More Movies You Didn’t See

I am a simple person who is really tickled when things break the rules. When I see filmmaking step out and away from convention and attempt something I haven’t seen before I get a warm, fuzzy sort of feeling. I have chosen four more movies that are really unique and special. Some you may have heard of and others you maybe have seen. They hail from Japan, Germany, Belgium, and lastly America, and I think you will be just as tickled to make their acquaintance if you have not already.

The first movie has become something of a cult classic. Makes sense. It was directed by a prominent cult filmmaker and it blends genres in a fun, unforgettable way. It’s Takashi Miike’s The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001). I first saw it several years ago with fellow Chronicler Mat O’Neill, as part of a crazed double-feature with Jan Svankmajer’s Alice. It was a good time had by most. Katakuris is actually a liberty-taking remake of a Korean film called The Quiet Family directed by Kim Ji-woon. The story is quaint enough. An adorably down-and-out Japanese family opens up a bed and breakfast in the country but nobody shows up…until guests do start arriving and then dying unexpectedly and then the Katakuris decide to bury the bodies on the property to avoid bad publicity. Did I mention it’s also a musical? There are many other subplots among the characters. Katakuris is narrated by the youngest Katakuri as a sort of innocent reflection on what makes a family. Her mother is always looking for love and winds up getting conned by the sleazy Richard Sagawa. Her uncle is trying to find direction in his life and overcome the stigma of being a thief in the past. The grandparents are the ones who are trying their darndest to keep the bed and breakfast alive and great grandfather has an ongoing rivalry with birds that fly overhead. Miike weaves in some weird jokes throughout: a fly burrows into a newscaster’s nostril; the entire cast is arbitrarily transformed into stop-motion clay figures at random. You know. Stuff like that. The film is purposely campy and very silly at times, yet despite all of its melodramatic whimsy and spoofery there is a real heart beating down in there. The songs are actually really good too. Every song evokes a different style, be it showtune, rock, sing-along, karaoke number, etc. It’s a wild, weird, funny, and oddly heartwarming film about the importance of family and I strongly urge you to see it for yourself.

Next up is a film that springs from the early career of Werner Herzog. Mr. Herzog has proven he is a master storyteller and documentarian (often blurring the lines between fictional narrative and traditional documentary) with such memorable films as  Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo (1985), Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997), Grizzly Man (2005), The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call: New Orleans (2009), and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010) to name a few. Whether he’s looking for desert mirages (Fata Morgana), remaking F. W. Murnau’s immortal classic Nosferatu with Klaus Kinski or he’s directing a literally hypnotized cast (Heart of Glass) Herzog is always full of invention and surprises. His second feature film, Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) may not be for everybody…but it is definitely for me! It’s an all little-person cast, black-and-white, German-language movie that appears to take place in some Spanish desert. It’s got everything. Comedy. Check. Satire. Check. Dwarfs. Check. Foreign shriek-chant soundtrack. Check. Car stunts. Check. Incessant maniacal laughter. Check. Violence against the blind. Check. Monkey crucifixion. Check. The dwarf who plays the president is even the dwarf who plays the president in Robert Downey, Sr.’s Putney Swope. The story is fairly simple enough. An all dwarf mental institution is taken over by the patients (think Svankmajer’s Lunacy). They lock up the president and run amok. Like many ill-bred revolutionaries they lack foresight and don’t know what to do with themselves once their dimly conceived role reversal takes shape. Revolution is achieved, but it quickly goes awry and devolves into chaos. Much symbolism and much humor and much, much craziness in this early film from a cock-eyed filmmaking beast. A treat for a very special few and would make a great triple-feature with The Terror of Tiny-Town and Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits. Or For Y’ur Height Only!

A Town Called Panic (2009) is Stéphane Aubier and Vincent Patar’s feature-length adventure based on their Belgian stop-motion TV series of the same name. It is a madcap romp through a whimsical world where anything can happen…as long as it is absurd and/or funny. Three lovable roommates, the aptly named Cowboy, Indian, and Horse go on an adventure to correct a construction error. Horse, a pragmatist, signs up for music lessons to get closer to the music teacher (who is also a horse), but Cowboy and Indian, in an attempt to order 50 bricks to build Horse a barbecue for his birthday, accidentally purchase 50,000,000 bricks and thus the bent harmony of Horse’s world is thrust into a twistedly inane series of events. Evil scientists lob snowballs from the north pole in a giant robot penguin, the trio gets lost in the center of the earth, and they meet an underwater parallel universe inhabited by amphibious pranksters. Things are nonstop silly excitement. Perhaps what makes A Town Called Panic such an unusual experience derives from the crudity of the cheesy plastic toy animations. The film essentially feels like your watching a child’s school project diorama do crack and come to life. I also enjoy the little touches, like the farm animals that behave like farm animals but also go to school and can drive (like children playing with toys). It’s light, breezy, fun, and funny and sure to entertain the whole family.

What’s one more cult classic? Oingo Boingo founder, Richard Elfman, made the off-color assault, The Forbidden Zone (1980) to create something that would feel like one of their concert shows (then called The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo). The result was a bawdy, black-and-white (finally colorized in 2008), cracked musical-comedy adventure steeped in the surreal. The film is loaded with frog-headed men, human chandeliers, torture, violence, sex, songs, and plenty of wild, wacky sound effects and characters. Hervé Villechaize (Fantasy Island) stars as the super horny King of the Sixth Dimension (a strange amalgam of Max Fleischer cartoons, minstrel shows, and fetishism) with Susan Tyrell as his jealous Queen Doris. The Hercules family purchases a humble shack in Venice, California from a narcotics dealer—unbeknownst to them there is a portal to the Sixth Dimension in the basement. When starry-eyed Frenchy Hercules (Marie-Pascale Elfman) winds up passing through the intestinal portal of the Sixth Dimension, the amorous King Fausto of this highly unusual dominion takes a shine to her and so he keeps her for himself. My favorite characters, Flash (a curiously old man for Frenchy’s brother) and Grampa Hercules, descend into the bowels (quite literally) of the Sixth Dimension to rescue her. Things get weirder and weirder. The Kipper Kids perform a raspberry grunting duet, a Chicken Boy (Matthew Bright) loses his head, Danny Elfman plays a Cab Calloway-covering Satan, and soon everyone is bouncing around the cartoon walls of King Fausto’s kingdom. As with Katakuris, this movie has great songs (a must-see for any Oingo Boingo fans), and it also has a special place in my heart because it was one of the first “weird movies” I ever saw. It’s a special kind of cracked gratuitous raucousness and it definitely won’t be for everyone, but it is a solid cult classic and (for the right mindset) it can be a whole lot of fun. (The main theme was also lifted for the Dilbert TV series intro music).

So there you have it. Two musicals, an animated kid’s show, and a social satire…but oh, so much more. Movies are supposed to be fun and sometimes when movies seem like they almost don’t even care about the audience they appear to have the most fun. To me that is the most fun of all. I hope some of these (preferably all of them) make it to your home television screens soon.

Originally published for “The Alternative Chronicle” Nov. 23, 2010.

Star Whores and Other Space Oddities

I love Star Wars (circa. 1977-1983, now! Not those other things that happened). A New Hope, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi can live on my movie shelf. For all the beef we may have with George Lucas due to the most recent incarnations of this cherished series (whoop-dee-doo it’s in 3D now. Geez, it’ll never die), one cannot forget how much influence the Star Wars films have had on culture and the art of filmmaking. Not only has Star Wars influenced subsequent science fiction flicks, it has also been copied quite a bit.

There are a few different approaches one can take when it comes to science fiction: you can be enigmatic, arty, and classy like 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968); you can be extremely scientific, poetic, and subtle like Gattaca (1997); you can be lugubrious, philosophical, and metaphysical like Solaris (1972); you can be dark, suspenseful, and horrific like Alien (1979); you can be kooky, kinky comedy like Sleeper (1973); you can be fast-paced character-driven razzle-dazzle like Star Wars; or (recognizing some of the childishness of space aliens, robots, and super-deluxe-hyper-warp-lightspeed) you can go all out campy, flashy, trashy like Barbarella (1968). There is, however, another sub-genre of science fiction. I am referring, of course, to the knock-offs.

After the release of the first Star Wars movie there was a huge sci-fi craze. Almost any movie could be made a better or more profitable movie with the institution of a well-placed spaceship. Movies like The Black Hole (1979), Battle Beyond the Stars (1980), The Last Starfighter (1984), Ice Pirates (1984), and Arena (1988) were cranked out by the bushel. Well, some of my personal favorite worst and also lesser known sci-fi movies made in the wake of the space craze are on my mind today so, naturally, I felt compelled to write about them.

First up is Saturn 3 (1980). This film is actually a bit more of an Alien rip off. There are essentially only three characters and they are played by (check this out) Kirk Douglas, Farrah Fawcett, and Harvey Keitel. Before I go any further I must tell you that this film is bad. Really bad. Almost not even so-bad-it’s-kinda-fun-bad. And another thing; I can’t help but feel like the title is even a little derivative of Capricorn 1 (1977).

Kirk Douglas (Lust for Life) is Adam, an older guy who’s been stuck up on a surprisingly spacious and roomy space-base floating around Saturn. We also see him naked and, I gotta be honest, 20 years since Spartacus and the man is still in shape…but really nobody needed to see that. Farrah Fawcett (Logan’s Run) is Alex, Adam’s blonde, leggy bed-buddy and his only companion. Together Adam and Eve Alex (I get it!) live quietly in space for no apparent reason (but it’s something to do with the government or science or something), until the most evil and warped mind in the galaxy comes aboard. This evil and warped mind belongs to a man named Benson. Seriously. Benson. Benson is the name of the bad guy. Well, actually he only kills a guy named Benson for some inexplicable reason and assumes his identity, but really now. Benson? Benson is played by Harvey Keitel (Mean Streets), but it gets better. Evidently the director was not altogether pleased by Mr. Keitel’s thick Brooklyn accent and so he is awkwardly dubbed by some other robot-sounding British guy (it reminded me of Andie McDowell’s awkward dubbing in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes). Benson is revealed to be mentally imbalanced in the beginning of the film and then, once aboard Saturn 3, he puts a giant suppository filled with brains into an 8-ft tall robot named Hector. He gives the robot his own thoughts and then tries to get in Alex’s pants with the most awkward space-future come-on lines since Demolition Man. Adam gets jealous and they talk about killing Benson because he is weird. Then the robot chops their pet dog in half and tries to rape Alex. The movie is a wreck and actually pretty boring despite the presence of a horny, rampaging robot. Saturn 3 also feels unnecessarily dark at times while being unintentionally silly, for instance there is a scene where Hector, the robot, wears Harvey Keitel’s severed head as a hat for a disguise.

Next up it’s Starcrash (1978), also known as The Adventures of Stella Star. I actually loved this movie. It’s near-nonstop mayhem in the same campy vein as Barbarella. The incredibly hot Caroline Munro (The Golden Voyage of Sinbad) stars as the frequently scantily clad Stella Star—the only hope for the galaxy. This film is more blatant a rip off of Star Wars and it is oh-so-hokey. Outer space looks like an awkward jumble of bad Christmas decorations hastily assembled by a one-eyed crazy person. Who knew the stars and galaxies were so vibrant and psychedelic? The special effects for the spaceships are actually pretty decent, but again the colors are more akin to a pinball machine that has lost its mind. The malevolent Count Zarth Arn (Joe Spinell) is the villain and his hair does for evil exactly whatever the name Benson did for it. He also has his own version of the Death Star, except his is in the shape of a big, evil robot hand that clutches into a fist when it goes into attack mode. There is also an extremely sexually ambiguous sidekick for Stella. His name is Akton (Marjoe Gortner) and he apparently has a new and incredibly convenient super power in each instance of peril. He bravely dies sword-fighting a stop-motion robot when his arm gets grazed and briefly caught on fire. The film also has a bald green dude, and a good robot with a Texas accent (half the film I just wanted to give him a ten-gallon hat to go with his Dr. Phil-esque aphorisms). Starcrash also boasts  lightsabers and David Hasselhoff (Knight Rider). The costumes are great and I couldn’t help but notice the recurring use of arrows on helmets seemingly pointing to the face of the wearer, and on belt buckles pointing to the crotch.

The movie is crazy and the plot is on crack. We go from an outer space battle to a strange planet to a space jail to the jungle and back into space and then on to another planet with cavemen or amazons and giant robots in like 4 minutes. It’s like the first 60 seconds of the Power Rangers pilot. The film DOES slow down occasionally for overly long spaceship docking scenes. What you eventually learn is that the film is strategically conditioning you to not care about the characters so you won’t be mad when new characters are randomly introduced and old ones go away or return without rhyme or reason. The best part of this movie? It’s a tie between Caroline Munro’s outfits (she dresses like Vampirella) and the great Christopher Plummer’s (The Sound of Music) emotionally detached and disenfranchised line deliveries. You can actually see it in his regretful eyes: he hates that he’s in a movie with Christmas space and a Texan android. All around the movie is awesomely bad and I highly recommend this frenetically-paced, sexist light show. It’s a great bit of 70′s Italian schlock.

Last and most certainly least is The Man Who Saves the World, or as it is known in its home country, Dünyayı Kurtaran Adam, or as it is most commonly referred to, Turkish Star Wars (1982). Every time somebody mentions the infamous Star Wars Holiday Special (1978) I fire back with Turkish Star Wars. The Star Wars Holiday Special is so bad it makes you wonder how there was a successful franchise afterward.  Turkish Star Wars is so bad it makes you wonder why God did not destroy humanity. Seriously, have the people who made this ever seen a movie before? It is film heresy. The whole spectacle is a noisy, raucous, incoherent Frankenstein mess of a film. It is a mind-boggling artistic travesty on all fronts. But I love it.

A guy and his best pal (Murat and Ali) crash land on an alien desert planet and they meet an impoverished, rock-dwelling civilization that is tormented by a big, nasty, beardy space bad guy, who allegedly is actually a centuries old wizard who needs a human brain so he can understand stuff and conquer the universe. The two guys decide to help the people and proceed to fight the worst excuses for robots and aliens you will ever see. Toilet-paper mummies, zombies, rubber robots, dudes in skeleton outfits, and great big orange stuffed animals, and even racist-looking African, Asian, and possibly Jewish rubber mask baddies, are only the half of it. The love story between Murat and woman-who’s-name-I-can’t-remember is also great. You see, occasionally jarringly softer music will play and we get reverse closeups of their eyes as they longingly/indifferently gaze at each other while performing mundane space activities. This unprecedented and clashing change of pace denotes romantic interest. Understand?

I’d be kidding if I said I could explain the plot of this weird movie. There are mentions of the virtues of humanity and the human brain as the key to all things (something the filmmakers ironically refused to use for the production of Turkish Star Wars), and vague references to Islam and other things, but the story is so convoluted and poorly executed that it hardly matters. One minute our protagonists are fighting monsters, the next minute they’re in space jail, then the bad guy has monsters slaughter a cave full of frightened orphan children and he proceeds to drink their blood through a crazy straw, then Murat is wielding a giant, golden Final Fantasy sword (made of cardboard) and melting it in a huge vat and then thrusting his bare fists into the molten gold only to have them emerge with clunky gold space mittens on. Seriously. Tone! You can’t murder children in a film like this. It’s like the naked suicide in Endhiran.

One particularly memorable sequence is the training montage where Murat ties boulders to his ankles and goes jogging and then works his fist muscles by slapping big rocks. Instead of the Force, Murat has the amazing power to jump kinda high and karate chop things in half (boulders, stuffed animal monsters, robot heads, *SPOILER ALERT* the bad guy…except that they just black out half the screen and show him on the ground with his eyes closed, and in doing the same for the other half—to truly indicate the pure in-halfedness of our antagonist—the filmmakers also accidentally reveal that both halves apparently have full noses, but I digress). The finale is a jarring, headache-inducing ménage of so much incoherent violence, jumping, and explosions that you will be fighting—and fighting hard—your body’s urge to roll your eyes back in your head and halt all blood-flow to the brain. It’s like Vogon poetry really. Your welcome, Douglas Adams fans.

The absolute best part of Turkish Star Wars is how it is edited. I know that sounds nerdy, but let me explain. Not only does nothing make sense, but the film is notorious for ripping actual stolen footage from Star Wars—and several other fantasy movies and even newsreels—and splicing them into the movie. And the transfers are just terrible, but I suppose that’s nitpicking. Best of all, they do it at inappropriate times. For example, to show space travel they film a character with a stupid hat moving a wheel while scenes from the assault on the Death Star play behind him (except the real Star Wars footage keeps cutting to other shots so the backgrounds don’t make any sense). The music is also stolen from Raiders of the Lost Ark and a bunch of other popular movies as well. If this movie weren’t so wonderfully, miserably bad  and hysterically inept it would have been facing an arsenal of lawsuits. People say I’m crazy, but I have actually watched this wretched film 5 times. It takes a certain constitution to enjoy bad movies like this. Turkish Star Wars is really more of an endurance test than a film. Are you ready for the challenge?

There you have it. Saturn 3 you might as well skip as it is the most boring and unimaginative of them all, but it does have a stupid enough plot to keep you with it and the Keitel dub is awful. Starcrash is awesome trash and you definitely should see it for Munro’s body and Plummer’s face. Turkish Star Wars you can watch, but this one comes with a warning: it is disorientingly bad and you may not be able to readily relate to people immediately after a viewing, but for Troll 2 and Birdemic fans I must insist you try. At least it’s not After Last Season.

picture references:

squidoo.com

webomatica.com

movierapture.com

muduckisdead.com

zombie-popcorn.com

Originally published for “The Alternative Chronicle” Jan. 25, 2011.

Size Matters Not…in the Philippines

Several great films have employed little people to play crucial roles. Unfortunately, little people have been largely reduced to playing mythical dwarves, gnomes, leprechauns, Oompa Loompas, ewoks, jawas, and various other creatures. It’s not everyday they get to play Time Bandits (1981), take over a mental institution and learn that Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970), or act out a whole western like The Terror of Tiny Town (1938). It is rare that a little actor gets to achieve singular notoriety like Verne Troyer (Austin Powers in The Spy Who Shagged Me, The Imaginarium of Dr. Parnassus), Hervé Villechaize (Fantasy Island, The Forbidden Zone), or Warwick Davis (Willow, Leprechaun, Harry Potter, Life’s Too Short) and even more rare do they get real juicy roles like Peter Dinklage (The Station Agent, Death at a Funeral, Game of Thrones). And how often do little actors get to use kung-fu, slide across the floor, umbrella-parachute out windows, or jet-pack to the rescue? The answer: not often enough.

Filipino actor, Weng Weng, got that rare opportunity to star in his own James Bond-style action movie. At 2′ 9″ Weng Weng enjoyed not only playing the shortest super-fly secret agent to ever don a leisure-suit, but he also got to be chased by several women and do a lot of pretty great stunts in the oddball cult classic For Y’ur Height Only (1980). Although most of his films are still unavailable in the United States, this particular little golden nugget can be found on DVD.

OK, so it’s still a bit of a novelty role with most of the more interesting plot elements revolving around the fact that the main action star protagonist is less than 3 feet tall, but you still gotta respect the little guy.

The story for this B-grade critter is incredibly thin. Bad guys—who (at least in the English dubbed version) readily acknowledge their negative roles and openly declare that they are opposed to all that is good—are hiding bags of drugs in loaves of bread. The good guys (really just a guy in an office, but I guess it’s implied he works for some benevolent government agency) send not-so-secret* Agent 00 (Weng Weng) to stop the bad guys. It’s as simple and ham-fisted as that and really it’s already more than it ever needed to be. Most of the plot is fairly incomprehensible and ludicrous, but if you are a true connoisseur of schlock cinema and/or bizarro entertainment then none of its quirks or foibles can deter you and you know it!

If you watch and love kung-fu movies and James Bond movies, you already know it’s not about the story. It’s about the action and mayhem and, I gotta say, For Y’ur Height Only delivers. Perhaps its the unfamiliar novelty of seeing a man knee-high to R2-D2 scaling walls and fighting guys and wooing chicks, but this film takes the throwaway rip-off concept that might have otherwise been forgettable and makes it something unique. Because Agent 00 is so small the action has to be choreographed with a bit of imagination…and some upper body strength on the part of the people attacking him—as Agent 00 frequently flips over them. Weng Weng uses his small stature to his advantage by sneaking between people’s legs, sliding on the floor whilst firing his gun, hiding in crevices, and, as I have aforementioned, umbrella-parachuting out windows. One of my favorite things this movie does is incorporate the 007 Q gadget exchange, but instead of specific instructions, this Q gives the vaguest guidance and seems astoundingly oblivious. 00 gets an amulet thing for correspondence with the agency’s plant and a solid gold ring that can detect any poison. There’s also a pen that shoots poison darts or something, an Oddjob murder-hat (only remotely controlled), and, yes, a jet-pack. By far the greatest gift bestowed upon Agent 00 by ripoff Q are the giant sunglasses that allows the wearer to see people with their clothes off.

The action isn’t exactly at Bruce Lee status, but it is pretty great. Perhaps a bit gratuitous on the kicks to the groin, but it’s all in good fun. And the outfits are spectacular. You will never see more obnoxious combinations of plaid blazers, pastel neck scarves, pinky rings, and super big collars. No style of combat is out of place in this movie. Guns, swords, darts, martial arts, murder-hat, and even a scary one-on-one fistfight with a slightly larger dwarf are all featured. The women, both established characters and random walk-ons enjoy muchas smooches from the pint-sized hero. Weng Weng, although made extra silly by way of the hilariously abysmal dubbing, demonstrates a playfully mischievous aura throughout the film. The absurd size juxtapositions and the twinkle in Weng Weng’s eye make this a lot more fun than your average Bond knockoff. One thing this movie really taught me was that putting drugs in bread is worse than killing scores upon scores of people. 00 destroys these guys. The bad guys kill maybe 2 or 3 people, while hero 00 murders at least 100 people. The whole spectacle is about as odd and awful as lunch at Jollibee’s,** only way more aimless and much more fun.

The acting is not good, the dialogue is about as clever and articulate as a 3 year old telling a story, the dubbing is terrible (seriously, worse than any Godzilla movie), the logic and physics of bullet trajectories is psychotically ill-informed, and it’s all absolutely wonderful. And what if watching a dusky dwarf wearing a plastic sparkler-spewing jet-pack suspended over rocks by a clearly visible wire is my idea of entertainment? What then? I liked the silly action and how the nonsensical plotline sort of meandered about waiting for the feature-length mark. You really have to like your cinema to be out there to appreciate this thing. Revisiting this movie for the first time after several years was a truly special treat for me.

So maybe you might blast movies of this ilk for their cheap production quality and dismissive character development, but you know what else was filmed in the Philippines because it was cheaper there? Apocalypse Now. Boom. Chew on that. God help me, I love this movie. For Y’ur Height Only is a masterpiece of strange. Check it out and see the amazing Weng Weng in his natural habitat: in hand to hand combat and smooching the ladies.

Cheap foreign midgetsploitation James Bond knockoffs don’t come much better than this.

The DVD distributed by Mondo Macabro also features knockoff Bruce Lee star, Bruce Le, in the ludicrous kung-fu flick Challenge of the Tiger. Longest scene in the movie: Bruce Le fighting a bull with his hands.

*He tells everyone he’s a secret agent.

**Maybe it’s because I’m not Filipino, but I never found Jollibee’s eclectic menu particularly appetizing. It gleefully includes spaghetti and yam boba.

Top 10 Reason to See For Y’ur Height Only

1. What’s up with that title? For “y’ur”? “Your”?

2. Two words: jet-pack.

3. How many movies are Filipino James Bond knockoffs with little people?

4. Two more words: murder-hat.

5. Weng Weng is affectionately compared to (and I kid you not) a potato.

6.He pulls his body over a gun to flip-kick a guy in the face and then proceeds to pummel him with the butt of the gun.

7. Two more words: umbrella-parachute.

8. “There’s a lot of dough in this dough: the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker…” actual line muttered by a bad guy in reference to the drugs hidden in the bread.

9. You’ll wanna dress your baby up in a leisure suit.

10. Two final words: Weng Weng

http://www.erichscholz.com/2007/09/weng-weng-rap-lyrics.html

http://99sense.blogspot.com/2007_02_01_archive.html

http://cigaretteburnscinema.blogspot.com/2010/10/yes-weng-weng-it-is-that-time.html

Originally published for “The Alternative Chronicle” April 4, 2011

I Spy…

I really enjoyed the new Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy (2011). It was well crafted, brilliantly acted, and stylish. The 1979 miniseries starring Alec Guinness and Ian Richardson was still superior though. But it did remind me of what a good spy movie can look like.

As a fan of espionage I feel it only necessary to trumpet a great little Cold War spy flick by the name of The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1965). If you are a fan of the long-running James Bond series or films like Ministry of Fear (1944) or the new-found Jean-Pierre Melville flick Army of Shadows (1969), and there’s early Alfred Hitchcock films such as The 39 Steps then I’d say it’s time to experience Martin Ritt’s The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. This bleak and gritty spy story is smart, slick, and extremely satisfying.

Based on John le Carre’s novel, Ritt’s movie sets a burnt-out British agent against a harsh European backdrop steeped in Cold War anxieties and fears. The British agent is Alec Leamas, played with tough cynicism by Shakespearean titan, Richard Burton (John Huston’s Night of the Iguana, 1964). Leamas is a grizzled spy who just wants another mission (and maybe a drink). Leamas appears down and out—and out of favor—with his British superiors and is placed on a lower rung of the agency where he is obliged to drink himself into depression . . . in actuality the whole thing is a carefully orchestrated set up by intelligence maestro, George Smiley (Rupert Davies) to infiltrate Communist intelligence. Leamas now resembles an ideal candidate for a Communist defector. A malcontented agent with inside information, Leamas is irresistible to the East German Communists and is quickly wooed and promised ample compensation for his defection and subsequent reveal of British secrets.

Things get complicated when he falls in love with English Communist activist, Nan Perry (Claire Bloom from Woody Allen’s Crimes and Misdemeanors, 1989), but he soon removes himself from her (or so he thinks) so as to advance up the ladder of Communist bigwigs and deeper into double-agent intrigue. The target is Communist head, Fiedler (Oskar Werner from Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim, 1962), but Leamas must successfully impress and fool several Red agents and pass from tier to tier to even come close to the target. As with all great espionage flicks there are several twists and if I were to explain anything after Fiedler’s introduction it would be a major spoiler alert…so you will simply have to watch the movie.

A humorous thing of note is that each Communist agent he meets acts like the head honcho until he is rudely dismissed by his superior. It’s almost like a Communist running gag.

For one to fully comprehend all that is at work in this story, one must put themselves back in a time of fear. The Berlin Wall is up; there is barbed wire and hushed whispers conveying political secrets being murmured in darkened rooms. The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming! Like Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964) which tapped into the extreme paranoia surrounding what could be happening on the other side of the world and John McTiernan’s The Hunt for Red October (1990) which dealt with the delicateness and severity of defection to any side and the deathly, fearful rage it would inspire, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold places all this anxiety on the shoulders of one small, flawed man. Alec Leamas is the lone warrior sent to slay the beast, but he is placed in the dark about several important details of his mission to protect the mission. At times like this, governments cannot afford the consistency of one man and so Leamas is manipulated about as if a pawn in some sinister game of chess and this time the Reds are not simply after “moose and squirrel”.

Filled with smart, subtle, and brooding performances and filmed in beautifully cold black and white, this fascinating film has our steely-eyed protagonist guide the audience through the perils of underground European intrigue at the height of the Cold War. No one can be trusted and as the plot unfolds we begin to realize how complicated the mission truly is and what is actually at stake for the British, the Communists, Fiedler, Nan, and Leamas. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is a clever and stylish story with plenty of twists and double-agent double-cross. If you like spy movies, or think you like spy moves—heck, if you hate spy movies—give this Cold War drama a whirl. It’s a harsh, grim world as chilled as its title would suggest. The Spy Who Came in from the Cold is first-class espionage entertainment. Enjoy.

picture references:

dvdbeaver.com

dailymail.co.uk

criterionconfessions.com

ferdyonfilms.com

spankyandjohngotothemovies.wordpress.com

Originally published for “The Alternative Chronicle” Jan. 20, 2010

Of Mills and Crosses

Films depict historical events, great works of literature, flippant works of pulp, true life accounts, biographies, and so on. How often do we get a film based on a painting? Maybe not often enough. Tarkovsky sort of did that in Andrei Rublev (1966), Svankmajer made some bizarre shorts in the style of Arcimbaldo, and Ivan Ivanov-Vano accomplished a truly staggering feat in his short The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971). All this to say that it can be done and it has proven to be a fascinating experiment when it is done. Why are not more paintings adapted to the big screen? After all, Fantasia (1940) and Allegro non Troppo (1976) are based on classical music compositions.

The Mill and the Cross (2011) was directed by Lech Majewski to cinematically represent Pieter Bruegel’s painting The Way to Calvary, painted in 1564. Rutger Hauer (Ladyhawke, Blade Runner) plays Bruegel and Charlotte Rampling (The Verdict, Melancholia) and Michael York (The Three Musketeers, Austin Powers) costar. This is a strange sort of film. It doesn’t really flow like a conventional plot with readily understandable characters. It is less of a movie and more of a tranquil lingering in every beautifully realized square inch of the painting that inspired it.

We gradually move from one detail to another as we explore Bruegel’s work through different angles, richer context, and multi-historical meanings. It is as much a depiction of the horrors of the Spanish Inquisition as it is a representation of the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. This is a tough sell. It’s masquerading as a film, but really what Majewski is doing is forcing an audience to pay attention to the details. How many people wander a vast art museum, approach a great work, gaze at it for a few moments, take note of the artist, date, and materials used, and then simply move on? How many of us take the time to seriously consider and interact with seemingly trivial details in great works of art? The Way to Calvary is one of those biblical accounts where the people still look like they are living in the Renaissance or Medieval times. This could be for a few reasons. One might be that widespread knowledge of the fashions and architecture of bible times was not available. Another might be from the simple fact that Majewski seems to be saying that Bruegel might have been comparing the passion account with his own contemporary world.

It is a beautiful film. Many special effects shots are used to integrate the rich beauty of the Bruegel painting into the film. The film very much resembles a painting. Many shots even appear to composite actual elements of the original painting into the background. This gives The Mill and the Cross a very distinct look and feel. In addition to looking great, the film takes its time. As I’ve said, this movie likes to linger on subtle, strange imagery and just let the moving pieces perform their bottled dance. There is minimal dialogue and it moves slowly and deliberately and does not explain everything right away. You have to stick with it and trust Mejewski. I, for one, was never bored by this smooth and impressively visual film.

Watching it, I realize it will probably not be for everyone, but I certainly enjoyed it and I think it is a noble experiment that leads one to appreciate art more and think differently about it. It is also a fine pseudo-account of the crucifixion narrative. I cannot tell if this is a better spiritual film or historical film…or maybe it is merely meant to be an art film. Whatever it is, it makes Bruegel’s painting come to life and delves deep into its obvious meanings and its more elusive symbolism along with carefully containing the era in which Bruegel lived. The Mill and the Cross truly teaches us that there is more in a grand old painting than what meets the eye in the first few moments one encounters it. There is much sophistication and beauty and pain and history. It’s a bold film no matter how you look at it and I think one that will be hard to forget.

For those with a keen eye for artistic imagery and a patience for the arts this is a must see. The Mill and the Cross is a pleasing art history lesson.

Quiet and at a Distance

“Tragedy is a close-up, comedy a long shot.”—Buster Keaton

“Life is a tragedy when seen in a close-up, but comedy is a long shot.”—Charlie Chaplin

The great silent comedians knew it best. The quotes up top reveal much in their simplicity. Serious is personal, funny is removed. When seeing a face contorted by physical or emotional pain, we have a tendency to empathize, but when seen in full juxtaposition against a much bigger world we sometimes get the feeling our own “big” problems are quite silly. Comedy can be a grotesque distortion of the real world or it can be a subtle exaggeration or unexpected emphasis. By taking those necessary steps back and poking fun at misfortune, we get a chuckle, but we can also realize something more telling about our society or identity than we might have anticipated because we are now the omniscient observer. Film teaches us…even when we are laughing.

One of the fascinating things about film comic auteur, Jacques Tati, is that it seemed he couldn’t get his camera far enough away from the action. Each successive film he made he moves further and further back until there are no characters, only bumbling specks. There is no plot, only impersonal environment and obstacle. If you saw Sylvain Chomet’s (The Triplets of Belleville) recent masterwork, The Illusionist (2010) then you got a pretty good look at the man (the main character is modeled after Tati very closely and it was based on a script he had written before he died) and you got a sense of his tacit comic style, but to view the actual gentleman’s work is something a bit different.

Like Chaplin’s Tramp, Keaton’s stone-faced stuntman, and Lloyd’s bespectacled everyman, Tati too had a consistent onscreen persona in the form the bungling Monsieur Hulot. Instantly recognizable by his raincoat, hat, umbrella, pipe, and avian stiff-legged gait, Mr. Hulot is a fine comic character that has made his way into cinematic memory. Mr. Hulot found his debut in Mr. Hulot’s Holiday (1953). The film is light and affable and full of many memorably creative sight gags. Essentially plotless, the movie follows the quiet misadventures of Mr. Hulot at the beach and all of the other peaceful—and far less clumsy—French folks on their seaside vacation. In Hulot’s first outing, we see Tati really toying with film itself to tell the jokes. Tati has been lauded for his impeccable mise-en-scène and we see a budding genius here in Mr. Hulot’s Holiday. It’s not what can be seen in each frame, but also what information can be strategically hidden or subliminally inferred.

What Tati does with pictures reminds me of what comedian Bob Newhart did with words. Newhart had several stand-up bits where he would talk on the phone or to an invisible person whose presence was assumed. We never see or hear the other person, but we know exactly what they are doing and saying and thinking based solely on Newhart’s subtle pauses, inflections, and word choices in response. Tati will either tell the audience or a few characters about a bit of information, such as the surprising presence of a horse for example, and then alternate back and forth between who is privy to said information; the audience or the characters. It was all a clever grown-up game of hide-and-seek. Tati liked to create beautifully set up spaces riddled with obstacles the characters would have to maneuver around. Scenes in Mon Oncle (1958) where we see Mr. Hulot navigating his way up or down from his rustic, old apartment dwelling are strangely, quietly amusing. The camera is always parked directly across the street as if the lens were from a voyeuristic Jimmy Stewart’s perspective. This distance reveals the labyrinthine absurdity and shows the audience the whole picture while Hulot himself is limited from room to room. Like watching the ending of an episode of Legends of the Hidden Temple, we in our chairs see exactly what obstacles lay in the next room before the participant. This allows for either suspense or suspended comedy.

The biggest production Tati ever did came in the form of Playtime (1967) and it had several layers to it. Mr. Hulot’s Holiday was an exercise in taking away the relaxation of a trip to the beach from would-be relaxers. Mon Oncle started to have more noticeable elements of satire. Mr. Hulot lives in a dilapidated, yet character-full, old apartment while his sister is obsessed with ever-backfiring modernity. Things are all about keeping up appearances for important guests with inefficient technologies and frivolities that “make our lives easier.” Tati satirizes this with his poetic Hulot character as the simple man who is poor in possessions, but rich in honesty and personality. Playtime takes this concept a step further. In Mon Oncle, modern architecture was merely imposing on old France. In Playtime, modern architecture has entirely engulfed old France. It is one of the grayest, most sterile, and concrete looking films you will probably ever see. The whole spectacle feels far away, hollow, and empty…and it is exactly what Tati was trying to do.

Jacques Tati returns as Mr. Hulot, a wandering old soul trying to find his way in this faceless new world. All of Tati’s/Hulot’s beloved old France has been relegated to a single street corner (in the form of an anachronistic-looking woman selling flowers under a tarpaulin). The real France is only ever hinted at in reflections or off in the distance behind “more important modern things.” Tati’s trademark plotlessness afforded him great opportunities to make very high-concept films about ideas and abstractions like modern city living in Playtime. One of my personal favorite sequences comes toward the beginning where Mr. Hulot is trying meet with someone and waits and waits and then, fed up with waiting, embarks on his own through a very homogeneous edifice interior full of identical hallways, rooms, cubicles, elevators, and people. Tati also plays with reflections and glass barriers to wonderfully inventive comic effect throughout Playtime.

The running gag throughout Playtime is that modern (and many times American) culture has eaten the old world, yet several of the characters are American tourists. They get off the plane and wander through an immensely sterile and impersonal airport, board a modern looking bus, get stuck in a traffic orgy of nearly indistinguishable cars, and wander the cold concrete corridors of all that is left of Paris. One marvelous moment comes when a tourist is about to enter another very modern building and catches a fleeting glimpse of the Eiffel Tower in the reflection of the glass door as she opens it. For a brief moment the tourist is struck by the magic and then continues on her way to shopping and sales. Tati’s biases are clear and obvious, but his clever delivery of all these statements is masterful. Hulot visits friends in their big-windowed apartment (nothing like his place from Mon Oncle) and the camera stays outside watching the silent, ironic, and humorous events transpire from across the street. The scene is about ten minutes long and all we see for this ten minutes is a grid of square windows with people watching televisions inside (the juxtaposition ventures to ask, “who’s really on display here?”) and all we hear is the passing cars outside. Everything is conjured to be as unnatural as possible. Another classic gag comes when an apartment denizen leaves to walk his dog and as soon as he steps outside the little dog hops up off the concrete and onto the only green in the film: a pitiful strip of astro-turf lining the building.

It’s more than a re-imagining of Chaplin’s Modern Times (1936). The humor is soft and subtle and easy to miss if you’re not paying close attention to what Tati is doing. One joke I missed the first time I saw this was a gag involving a heated argument and then the “slamming” of a new and improved silent door. (The joke is that it doesn’t make any noise so the angry door-slamming loses its effect). Those people expecting to find Mr. Hulot as a central figure in this huge film will be disappointed. Mr. Hulot has become not only distant from the camera, but distant from most of the action. Hulot has become just another character in a sea of faces, but his is still the most familiar and I’d say the most amusing. In parodying city life and the heart-breaking trend of embracing all that is sleek, streamlined, and new while bulldozing the artful past, Tati creates a film unlike any other. Cold buildings tower over gaudily dressed cartoon characters of the human race and kowtow to all things modern. The tragedy is, just like in Brazil, the modern stuff doesn’t always work and Tati would argue is far less pretty.

Playtime meanders about and then finally culminates in a swanky restaurant’s ill-fated opening night before sending all the tourists on their carnival ride through Paris traffic back to the airport. Fitting this film should end with traffic as Tati’s next film and final outing as Mr. Hulot would be Traffic (1971). Traffic gets crapped on as being lesser Tati, but it is still great and very clever, but Playtime is a tough act to follow.In viewing Tati’s canon one gets the feeling he was feeling more and more archaic and out of place in a world that was constantly changing. He was a dinosaur, a silent comedian trapped in a land of sound, a wandering poet drowning in a sea of science. Mr. Hulot is really a tragic figure and many of the ideas in Tati’s films are rather sad and unfortunate when you think about how true so many of them are or have become…but then, he set the camera far enough back. From this safe distance we could clearly see the anarchy and lunacy of our society and appreciate the grim comedy of it all. Up close, many of the most important comedies would be far more serious affairs.

Many an homage has been made to the great Tati’s contributions to film and comedy, from Rowan Atkinson (Mr. Bean) to Elia Suleiman (Divine Intervention), but there aren’t many comedy directors today that are as bold and articulate as Jacques Tati was at the height of his powers. When comedy is at its best it is as intellectually effectual and perceptive as drama, but it has the added bonus of being clever and letting us laugh at ourselves too.

Top 10 Reasons to See the Films of Jacques Tati:

1. He was one of the last great silent comedians, keeping it alive and respectable well into the 1970s.

2. You think comedies don’t have as much artistic merit or visual brilliance as other genres? Correct your misconception.

3. He is regarded as one of the greatest filmmakers of all time…and he only made six features.

4. Playtime was the most expensive French film ever made up until that time so make his investment worth it.

5. You liked The Illusionist? Good. Now you can make it even more funny and important.

6. Impress your friends with knowledge of famous French filmmakers that aren’t Francois Truffaut or Jean-Luc Godard.

7. Maybe I’m just old-fashioned, but I genuinely find him funny.

8. I can think of three truly memorable comic walks: Charlie Chaplin, Groucho Marx, and Jacques Tati…then there’s the whole Monty Python’s Flying Circus “Ministry of Silly Walks” but that’s another story.

9. If you saw Elia Suleiman’s Palestinian film Divine Intervention (2002) and were lost or didn’t get it, acquainting yourself with Tati will really explain a lot of the mechanics of this film and, I think, make it funnier and more rewarding.

10. If you like your comedy to be significant or have a subtle, jabbing commentary to it, check out Mon Oncle, Playtime, or Traffic. Or if you’d rather comedy just be amusing without heavy societal messages watch Mr. Hulot’s Holdiay.

http://thenakedapegetsdressed.blogspot.com/2011_01_01_archive.html

http://www.cinemaisdope.com/category/people-jacques-tati/

http://www.toutlecine.com/images/film/0011/00117933-play-time.html

http://crazymonk.org/topics/jacquestati

Originally published for “The Alternative Chronicle” March 28, 2011.

Rock, Paper Moon, Scissors

A jaunty jalopy ride down a dusty Kansas road to a former lover’s funeral was all it took to rope conman, Moses Pray (Ryan O’Neal), into meeting one of the most special ladies his puny life might ever know. Shot in glorious black and white and boasting a sharp wit set rakishly against bleak Depression-era Midwestern textures and scenery, director Peter Bogdanovich (The Last Picture Show, What’s Up, Doc?) weaves up a homespun adventure with Paper Moon (1973). Paper Moon is a very welcome departure off the beaten path…and onto an even more beaten path with two guides that scarcely know where they’re headed in life let alone on the road.

Moses Pray travels the American Midwest and cons recent widows into believing that their dearly departed husbands have purchased Bibles for them. Genuinely touched that their loved ones would have been so piously generous in their final days, they gladly pay the difference (minus the original fictitious down-payment Pray alleges their husbands have already spent). It’s an easy gig with easy money, made easier by Pray’s seeming lack of a conscience, but it gets a lot more complicated after a visit to the funeral of a woman he once loved (she was what some might call a woman of ill repute). Orphaned Addie Loggins (played by 8-year-old Tatum O’Neal) is the spittin’ image of ol’ Moses (no coincidence, they were father and daughter in real life) and the old biddies at the funeral shame the con-artist into taking little Addie with him to her aunt’s house. Reluctantly he obliges.

Moses feverishly denies the most probable possibility that he is the girl’s father, but the stone-faced, quick-witted tomboy, Addie, soon finds her way into the conman’s life (he earns money from Addie’s misfortune and she knows it and she demands he pay her back in full). The two form an uneasy alliance and turn out to make a pretty good con team. Addie’s added innocence to Moses’ scam pays off well for the shifty duo (despite Addie’s stubborn moral compass that she employs on certain occasions) and they set their sights higher and con their way across the state. In the eyes of the viewer, these two unlikely and extremely stubborn characters were made for each other.

And can I just say how good this film looks. It is beautiful. And although they are not exactly comparable, some similarities definitely exist and I say I love this movie a lot more than Bonnie and Clyde (1967).

The movie follows Moses and Addie through squabbles and squalls—as when buxom stripper, Miss Trixie Delight (played by the always enjoyable Madeline Kahn) makes her move to use and abuse an all-too willing Moses and it’s up to Addie to break it up. Between Moses’ fast-talking and trouble-making, it’s all little Addie can do to keep the plan going and still have time for a smoke. Even if Moses may never admit he is her father, they become a very formidable family unit. At the end of the day they have nowhere else to turn but to each other.

I applaud any movie that makes us fall in love with lowly shysters and Paper Moon is no exception. Moses Pray is plain diabolical (if a bit slipshod), and Addie Loggins proves her precocious mettle against many an odd. Tatum O’Neal is the real star of this picture and her deadpan performance as Addie notably garnered her the Academy Award for best supporting actor (against co-star Kahn and other child actor, Linda Blair for The Exorcist). This film may be accused of wearing its heart on its sleeves, but Bogdanovich makes it really work. This film earns its sweetness. And it’s got sass too. Paper Moon is fun and sweet and humorous and insanely likable. The script, performances, and the sumptuous cinematography all combine wonderfully well to transport us back to the Dust Bowl era in Middle America, when religion was in and wallets wore thin. I encourage you to seek out this smarmy but sweet little treasure. Paper Moon is a charmer that can warm the most cynical of hearts…because that’s what it does to the cynical characters that inhabit the film. It’s an immensely pleasing and satisfying film that will paint a smile across your face that tickles each ear.

Originally published for “The Alternative Chronicle” Nov. 20, 2009

Koo!

So what do you think of when I say Soviet sci-fi? Yakov Protazanov’s Aelita: Queen of Mars (1924)? Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris (1972)? How about Georgi Daneliya’s Kin-dza-dza! (1986)? Aelita is a creaky cult silent space adventure where Russian space travelers introduce oppressed Martians to the freedoms of communism and Solaris ties cosmonaut isolation together with repressed memories and LOVE-GHOST SPACE-MANIFESTATIONS and is a pretty well-known film from a legendary director, but Kin-dza-dza! remains fairly obscure in the west…and this bothers me. Like so many weird and wonderful foreign films, it is currently unavailable on home video. This just won’t do.

Today I would like us all to take a quiet moment and consider this immortal cult science-fiction comedy known as Kin-dza-dza!

Here’s the setup for this oh-so-sweet movie. A humorless construction foreman (known only as Uncle Vova)—on his way to the supermarket for his wife—is accosted by a younger comrade (known only as The Fiddler). The Fiddler tells the stranger that a shoeless man, presumably drunk and insane, is lost. They offer to call a policeman for him, but the shoeless man insists he is from another planet and continues to fiddle with his space gadget. Incredulous, the two strangers reach for the device and are suddenly transported from downtown Moscow to a barren desert wasteland. It is the planet of Pluke in the Kin-dza-dza galaxy. And so our tale begins.

At first Uncle Vova (Stanislav Lyubshin) remains staunchly skeptical that they are indeed on another planet (this denial clearly for his own sanity). The Fiddler (Levan Gabriadze) suggests interplanetary possibilities, but Vova dismisses them all in favor of some earth desert estimations. They wander about in the parched abyss, when suddenly, out of nowhere, a large, rusty, rickety flying metal bucket (riddled with dings and dents) hovers right up to them and makes a sloppy landing in front of the earthlings. Before reason and understanding can be found, the hatch opens and a short, stocky gentleman in simple, uncouth togs (Wef, played by Evgeni Leonov) steps out, accompanied by a similarly dressed taller gentleman in a man-sized canary cage (Bee, played by Yuriy Yakovlev), and together they engage in synchronized squatting whilst reciting the fictitious word “koo” in unison over and over (in essence they perform an impromptu Plukanian variety show). Utterly bewildered, yet unyieldingly accepting of this peculiar performance, Vova and the Fiddler attempt communication. They attempt Russian, Georgian, English, and French and all they ever hear back from the two unkempt aeronauts are the unmistakable words, “koo” and “kyoo.” This comprises the bulk of the Plukanian language. Eventually the stranded Soviets figure out that they can bribe their new friends to take them in their craft in exchange for matches.

After many minutes with the human-like “aliens” everybody starts to speak Russian. Apparently the Plukanians are telepathic and it took them some time to learn the thoughts and subsequent language of the earthlings. Once the language barrier is removed we get a lesson in interplanetary culture…also Uncle Vova and the Fiddler must wear tiny bells on their noses out of respect. The desert planet of Pluke is a real tough place. Everyone (like eight people) is mean and only thinks of themselves. Their resources are all but wiped out and the land is sparsely populated (like eight people) and is drying up. Promises are worth little or nothing as you will more likely be swindled and cheated than helped. There are two types of people on the planet: the Chatlanians and the Patsaks, the latter of which (although indistinguishable from the former) is considered to be of a lower caste and must perform degrading rituals (such as being in a man-sized canary cage while in the presence of Chatlanians) to avoid punishment for impudence. The class differentiation seems almost entirely arbitrary. The higher class Chatlanians get to sleep on beds without nails and they cannot be beaten in the middle of the night. The lower class Patsaks are not so lucky. Matches are apparently very valuable. Water is rare. Police are corrupt. There are about thirteen words in the Plukanian language that can be translated. All other words are “koo.” A popular expletive is “kyoo.”

A particularly humorous bit comes at about the halfway mark where a title screen comes up and summarizes all of the words on Pluke we have learned so far. It doesn’t take long.

I won’t go into all the elements of the plot. Kin-dza-dza! is essentially a space travel comedy (reminiscent of Douglas Adams’ work in the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy series) about two dudes trying to get back to Moscow and learning about human nature and friendship. That’s really all you need to know. The rest is just a string of absurdity, oddity, and japery. Be it the fear of being turned into a cactus by a higher being, or singing earth songs for money, or the ludicrousness of the many bizarre rituals lower castes must perform, or the way in which the earthlings are deceived and must use their heads to get wise and make it on Pluke, it’s all for a laugh. And it’s a good laugh too. Amidst the budding friendships and backstabbing there is always room for bizarre absurdist humor.

One thing that is particularly striking about the film are the jabs at capitalism and some of its pro-communist themes. (*quick scan to see if Joseph McCarthy has been resurrected from the grave…ok, good. Wikipedia doesn’t mention anything.) One of the reasons why Pluke is so backwards and dehydrated is because of class struggles and wanton spending and exhaustion of natural resources. It is a dog eat dog world and nobody trusts each other and many have been reduced to begging. Only when the stiff Uncle Vova can accept his traveling companion, the Fiddler, and the Plukanians as his comrades can they return to earth. We even learn Uncle Vova and the Fiddler’s real names: Vladimir and Gedevan. There must be social equality and mutual understanding in order for progress to take shape. Although Wef and Bee may never fully understand self-sacrifice or friendship and may never fully trust the earthlings they wind up helping them get back to earth anyway.

It’s a kooky movie all around. Kin-dza-dza! is a consistently odd and humorous space saga with interesting characters and a truly absurd sense of humor. It is an amusing journey with philosophical and social undertones which as of yet remains unavailable in the United States. *COUGH* WHICH AS OF YET REMAINS UNAVAILABLE IN THE UNITED STATES. Seriously. Someone needs to release this on DVD. It’s got it all: spaceships, singing, funny hats, you got it. It’s great.

Top 10 Reasons to See Kin-dza-dza!

1. It’s funny!

2. The spaceships, although clunky, are just as awesome as anything in Star Wars.

3. It’s interesting to see a film from such a pro-communist perspective…the opposite of say, Krzysztof Kieślowski or Zbyněk Brynych which represent a more markedly anti-communist sentiment.

4. Did I not already mention the humorousness of the headgear (aka funny hats).

5. Grown men wear bells on their noses.

6. It’s one of the more original outer-space movies you’re likely to find.

7. It’s obscure and kitschy and therefore tickles your “anti-mainstream hipster” sensibilities.

8. Although visually sparse and minimalistic at times, the juxtapositions and mise-en-scène are wonderfully surreal (at times it feels to be a cross between Jodorowsky’s El Topo and Monty Python).

9. If you enjoyed reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy then you will definitely like this movie.

10. Koo!

Bonus Reason:

11. Kyoo!

picture references:

ninakinert.blogspot.com

jesselawrence.com

oeff.jp

avaxhome.ws

levmishkin.wordpress.com

Originally published for “The Alternative Chronicle” Dec. 8, 2010

Me, Myself, and CGI

Special effects have been a part of film since the very beginning. The very idea of organizing a series of slightly different images and playing them in quick succession to establish the illusion of movement in the eye of the viewer is in itself something of a special effect. Eadweard Muybridge, you sly dog, you. Film is merely still pictures dancing through time and it still fools us. French magician and film pioneer, Georges Melies, took the medium a step further. Let’s play further tricks on the audience’s mind, he thought. His early films featured expanding body parts, human disintegration, dancing specters, explosions, and much imagination. Melies’ most famous work, A Trip to the Moon (1902), inspired by the writings of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, features one of the most iconic screen images: that of a rocketship wedged in the eye of the man in the moon. This image, although considered crude to some by today’s standards, is still a magical special effect and gets the fantastical point across loud and clear.

J. Stuart Blackton is credited as being one of the first people to use stop-motion animation special effects, using the technique as early as 1898. To conjure the extinct relics of eons past, stop-motion pioneer Willis O’Brien used tiny figures to create the gargantuan prehistoric terrors of The Lost World (1925) and the infamous beasts and creatures from King Kong (1933) and Mighty Joe Young (1949).  Ray Harryhausen would become one of the most famous and prolific of all stop-motion effects maestros of the 20th century, with credits including 20 Million Miles to Earth (1957), Mysterious Island (1961),  Jason and the Argonauts (1963), The First Men in the Moon (1964), One Million Years B.C. (1966), and the Sinbad adventure movies. Other effects teams would use puppets, or men in suits, or (the oddest of all) real lizards with bonnets and spikes glued to their bodies to create dinosaurs and monsters from other worlds. Irwin Allen must have been on something.

Before the advent of computerized special effects technology, earth was invaded by flying saucers; Godzilla stomped Tokyo; the thief of Bagdad rode a flying carpet, was aided by a monstrous djini, and fought a giant spider; Darth Vader dominated the galaxy only to be defeated by Luke Skywalker and the rebel alliance; blade runners pursued replicants; archaeologist Indiana Jones battled Nazis and supernatural relics; Robbie the Robot made beer; Kubrick showed us the year 2001; Moses parted the Red Sea (twice!); E.T. got stranded on earth; Marty McFly went back to the future; Linda Blair did neck twists; Ben-Hur entered a magnificent chariot race (also twice!); the Ghostbusters got steady slime sleuthing work; Frankenstein’s monster was brought to life; Fritz Lang built a Metropolis; Roger Rabbit shook Eddie Valiant’s hand; we journeyed 20,000 leagues under the sea (at least twice); the Blues Brothers crashed hundreds of cop cars; and Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan did their own stunts. Everything had to be carefully thought out and done and you knew a lot of thought went into it. There was no magic bullet to answer all the problems of how to achieve the impossible on screen. Before CGI if you saw it on screen you knew it was real somewhere. Perhaps smaller, perhaps less shiny in real life, but something occupied real space.

One of my grievances with the overuse of computer generated special effects is just that: overuse.  It seems to create this shortcut to the magic and for me the magic has rarely been more convincing this new way. Shortcuts are not in themselves bad, but they can be used too much. So many films to come out in the past decade and a half or so seem to be leaning a little too much on this readily available tool. Stephen Sommers’ movies like The Mummy Returns (2001) and Van Helsing (2004) and Michael Bay’s Transformers movies (2007, 2009, 2011) are exhausting to watch. Too much wispy, plastic, pristine CGI crammed into the seams. Maybe Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy (2001, 2002, 2003) worked better because we weren’t always focused on them and there were enough scale models and interesting characters to pull us in. In addition to just being poorly written, acted, directed, etc. the Star Wars prequels (1999, 2002, 2005) are overloaded with CGI special effects. My brain can’t take it all at once. I remember watching Episode I in the theaters and just being baffled at why Lucas didn’t just make a cartoon. It seems there’s just less imagination when all of the questions can be answered by computers. It’s convenient one-stop shopping and that means any bozo can get at the goodies.

Perhaps my biggest grievance from the latest special effects trend is that CGI has eclipsed so many other means to create the illusions I love. I miss matte paintings, backlighting, stop-motion, and puppets. I’m not a huge fan of Joe Dante’s Gremlins (1984), but imagine if all the creatures were CG. I couldn’t imagine it being nearly as creepy or gritty. Imagine Jim Henson’s Labyrinth (1986) the same way. If Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (1985) were made today you can bet they wouldn’t build a real boat and drag over a mountain (probably less people would have died too). And you can forget Akira Kurosawa’s torching of an entire castle set for Ran (1985) or Andrei Tarkovsky burning down a house twice for The Sacrifice (1986).

Why did Lucas feel the need to make a Star Wars: Special Edition (which, you may notice, highlights some extremely poorly aged CGI special effects juxtaposed with the old puppets and prosthetics that still look great today) and why did Spielberg screw around with E.T. by injecting the already wonderfully expressive face with cartoonish CG “enhancements?” I’m with Quentin Tarantino on this one: CGI car crashes are terribly boring and ugly. Where’s the grit? I like grit in my movies. I love the asymmetry and dirt and dimension. Jan Svankmajer’s Alice (1988) blows Time Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) out of the water (though that probably wasn’t too hard). CGI may be cheaper and easier, but it’s less fun to look at (for me anyway). Maybe it is simply a love affair for glorious expensive excess on my part, but if it is excess they wish to throw at me I’d like it to at least be real and have true substance. That’s what I’m paying for.

Maybe it’s me but I just could not find the appeal of Avatar (2009).

It all really boils down to personal preference, I guess. CGI almost always looks cartoony to me. I feel more detached by the illusion because I just know that deep down nothing happened. When a digital spaceship blows up there’s nothing for me to cling to. When a three-dimensional model of a spaceship blows up it’s thrilling to me because something that had actual matter has been destroyed (and my brain knows the difference). I like the character and texture of the older special effects. It’s purely an aesthetic choice, but film is about aesthetics.

In the end all special effects do the same thing. They try to fool us into believing the impossible but today’s cynical audience isn’t fooled by any process. We will always know when it’s fake. A CGI Godzilla or King Kong doesn’t fool me more than a rubber suit or stop-motion miniature…yet I admire the pioneering craft more the old-fashioned way. Some have told me that “old” special effects are dated and cheesy, but we know that the dinosaurs and the monsters aren’t real regardless of how they are conjured. Forgive me, but CGI can look just as cheesy and fake. (And the explosions and car wrecks could still be real.) The creatures manufactured through special effects are never going to trick us into believing they’re real off the screen. But something from the Jim Henson’s workshop has a rather unique mystique in that it might still be around but dormant in some old warehouse and the creatures from The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (2005) are simply confined to some digital space on several computers. Return of the Jedi’s (1983) Rancor and the giant scorpion from Honey, I Shrunk the Kids (1989) seem more real and interesting to me than most of the digital monsters thrown at audiences today.

It’s not that I’m against technological progress (entirely), but I do think it might be appropriate to question it and reminisce on the magical times shared between traditional effects. When Barry Levinson’s Young Sherlock Holmes (1985) came out people were dazzled by the stained-glass window knight that sprung to life because of CGI. Jurassic Park (1993) works splendidly as it is, combining digital effects with life-size animatronics, but that was back when CGI was new and exciting and used sparingly to fill in the gaps that would be too difficult to produce another way. James Cameron’s Terminator 2 (1991) and Chuck Russell’s The Mask (1994) work great too but now CGI can come off as a bit of a cheap crutch and its novelty is gone. . . for me at least. Imagine if Burton’s Wonderland was made with every digital character done via stop-motion (this was what a lot of us thought it was going to be a few years back). It’s a personal preference, but the aesthetic of CGI is just so flat and boring to me. I don’t like my movies to look like video games. I like it more real and present. Remember, for every filmmaker who utilizes the latest technologies afforded to him with cunning and craft there are countless hacks who butcher the blessings and produce lackluster products with meaningless, artless piffle.

Consider this: the original Clash of the Titans (1981) feels personal like classic Ray Harryhausen whereas the 2010 remake looks and feels like every recent bad overblown Hollywood special effects extravaganza.

I don’t hate CGI. I think there are plenty of times when it is effective and cool, but as it becomes cheaper and more accessible I see more and more of it and the spectacle it once was is no more. It’s ho-hum and standard now. A lot of new films have become visually boring because of their over-reliance on CGI. And special effects should never be boring.

We will never have the time back when movie magic was largely a mystery. Studios used to be cagey and not like to reveal how the illusions were done. Now every movie comes with at least a few documentaries on how it was all done. Jaws (1975) may be a clunky robot shark, but we get that it’s a big, scary shark and that’s all the film needs to do. A CG shark could be more distracting (consider 1999′s Deep Blue Sea). Would Spartacus’ army be more believable as a CGI onslaught or as flesh and blood actors as they are in the 1960 film?

Is it bad to know how the trick is done? No. Not if your a magician. But the audience likes to be fooled. They like to keep guessing and looking for the seams. At least I do.

What do other people think? I’m curious. Am I just an old fashioned, out of touch guy who doesn’t get it? What movies get you? What special effects work?

The above images are from “A Trip to the Moon” (1902), “Metropolis” (1927), “War of the Worlds” (1953), “Baron Prasil” (1961), “Alien” (1979), “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” (1977), “Fitzcarraldo” (1985), “Safety Last” (1923), “The Empire Strikes Back” (1980), “Jason and the Argonauts” (1963), “Hausu” (1977), “Jurassic Park” (1993), and unfortunately Blarp from “Lost in Space” (1998).

Originally published for “The Alternative Chronicle” July 5, 2010.

A Man for All Faces

My biggest regret of tackling this article is that I have not seen more of Mr. Lon Chaney, Sr.’s (1883-1930) work. Of the handful of films I’ve seen of his, none have disappointed and all have been wonderfully twisted. Lon Chaney (father of the Wolf Man, Lon Chaney, Jr.) was one of the biggest icons of the silent era. Praised alongside silent legends such as Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., Mary Pickford, Theda Bara, and Rudolph Valentino, Chaney was every bit as talented and engaging. Chaney’s trademark, however, is what separated him from his contemporaries. They loved Chaplin for his comic humanity; Fairbanks for his swashbuckling acrobatics; Pickford for her beauty and the dramatic chances she took; Bara for her exotic, seductive persona; Valentino for his rich Mediterranean good looks; they loved Chaney for playing grotesques and psychotics. His real claim to fame was that not only did he portray gross villains and sympathetic monsters, but also he designed all of his own makeup and prosthetics to astounding effect.

Lon Chaney, Sr. made his living by playing some of the most demented characters in movie history. He was known for the incredible emotional power he could evoke beneath layers of makeup and for his facial and bodily expressiveness (both his parents were deaf-mutes, so he had to learn at a young age how to express himself without words). From mad doctors, to amputees and deformed deviants, to bent Chinese patriarchs, to tragic clowns, to insane killers and criminals, Chaney played them all. The first film of his I ever saw was the classic 1925 horror flick, The Phantom of the Opera (directed by Rupert Julian). This is easily his most famous and well-known role. Naturally he plays the diabolical and disfigured eponymous phantom. He wears a most unnerving rubber facemask with a crude veil over his mouth to hide his hideousness. The best scene of the film occurs when his lovely muse, Christine Daae (Mary Philbin), is taken to his secret lair beneath the streets of Paris and her curiosity spurs her to approach her musical master while he plays the organ and she removes his mask to reveal his true ugliness. Chaney’s reaction is one of the most memorable few seconds you are likely to see on film. This movie also boasts a colored Masque of the Red Death segment. Although the lavish film presents the Phantom as a deranged killer out for revenge, Chaney brings a darker, more tormented side to his performance. He is the character we see the rest of the film through. We recognize his sorrow and—on those wonderful occasions—cavort as he executes his judgment on the little people of the opera house. We catch ourselves sympathizing with this murderous monster and even rooting for him.

Besides the Phantom, Chaney played a very noble Quasimodo in Wallace Worsley’s  The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), again implementing his own inventive makeup effects. In 1922 he was a pretty solid Fagin in a silent version of Oliver Twist (co-starring The Kid star Jackie Coogan). He played a deranged and possessive Chinese patriarch in Mr. Wu (1927) (he actually has a double role and Anna May Wong has a small part). Chaney received much acclaim for his performance as a tough Marine Sergeant in 1926′s Tell It to the Marines. He played a brilliant scientist whose heartless betrayal at the hands of his mentor and his fiancée, drive him to become a tormented circus clown whose sole act consists of being slapped in the face in Victor Sjostrom’s bizarre tragedy He Who Gets Slapped (1924). Chaney played another conflicted, tragic circus clown in Herbert Brenon’s Laugh, Clown, Laugh (1928). He joined the circus again for Tod Browning’s (Dracula, Freaks) The Unknown, as well.

The Unknown is a particularly strange movie. Set in Spain, Chaney plays a wicked fugitive with double-thumbs, who stuffs his arms in a corset-like device so he can join the circus as Alonzo the Armless, the amazing knife-thrower (he uses his feet…or rather Chaney used the feet of real-life armless wonder, Paul Desmuke). He falls in love with a beautiful circus girl, Nanon Zanzi (Joan Crawford) and—in order to ensure that she will love him and not the circus strongman—he psychologically bewitches her into fearing human arms. Alonzo kills and creates general mayhem while he dreams of how he will make this poor girl his own…until his sidekick reminds him that if they were to marry Nanon would find out he really has arms and be repulsed. Distraught, Alonzo devises a plan. He cashes in on a favor owed him by a shady doctor and has the doctor amputate his arms. While Alonzo recovers in the hospital, the strongman gets cozy with Nanon and cures her of her fear of arms. When Alonzo meets Nanon again she is engaged to the strongman and Alonzo becomes quite mad. I will not spoil the deranged finale of The Unknown, but I urge you to watch for yourself.

Chaney worked with Tod Browning on several projects, including the most famous lost movie in film history, London After Midnight (1927). The original The Unholy Three (1925) was another great film Chaney collaborated with Browning on. He played a circus ventriloquist who turns to crime along with a dwarf (played by Freaks star, Harry Earles) and a strongman. Chaney dresses as an old granny who runs a parrot shop and the dwarf poses as a baby and together the three of them act as jewelry thieves. The film is wonderfully peculiar and a must-see. Chaney’s final film was the 1930 remake of The Unholy Three.  It was Chaney’s first and only talkie and he performed five different voices in the film. Apparently “the man of a thousand faces” (as he was so dubbed for his talent with makeup) was also ready to become “the man of a thousand voices” when he died of lung cancer in 1930 at age 47.

I think Chaney was at his best when paired with Tod Browning because Browning was about as messed up and screwy as he was. Two other Chaney-Browning films I really enjoyed were The Road to Mandalay (1926) and West of Zanzibar (1928). Both are awesome and West of Zanzibar might be among my favorite movies. Yeah. It’s that pulpy, strange and great. Imagine if he hadn’t died and Browning had cast him as Dracula instead of Bela Lugosi. I don’t know if it would have been better but our understanding of vampire motifs would be quite different today.

After making well over 150 films in his lifetime and establishing himself as a true master of his craft, Lon Chaney, Sr. stands as real treasure that film has been able to make immortal. Chaney’s films are quiet oddities, psychotic marvels, and horrific tragedies and deserve to be celebrated. His performances have been highly regarded for decades and are still just as enchanting today. If you are a movie buff and have never seen a Lon Chaney, Sr. film, I strongly recommend you remedy this, and if you’re like me and you’ve seen several of his films already then I needn’t hesitate to tell you to see more. My hat’s off to you, Mr. Chaney. Thanks for making it fun.

Originally published for “The Alternative Chronicle” Oct. 29, 2009