Skip to 19:30 if you’re lazy, although I think the entire hour long talk is completely worth the watch.
Jim Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai features Forest Whitaker in the leading role. The pudgy dude who seemed the perfect fit for Idi Amin in The Last King Of Scotland seems a whole lot more bewildering as a dude who lives by the samurai code, working for a mob boss as a hired killer. The film itself is a sorta homage to Melville’s Le Samourai but it somehow also reminded me of Leon The Professional in some ways. Of course, it’s also set to a soundtrack built by RZA. Which is kinda awesome.
It is curious. There’s a whole lotta pop culture being mentioned, from Rashomon and Hagakure to Betty Boop and Felix the Cat. Or Wind In The Willows and Frankenstein. It’s a kind of cultural kaleidescope, with a black man pretending he’s a samurai working for the Italian mafioso. The titular character Ghost Dog’s best friend is Haitian and speaks only French which he doesn’t understand. Yet they seem to communicate and emote perfectly. There’s also 2 other people in Ghost Dog’s life, Pearline, a young girl which lends the Leon aspect and Louie, the mob boss. In the former, Ghost Dog seems to envision a sort of protege. In the latter, he is respectful towards, as if he really was a samurai working for a retainer in feudal Japan. Interestingly, the mob are also made up of old Italian dudes who are characters in their own right. One dude likes to rap in the bathroom. There’s a certain cultural stereotyping but also a certain non racism inherent in the characters. Also, Nobody from another Jarmusch film, Dead Man, makes an appearance, uttering his trademark, “Stupid fucking white man!”.
A lot of the stuff that gets mentioned, various books or the cartoons mob bosses watch before they get whacked, seem to relate strongly with what’s happening in the film or has something to do with the plot or characters. In the most Leon-esque scene, albeit with no trace of Lolita elements, Ghost Dog has a conversation with Pearline about books. Each one seems to emphasize him in relation to the story at large. On the flipside are the cartoons, usually pre emptive elements that foretell the mob bosses death, even going so far that the happenings in real life are pretty much mimicking the cartoons entirely. One scene has a cartoon character firing bullets up a drainpipe to attack another character. In the real world, Ghost Dog is in the basement, working his way to a pipe attached to the bathroom upstairs. He disassembles it and manoeuvres his pistol to kill the crim who’s wondering why a red light is coming out the plughole.
It’s kinda funny in bits, especially when Ghost Dog twirls his pistols as if they were swords. Or when Ghost Dog and his Haitian friend Raymond converse, pre empting each other despite the language barrier and then following up on what the other has guessed. Like when Raymond says in French, “I guess you have to go because it’s getting dark right?” or words to that effect and Ghost Dog replies, “I got to go, it’s getting dark soon”. They don’t get it but they feel it and maybe sometimes that’s more powerful than a film with standardized plot or character development with conceivable story arcs or a linear progressive idea. Ghost Dog follows a basic script as such, which is the lead character knocking off mob bosses after him because of a botched hit that wasn’t even really botched. Yet, it doesn’t feel like it maintains that structure but that the story itself allows us to get a sense of this imaginary, culturally mashed up reality. Zen calm amidst a cultural storm.
Check this scene for a sampling, which is itself, an offplot device. The samurai-esque Ghost Dog is seen walking and in the other direction, camo fatigue clad RZA. They meet and exchange the following. RZA: “Ghost Dog, power, equality” GD: “Always see everything my brother”. Which translates to Peace if you take the take the first letters of the middle text and swap see for C.
I have this project in class which involves me and 3 other guys researching about a country and talking about it. So part of my research involved watching a film, in this case, Pedro Aldomovar’s Talk To Her or Hable con ella. Lame excuse of course but no need to bother about that. *Spoilers aplenty btw.
So I finally got down to watching it and I must say I am hella creeped out but very impressed. Typically, I’m not one for the touchy feely emotional type drama shows. Which is why I took so long to watch this much heralded film. I now know why. Again, I also only tend to like films that have a certain aesthetic beauty. This one falls into that category just fine, only that its a certain disturbing sort of beauty, where you feel that you are a sicko for appreciating almost.
The film is mainly about 2 guys, Marco and Benigno. Marco is a travel guide writer who has just gotten into a relationship with a famous female matador. Benigno works as a nurse in a hospital. They sort of meet at a sort of avant garde dance show where the former sheds a tear in one touching scene of melodrama. You keep thinking Benny (whose name translates as benign) is the gayzorz because of his effeminate speech and the fact that he was creepily mentioning Marco to Alicia, his object of affection. She also happens to be in a persistent vegetative state. So he’s apparently simple but also creepy.
The proper meeting between Benny and Marco happens in the hospital, when Lydia, the matador gets gored by a bull into a coma. Benigno advises Marco to talk to Lydia, like he does in his monologue with Alicia. At times, assuming her responses for her. The film reveals more plot points as you go along and the more you know, the more uncomfortable it gets.
It’s all really pretty, especially the scene where Alicia is on a hospital bed and the nurses dress her, easing the sheets and the gown horizontally across the screen. There was this faint hint of the creeps hiding under the serenity and calm. All the psycho stuff then comes out later, when Benigno opens up to Marco.
These two, insecure and lonely men are completely incapable of having real relationships with women. Marco was gonna get dumped the day Lydia got gored. Benny assumes the PVS chick is responding positively to his advances. They carry on, deluded that they are in love, when they only love themselves. Things get strung out till we reach this climactic point where its goes beyond just creepy and weird to downright wrong.
Amidst all this, the dance shows inside the film and the film within a film reinforce the goings on between the characters. The fragile distance between the sexes and the ambiguity of sexuality in and of itself, loneliness and selfish desire or perhaps naivete and obstinance.
There’s also this wonderful scene where Caetano Veloso provides a heartwrenching rendition of Cucurrucucu Paloma. If you ever need something to make a girl’s heart swoon, this shit has got to be it.
Talk To Her is sensual, provocative and soooo gentle yet completely perverse at the same time. A must watch.
In my quest for food related films, I stumbled upon a rather interesting magazine with covers that look pretty stunning. Gastronomica is based in Massachussetts in the US and dabbles in anything related to food, from writing to recipes to restaurants etc. It also has a good long list of films related to food. I have managed to watch a smidgen but that I managed at all was thanks to that same list.
Filed under: Art, Comedy, Culture, Film, Food, Graphics, Politics | Tags: surrealism
The DVD cover art for Luis Bunuel’s The Discreet Charm Of The Bourgeoisie has got a giant pair of lips with some feet and a big hat. Its kinda cute and says a good bit about what the film involves. Instead of a face, we get enlarged, fetishized elements of a person, presumably someone who puts on airs. A big black hat, glossy painted lips and high heeled shoes.
Its a satire in the strongest sense of the word, not just poking fun, more outright denouncing the subject matter entirely. I wouldn’t say its funny though. Its really cynical and pokerfaced. You may be puzzled by the odd sequencing and bewildered by the situations but I never had a laugh out loud moment, that’s for sure. I don’t even think I snickered.
The central element of the film is the attempts of a group of upper class donks to get together for a meal. They try their best, but a combination of unfortunate events and their animalistic impulses deny them this. Towards the end, they even sit down and get to the main course, but Bunuel denies them the finish. These dogs aren’t even allowed a simple meal.
The subversion is obvious. Its purposeful but not spiteful. These crusty, fako folks are pathetic, sad creatures. You almost feel sorry for them. They gather and shoot shit, mostly shitting on a fictitious country and the ambassador, or talking about how their poncey food is so good. They do the same thing 500 times over. It’s sad. Plus, they can’t even finish what they wanted to do. From a simple misunderstanding to the death of a restaurant manager to an army invading the room, we get a whole spread of crazy interruptions. Which saves us from the boring episodes of inane behaviour amongst the preening actors.
Every facet of the Bourgeois is given a grilling here, even the church. A Bishop with a green finger fetish joins the group, buffoon like in one interchange where he reveals the depth of his lack of knowledge. He appears at first in his robes, greeted with a kiss by a maid but returns in gardening gear and gets ushered out by the owners of a house. Yet, in Clark Kent swiftness, he rings the bell again and is greeted with apologies when he’s back in the robes. Clothes maketh the man. If he were wearing papal robes, they’d probably take him for the pope too.
Then there’s the dream sequences. The characters get into nighmarish situations, where they variously end up in jail only to be saved by a dead policeman or they end up as actors on a stage when they thought they were going for dinner, even forgetting their lines. There’s dreams within dreams and these get stitched together by the 6 main characters walking down a lonely road in a huge field with no destination in sight. Rather peasant status for some rich folk.
It’s one big slap in the face for anyone who thinks they’re anything more than the apes we really are. There are those who will feel aghast at the thought of themselves as pretentious twats. Then there are those who think it’s a massive insult. Then there may be those who might dismiss it as mere entertainment. And yet others might actually trump the film as some sort of masterpiece, like the Academy For Motion Picture Arts And Sciences handing out the Oscar Discreet Charm won for best foreign language film back in ‘73.
On the journey home, as usual, I had a torrid time. This time, I got stuck in the window seat. To my right, was the wing. To my left, 2 cows. They were enormous. I reckon it was safer for me in the window seat as my face might’ve been pummeled incessantly by arses the size of the moon every 5 minutes, given the frequency of their desire to leave the tiny space that was their pen. So I stayed in my own for 7 or 8 hours, watching videos to get by. I only suffered the odd, random elbow in the side or crumbs falling onto the floor below me. I think SIA hates me.
Anyway, one film I caught was a documentary by Louis Theroux, called Law & Disorder In Philadelphia, or Killadelphia, as one local in the show called it. Its an interesting glimpse of a city, supposedly infamous for having one of the higher violent crime rates in the US. You get to see Theroux ambling round with police protection, a bulletproof vest, a pair of acetate frames and a British accent. He goes round, interviewing police, drug addicts, street corner boys and even a supposed druglord with a gold chain with his fake naivete, hoping to disarm people with wide eyed innocence and simple questions.
It works to an extent I suppose. At least you don’t see him threatened. With the cops, he gets rather more direct and at these times, he gets completely direct and unambiguous responses. The basic gist you get from the film is this seemingly unending cycle of “thug” life. One dude had “Born” and “Thug” tattooed on his knuckles. His answer, when queried, was one of utter resignation.
In Philly, there’s only really violence in a smaller contained area. Within this area, drugs are rampant, and this is what most people consider to be the real root of the problem. Because the drugs are on the street, you get prostitution, you get violent crime, you get people all trying to feed this industry and it’s not a problem that’s separated by race either. This shit affects everyone and you get to see this in interviews with a family of a guy that just got shot on the street the day before. Or with the prostitute that earns money just to blow it all on dope. Or the only girl in the show who wants to testify against her sister’s murderer.
“Don’t Snitch” is rule #1. If you close your eyes and pretend nothing happened, it never did. I don’t know why people even bother staying there, why the violence gets so ingrained in them that they just accept it. Maybe its the music, like that Memphis Bleek track on my playlist. Its about a corner boy that gets back in the game again, after getting out of jail, saying “But I swear, we all gon be alright”. Or maybe they just don’t want the change because they see something that’s worth pursuing. I think its a combination of both, in the sense that the good people who were there all along see it as home. At the same time, they’re not used to the idea of change, where they’d have to move, plus they’re also really poor so they couldn’t even if they wanted to. Then there’s the allure of the large wads of cash rolling around on the streets and it seems so easy.
The premise of the film was enough to hook me onto wanting to watch it. Michel Gondry’s latest piece, Be Kind Rewind, has Jack Black starring as a power plant worker/conspiracy theorist who gets magnetized trying to sabotage the plant and ends up erasing all the vhs tapes at his best mate’s (Mos Def) video store. They then decide to re-film every video that people want to rent out from Ghostbusters thru to Robocop and Rush Hour.
The website alone is fantastic. I can’t understand why ratings for this film aren’t higher than they are. You have to be a prick to not like this. That or a really sad, miserable sod. And a prick. At the same time.
Check out the official trailer!
It’s got Jack Black, Mos Def and Danny Glover among others so you know its gonna be funny one way or other. I just didn’t expect it to be quite so heartfelt and engaging as it was. I suppose I shoulda known at the start, when a “documentary” introduces everything with Mos Def playing Fats Waller, the American Jazz pianist. That serves as the backdrop for a discussion about racial tension/cohesion, big business versus small business and new school hip-hop versus old school jazz. These issues are all played out in the film, with every facet there is to show, from the films they choose to re-create and the lines every character has. It’s so much more than just a simple comedy and in my opinion, manages to lay on the schmaltz without being totally contrived.
One brilliant thing about the film is that it introduces the sublime concept of Sweding, which is “re-making something from scratch using whatever you can get your hands on”. You can check out all the sweded films in BKR on the official website and believe me, they’re way better than the original versions. You can even swede your own website and submit it and put yourself on the cover of a famous film.
Which leads back to the question about whether all these shitty films that Hollywood makes are any good at all. Perhaps, small-time, independent, low budget shit is just as good. BKR is one part Gondry’s madcap art film ideas and one part using those ideas in comparison to the issues the film revolves around.
Its brilliant how he manages to capture little itty bitty essential details about say, Lord of the Rings, for instance using simple ingenuity and no budget. The sweded LOTR may be really camp and kitschy, but then again, the actual film has pretty much the same qualities. It may have a far bigger budget and infinitely more gloss but its still kinda cheesy really. Now, don’t ge me wrong, I love LOTR as much as anybody. I’m just saying that maybe, sometimes, you gotta appreciate the little things in life, like Proton Guns shooting X’mas tinsel. That’s just ducking fawesome.
I suppose another part of the beauty of sweding shit, is that you get involved, your friends get involved. You feel like you’re a part of it rather than having to pay $12.50 or whatever to see Tom Cruise shoot planes out of the sky. Also, you get the chance to rewrite stuff, like say, make Valerie Chow totally naked in her scene with Tony Leung in Chungking Express and then make a connection between that and the cult of celebrity falsehood and recent HK sex scandals. Ok fine, I pretty much just want to have some sort of excuse to star in a movie with a hot naked chick but I also want to be arty and pretentious. But mostly, its the hot naked chick thing, which makes me a lot less arty and pretentious.
If you saw the official trailer, you now have to check out the sweded version of the trailer, starring Michel Gondry himself, a masterpiece in its own right and possibly inspiration to a million sweders.
Saturday was the annual Mardi Gras in Sydney, where float after bus after van after truck after dancing contingents after Harleys and geriatrics rode/strode down Oxford Street. The above pic shows 3 scantily clad male dancers backlit by a LCD screen that had my female companion drooling. Too bad for her they’re gay.
One thing I’ve come to learn in Sydney is you don’t really need a reason to party. Thousands of natty kids went in their droves, adding to the spectacle itself and making it one big theme party replete with Pink Australian flags and a lot of shit beer.
I have to say its quite amusing watching wave after wave of gays, lesbians and transsexuals do their thing on a really long runway, pouting and blue steeling at every opportunity for hours. Backed by thumping gay house anthems, I was at once aghast and animated at the sight of fat titties jiggling around everywhere, of both the female and male variety. Much respect to all these peeps for standing up for what they believe in, regardless of if they look ridiculous in skin tight spacesuits that hug their lovehandles or not. They hammed it up every chance they got. There were grown men dressed as flowers, a Britney Spears themed group complete with papparazzi, dancing nuns & popes, gold dust flecked Balinese dancers. We also got to see the famous “dykes on bikes” as well as gay footballers dribbling. The Police, Ambulance and Fire Brigade also got in on the act as well as a few companies like Ikea and Virgin Blue with a semi adspot of sorts.
Ok, so a few “corporations” made it feel a little commercialized. Add to that the sudden springing up of hot dog (rather poignant) stands along Oxford, people selling stools and an influx of Asian tourists (like me) and it might have just felt a twinge like it was just a big show with fancy costumes. Still, the biting Australian humor that marked every placard was on show, plain for all to see. With all the frank and uninhibited Oz sensibility on display, I’m pretty sure the message got across.
All in all, a spectacle that truly showed the diversity of human life, the richness of our imagination and a great sense of fun. Definitely one for the calendar.
I might be a lil late on this one because I was in week long mastur… conversation with regards to this episode. Still, credit where its due, late or not.
Restecp to my main man Edison Chen for doing the du on Gillian Chung, Cecilia Cheung and a buncha others and henceforth providing the entire Chinese male populace on the face of earth, enough meat beat material for a generation or 3!
I specifically refer to the pictures of Cecil in a “police” uniform. Also, I would like to propose a minute’s silence to the crushed hopes of a billion teenagers that were hoping to marry one half of Twins, with particular mention of one mate of mine, whose tears are flooding Sydney as we speak.
Another mate deplores the lack of vaginal shaving amongst Asian women in general and hopes that Gillette, Schick et al, will conspire to produce a better product for the nether regions. This is one instance when environmental, forest loving wussiness should go out the door.
Also restecp to the HK entertainment scene in general, which has until now, been diminished by the tiresome hourly scandals from Hollywood. I always knew you were reserving yourself for one big blast.
And to everyone compromised, “We will always support you!”.*
*You know, in the typical post mando-pop concert, 13 year old girl chanting style with placards and pom-poms.
