings, some people have passed out when he read the story, but nobody passed out when we were there. Must have had some real wimps at those other readings!
Hell, after reading authors like Ed Lee, I guess I'm kinda jaded, anyway. haha.
Well after the reading we stood in line to get some books signed (I HAD to get my copy of FIGHT CLUB signed by him!) and we had to wait for 2 fucking hours! His arm must have been ready to fall off by the end of it. When I finally got to the table for him to sign the books, I mentioned to him that his book LULLABY had been nominated for the Stoker Award this past June. And he didn't know anyting about it! Pretty fucked up.
I don't think I'd wait in line that long again, but I had to do it at least once. Autographs just don't seem worth the trouble in these kinds of situations sometimes, but, fuck it, this is the guy who wrote FIGHT CLUB and who knows if I'll ever get to see him in person again.
All in all, he was a really nice, personable guy with a ton of charisma. The reading was almost a love-in, the way everybody was so psyched to see him in person. It looks like his fame is just growing and growing, and that's great to see.
Thursday, September 11, 2003
Laura and I celebrated our fifteenth wedding anniversary today. Man, does time zoom by. Considering we were together for about five years before we got married, that's a helluva long time for two people to be together. We've been through good times and rough times, just like anybody else. But on the whole, it's been a pretty good journey together so far.
Tomorrow we go see Chuck Palahniuk read from his new novel, Diary. Should be fun. I hear he's quite a character, and I missed him the last time he was in town. For those who don't know, he's the guy who wrote the book Fight Club, of which I'm a huge fan of the book and the movie. His other books include Invisible Monsters (which I hear is being made into a film now) and Lullaby.
I also hope to go see the movie Cabin Fever this weekend. If I do, I'll probably be posting something here. Sounds like it might be a good 'un though.
Just finished a collaboration with writer Stephen Dorato. I think it came out pretty good. We're going to send it someplace soon. Wish us luck.
The other big news this week is that singer/songwriter Warren Zevon died. He had inoperable lung cancer and was given three months to live. Instead he lasted over a year and completed his last album, The Wind, which just came out a week or two ago. Zevon was a true original and he'll be missed.
You'll no doubt hear from me again soon. Until then...
Infernally Yours,
LLS
Wednesday, September 03, 2003
DEAD LIKE ME
Saw kind of a mini-marathon of episodes of the new Showtime series Dead Like Me over Labor Day Weekend. For some reason, we've got a free preview of Showtime for a few months. (Imagine that, the cable company giving you something for free!). Since it had a kind of dark fantasy theme of a girl who dies and becomes a "reaper" who takes the souls of the dead and sees they get to where they're going, I thought I'd check it out. Didn't have much in the way of expectations, though. Showtime has always been the ugly stepsister to the superior programming on HBO (home of instant classics like The Sopranos, Oz, Six Feet Under, and Curb Your Enthusiasm, to name a few), and the few series I saw on Showtime back when I had it last were all pretty disappointing. But Dead Like Me was a pleasant surprise. Sure, there are some holes in logic (especially when these dead people squat in the apartments of the departed and somehow don't get thrown out into the street) and real depressing aspects (after she dies, lead character George still has to go work at the temp agency she worked at when she was alive - although now she appears to be a different person to the living. But shit - you still have to work after you die! That's just gotta be hell!), but given that, it's a mostly well-written, well-acted show that I've sort of become hooked on.
The plot revolves around George (short for Georgia), an 18 year old college dropout who dies when she is hit by a falling toilet seat from the MIR space station. You heard me right. Pretty stupid way to die, but then again, I guess that's the point. Unfortunatley a lot of the deaths on the show seem to be overly dramatic and absurd, to the point of being downright annoying sometimes. Doesn't anyone die quietly anymore? I'd think big flashy deaths would be in the minority. But I digress. George dies and then finds out she isn't going to the great beyond after all. She's sticking around to be a "reaper." Her new job is to remove the souls of the newly dead and make sure they get to their intended destination. Her new boss is Rube (Mandy Patinkin), a no-nonsense kind of guy with a fixation for breakfast foods(he practically lives in the German waffle house where they all meet every day). He's the one who gets the "list" of who's going to die that week and hands out the post-its to everybody so they know who they've got to escort out of their corpses. The other reapers include Jasmine Guy as a disgruntled meter maid (she actually looks like a "guy" these days, so forget the Jasmine of "Another World"), Callum Blue as British former junkie (before he died) Mason, and the almost interchangeable characters of Betty (Rebecca Gayheart in the first five episodes) and Daisy Adaire (Laura Harris who also had a prominent role as the blonde terrorist in season 2 of 24), who comes in at episode 6. Both Betty and Daisy are self-obsessed twits who are capable of some funny moments, except Betty was a bit more endearing and Daisy is downright pushy, but I like them both as characters.
George herself seemed like a real depressive before she died. She had never had a boyfriend, had a dead end job as a temp, lived at home with her parents, and really didn't seem headed for anything all that exciting. So her new role as a reaper actually seems like a second chance to stick around and live a little (even though she's..er..dead now). She's also still obsessed with her past and sneaks over to her parents house now and then, hiding but always on the verge of telling them the truth, even though to the living she no longer looks like good ol' George anymore and they'll think she's a crazy person.
I could go into even more detail, but what's the point? If you find this at all interesting and you have Showtime you can check it out for yourself. I've already said way too much. But the writing is good and the characters are just about all interesting and endearing in their own quirky ways. Ellen Muth is good as George, although she's not the most charistmatic person on the planet (which, once again, is the point). Mandy Patinkin is just terrific as Rube, though, and steals every scene he's in. This guy can fuckin' act!
The only way I can explain what I think about Dead Like Me is I sat down and watched five hour-long episodes one after the other and enjoyed every bit of it. So I guess that's what you could call a "thumb's up." I don't know if the show is in HBO's league, but for Showtime, it's pretty fucking above average. I can't wait to see what happens next.
So, til the next time we meet up in this dark alley...
Infernally Yours,
LLS
