Dr. No, the first in a long line (22 official films so far) of James Bond screen adaptations is sill my very favorite. I used to watch the Bond movies all the time with my dad and still fondly recall the magic of this one from the first scene of the totally cool Jamaican assassins called the Three Blind Mice to the final make out shots on the boat Bond's purposefully set adrift. It's got Sean Connery (still the best Bond), Ursula Andress as Honey Ryder emerging from the ocean like a vision (still the best Bond girl), and it's got a great underwater evil lair belonging to a villain with metal hands! Set in beautiful Jamaica, it makes for nice afternoon viewing while dreaming of warmer climates.

James Bond, who still manages to capture imaginations and inspire film adaptations was created by Ian Fleming in 1953, though the character lived on in additional novels after Fleming's death in 1964 thanks to various authors. According to Wikipedia, Bond is believed to be:

A romanticized version of Ian Fleming, himself a jet-setting womanizer. Both Fleming and Bond attended the same schools, preferred the same foods (scrambled eggs, and coffee), maintained the same habits (drinking, smoking, wearing short-sleeve shirts), shared the same notions of the perfect woman in looks and style, and had similar naval career paths (both rising to the rank of naval Commander).

Fortunately even as the franchise producers continue to turn out Bond movies, no one seems interested (yet) in remaking the old films, so Dr. No should remain in its Technicolor, womanizing glory for awhile. It's available on Blu Ray, which is really making Jim and I consider buying a player as they are rapidly going down in price.

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Posted on February 23, 2009

While Frank Capra might be best remembered for the feel good?holiday classic It's a Wonderful Life, I myself prefer the early screwball comedy It Happened One Night, a popular film that swept the Oscars but almost didn't happen. The production suffered a myriad of casting mishaps (Myrna Loy, Bette Davis, Carole Lombard, and Robert Montgomery all couldn't do the film, for various reasons), in fact both the porcelain Claudette Colbert and the rugged Clark Gable originally refused to star because they didn't like the script.

I can see why they might have been hesitant. It's a pretty straightforward plot that lacks the intricacies of a comedy like The Golddiggers of 1933 or The Women, but it's full of charm, in part due to the chemistry between the two leads. There's also a guy named called Shapely (which, coincidentally, is how he likes his women) who spouts all the film's best lines, lines like this: “When a cold mama gets hot, boy she sizzles – woo wee!”

Colbert plays the kind of rich brat who'd rather starve than eat raw vegetables trying to clandestinely travel from Miami to New York (by bus) to defy her father and marry an aviator he detests named King. Gable is an out of work, drunken journalist (he's also an expert at hitch hiking, dunking donuts, and giving piggy backs) who spots a headline grabbing story in the girl's journey and agrees to help her out on the condition that he gets an exclusive.

Colbert looks amazing in her few costume changes, both draped in an over-sized trench and elegant in a liquid white wedding gown with a flowered neckline and a long veil that looks great trailing behind her. Gable also caused some sartorial stir, according to a Hollywood anecdote, when he undressed for bed and was not wearing an undershirt — legend has it that undershirt sales plummeted by 75%.

Made over seventy years ago, there are bound to be some dated aspects. For example, her Colbert's father decides Gable is an okay guy and an ideal husband for his daughter after the suitor exclaims that she should be socked once a day, whether she deserves it of not. In another bit of arcane excitement, you'll learn what a aero-gyro is (SPOILER ALERT – it's got the body of an old plane and the propeller of a helicopter).

Still, just because it's of its time, that does not mean it needs to be remade; though I can easily imagine some moronic producer thinking this would be the perfect vehicle for true life rich girl Paris Hilton. And while that may seem like a pretty remote possibility, did you know that they're remaking Bonnie and Clyde with Hilary Duff right? Guess how Faye Dunaway feels about it?

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Posted on February 9, 2009

Seijun Suzuki made over forty films in ten years; all cheapie B movies for the Nikkatsu Company, but he didn't let the low-brow circumstances cramp his visionary style and during his tenure he created Tokyo Drifter, a colorful, trippy yakuza action film. To be honest, there's not much to it as far as plot and script, it's convoluted in too many ways to count — characters show up without introductions and there are even two characters with the same name (our hero, Tetsu, and Viper Tetsu, who's out to kill Tetsu).

Even once the plot becomes clear, it hardly matters. The film would have been forgotten in no time if it weren't for its eye popping visuals. The story, though, just so you know, concerns the aforementioned Tetsu and his father figure boss trying to go straight after a life of major crime. Unfortunately a rival gang lead by perpetually sun-glassed Otsuka is inexplicably hell bent on dragging them out of retirement by obtaining the deed to their building through a duplicitous cash payment to their lender. Otsuka's gang is headquartered in a club called (wait for it)… Manhole Music Tea Room (amazing!) where the back office includes a conveniently located trap pitfall and kooky kids go wild on the dance floor.

Each scene is incredibly unforgettable, like a woman in tweed dying in front of stylized red light, a burning black car with fins, an injured hit man walking through the snow in a pale blue suit… Not to mention an epic fist fighting brawl in an old West themed saloon with more “thwak” sounds than an entire episode of the Batman TV show, and then there's the final shoot out in an all white abstract set that includes a piano used as a weapon.

This over-the-top dedication to style eventually got Suzuki black-listed from the movie industry. The Nikkatsu Company wanted him to play it straight but instead they got increasingly more outlandish and far out stuff. Just goes to show that 'the Man' has been afraid of 'The New' since forever, even in the seemingly innovative atmosphere of mid-60s Japan.

There's tons of good fashion to be seen including great bulky herringbone and slick, confidently non-black suits for men, and wild updos, great necklines, and a perfect floral and plaid combo that I've become obsessed with but is only on screen for a few seconds. The music is also fantastic. I loved the theme song, which is fortunate for me because it's repeated throughout many, many times in renditions vocal, instrumental, cabaret, and whistled.

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Posted on January 26, 2009

Sometimes a hard-to-find movie attains a frenzied cult status but ultimately disappoints once you finally track it down and watch it. Trouble Every Day has almost the opposite problem, despite absolutely glowing reviews like this one by Walter Chaw, “Mesmeric and entrancing, intuitive and impossibly intimate, the picture is alive with craft, intelligence, and the absolute courage of its macabre vision. Trouble Every Day is among the finest films of the year, but handle it with care” this dark and bloody vampire tale doesn't seem to be on everyone's lips.

But that's something I expect will change as more and more people happen across reviews and articles – maybe one day it will even be released here on DVD. And it will surely, as word of mouth builds, claim a rightful and honored place in vampire, horror, and strange cinema thanks to its masterful and artful blend of dread punctuated by extreme violence.

In some ways, it's really just a typical vampire story: a man of science travels to a foreign country to find his former colleague and stop him from unleashing the monster they created years before, but it's told in a very irregular fashion – at least for a horror movie. In fact, it's much more in step with contemporary French art house cinema. The film is nearly silent with little or no dialogue and sparse music, and for the first forty minutes or so you're left to decipher what's happening through the beautifully framed actions of the characters alone.

The result is a brooding mystery where each scene escalates the dread and prompts questions like: Who are these hot teenagers hell-bent on breaking into a lone woman's apartment? What are these scientific experiments that were so suddenly abandoned? And why can't Vincent Gallo stop masturbating?

It's a technique that may tax less patient viewers desiring the gore they imagine might come from the trailer instead of moody shots of a scarf fluttering over Parisian rooftops. But more patient viewers need not worry, you'll get blood and lots of it courtesy of the enigmatic and beautiful Beatrice Dalle. Never again will you imagine vampiric bloodletting as a clean, sanitary act, but one of total chaos. The film takes on vampirism as a medical condition, a horrible disease and, as a vampire, her plight is both frightening and sad; in one of her only lines in the film she tells her caretaker/lover that she is ready to die.

Dalle is by far the greatest embodiment of a vampire ever put on screen. She is irresistible, unleashed, uncontrollable, and truly not human. She's a siren of death that makes Hollywood's cloak clad, widow's peaked Dracula look like a joke. Her portrayal of a real-life monster is pure genius and I only wish the film had focused on her just a little more.

Gallo's off kilter performance is right on target as a frotteurist but hard to buy as a research chemist. Still, even for someone who finds him silly (like me), he doesn't ruin it all – even when he and his wife first punctuate the film's prolonged silence with dialogue that sounds like it was over-dubbed by shy children.

There's a pervasive sexuality throughout which, as any symbolist will tell you, is something a good vampire movie ought to have: nearly every scene includes kissing, touching, extreme close ups of skin, masturbating, small French breasts, panty removal and more masturbation, and it's all set to a great soundtrack by Tindersticks (not Frank Zappa).

You may not yet have heard of Trouble Every Day, but if you're a fan of shocking and arty horror cinema, I'll leave it to you to spread the word. You can find the DVD at my favorite place for rare and hard-to-find movies, J4Hi.

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Posted on January 12, 2009

The infamous Giallo, Death Laid an Egg, begins with total abstract disorientation: quick cuts, John Cage-y music and images of developing chicken embryos are followed by an arty murder. I'm pretty sure that the filmmakers put the murder up front to conceal the truth: that this movie is mostly (I swear) about the business of poultry farming and it takes almost an hour before you even get some awkward groping – and it's even longer before any more blood is spilled on lingerie. There's nearly an hour of confusing scenes and conversations about chicken farming equipment, insomnia, party planning, more chicken farming, and experiments in chicken farming (there's a laboratory that factors into the “plot” later) before the traditional Giallo components come into play.

The gorgeous Gina Lollobrigida is Anna, the owner of a chicken farm that she runs with much pride and joy (at one point she giggles through a friendly family photo shoot while holding up dead and mangled chickens) with her husband Marco (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant), who is having an affair with their assistant, the blonde and spacey Gabrielle (played by Ewa Aulin of Candy), who so pretty that her stumbling through abrupt non sequiturs like, “Hmm… I would like some delicious ice cream” is totally adorable.

Does it already seem like I'm describing a dream rather than a real film? If so, then I'm at least conveying some of the strangeness of this movie –?but just let me tell you about “the Association”. It's mentioned early in the film with some urgency, so it makes sense for one to expect some sort of Mafia type organization – but one would be wrong. It is, of course, The Poultry Association and their office houses a huge egg sculpture as well as a bunch of men running around as if they were on Wall Street shouting, “I'm buying! I'm buying! I'm buying everything!!!”

But despite the man on the phone's enthusiasm, the Association is facing big problems, for one (as the head of the Association declares in front of a huge painting of a rooster), “No one knows about poultry!” Just ignore the absurdity of that statement and sit back as the plot leads Marco into an uneasy working relationship with a young advertising hotshot named Mondaini (played by abstract painter and father of Leelee, Jean Sobieski) with whom he must work with on a PR campaign designed to alert the public to the fact that chickens and their eggs are available for purchase and consumption.

Fortunately, Mondaini has a new idea for some posters that “will take them by surprise,” which, quite frankly, took me by surprise too; this scene is so outrageous that we were barely able to breathe as tears of laughter streamed down our cheeks. I'll try to explain: Mondaini's ad campaign features “chickens as an integral part of society,” as a doctor, an engineer, even a soldier – the ludicrous images on the posters perfectly match his totally gonzo concept which, as he enthusiastically points out, is “Newer than tomorrow, preposterously new!” I agree… I think.

The other issue plaguing the Association is that chickens are continually born with heads and feet. This problem is resolved in the crazy chicken farm laboratory (I told you it comes back into play) where Anna is thrilled that her salaried geneticist has succeeded in spawning headless, feetless chickens. “Finally,” she tells her husband, “something we can share!” But Marco does not share her enthusiasm and in a fit of rage he brands the weird writhing sacks of veins and feathers “monsters”, then he proceeds to beat them to death with an over-sized metal bar. In an effort to heighten the weirdness, worms crawl out of the grotesque feathered lumps as he splits them open.

There's also hotel prostitution/sexual perversion subplot, a flaming car wreck, and a Seven Minutes in Heaven-like party game. For lack of a better descriptor, it's a supremely weird movie – and a fairly unforgettable one. Opinions vary drastically: some call it a masterpiece of the genre citing its truly unique editing and gorgeous cinematography (both DP, Dario Di Palma and star Jean-Louis Trintignant went on to work on highly influential films), while others declare it to be downright awful and ridiculous.

Either way, its status of being nearly impossible to find has gained it notoriority in certain nerdy film circles, and when offered a rare chance to view it, few who've heard the synopsis can resist (many thanks – and birthday wishes – to Matthew for tipping us off to this one). I got my copy (an excellent transfer) from J4HI, the same place I got the wonderful and equally difficult to find Roller Derby documentary Derby.

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Posted on December 28, 2008