Archive for June, 2006

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

Tuesday, June 27th, 2006

This third picture in the FAST AND THE FURIOUS trilogy saga is pretty different and at first doesn’t even seem to be connected to the other ones. I never saw Academy Award nominee for best director John Singleton’s 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS, but I know Paul Walker returned and Vin Diesel didn’t. And I believe Tyrese showed up. This time around we lose everybody and start over with a new character played by Lucas Black (the kid from SLING BLADE who I last saw in a small role in JARHEAD).

The first section of the movie, which is also the best section, is all about Lucas Black getting into macho confrontations with dudes and then having a race. In the opening he’s leaving school, getting into his junker car when he exchanges words with a rich asshole jock dickhead (HOME IMPROVEMENT’s Zachary Ty Bryan, still wearing a letterman’s jacket at 24). You can already tell this is gonna be a worthwhile movie when it starts playing western style music and showing closeups of their faces as they stare each other down. They’re about to get in a wrench fight when the jock’s girlfriend suggests a peaceful solution: a fast and/or furious race. Lucas Black says, “I only race for pink slips,” (he doesn’t mention whether or not he lives life a quarter mile at a time) but since the HOME IMPROVEMENT guy’s Viper is worth $80,000, the bet is not agreed upon. So the girlfriend suggests herself as the prize. So you know the western music was not lying about this movie being awesome.

Now, maybe it’s the girl who uses her bra as a starting flag, or maybe it’s Lucas Black’s strategic decision to crash through an unfinished house as a shortcut, or maybe it’s the girlfriend turning to her boy and saying, “I thought you loved me!” when they start to lose and then the boyfriend pulling that one lever they have in cars that makes them go faster that you only think of using late in the race. It could be alot of things but something about this scene is even better than the rest of the movie. At the end of the race both cars are destroyed and all three drivers and passengers are bloody. Black smiles with bloody teeth and winks at the girl he has supposedly won in the race. What a charmer. (more…)

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Cars

Tuesday, June 27th, 2006

As you know I’m not one for the cartoons but somehow I ended up seeing this new one called CARS. What CARS is about is cars. However they are not any ordinary type of car like you’ve ever seen before, they are living cars. And when I say that I am not even talking about a Knight Rider or Herbie the Love Bug type of scenario here, I am talking about an entire society devoid of human life, but dominated by living, feeling cars with weird eyeballs on their windshields. They can make gestures and they can use their tires sort of like hands, and they have jobs, etc. Even the insects of this world are cars, but there are regular non-car plants.

These cars have not only created a civilization, but their civilization has been around long enough that the good old days are gone. The story is about Lightning McQueen, who is apparently not named after Steve McQueen despite his brave service to the cause of cars in LE MANS and BULLITT. Thanks alot, assholes. Lightning is a hotshot race car, basically a NASCAR star without a driver. Because he’s a stubborn egotistical asswipe of a car he fucks up and blows his huge lead making the big race a three way tie. One of the other racers is played by Michael Keaton but he looks like the Burt Reynolds of cars. Anyway Lightning has to go to California for another race and because he’s a celebrity he doesn’t even bother to drive there himself, he goes inside his friend, a Mack truck played by Cliff from Cheers. Basically, he is inside his friend’s ass, but you can’t completely blame him because the inside of his friend’s ass looks like some kind of luxury apartment.

But then Lightning gets lost and ends up stranded in a small town along Route 66 where he learns valuable car lessons and helps revive a dying way of car life, etc.

This movie maybe isn’t quite as effective as the other movies by these TOY STORY people, but it does work. And part of the appeal is the incredible attention to detail, even in the filmatism. For the parts about car races they take on the frinetic tics of sports broadcasting, with flashy camera moves and onscreen graphics and with car commentators and corporate sponsors. There is an entire audience of thousands of cars. Then when it gets out on the road it slows down and there is actual atmosphere. Somehow they really capture the feel of driving out on the highway at night. And when they get to the town, I think it’s called Radiator Springs, there are these quiet establishing shots with a yellow traffic light slightly buzzing as it blinks on and off. Even the sound effects are perfect. They had to figure out the sound of tires rolling around as cars “walk” along having a conversation. (more…)

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Karate Bear Fighter

Monday, June 26th, 2006

The second in Sonny Chiba’s Oyama trilogy is even better than the first one. First of all, no rape scene. Second of all, he becomes more of a classical badass who gets to show off different facets of his badass powers. There’s alot of scenes where he’s in a situation that would make most people nervous – like when a powerful gangster tries to hire him – and he just gives off a Just Don’t Give A Fuck vibe, sometimes even munching on food instead of paying attention to people (always a favorite of mine since Dirty Harry foiled a robbery while eating a hot dog).

Oyama takes the job with the gangster, which is a great chance for him to wear shades, a white suit and a long white coat over his shoulder, and scare everybody without saying a word.

The plot has a kind of episodic feel to it that makes him seem more like a Lone Wolf and Cub type of character, a badass that travels around helping people and getting into scuffles. First he runs into a street hustler pretending to be him – Oyama, world famous karate master – to sell homeopathic fitness aids. This pisses him off and he humiliates the dude. But the hustler buys him a drink as an apology and, getting a glimpse into the guy’s life, he grows sort of fond of him. The guy is engaged to a waitress who believes he’s the real Oyama, and that especially touches him. (But not enough for him to intervene when the imposter has to fight a bunch of karate masters because everyone thinks he can take them.)

But then the waitress gets killed by an asshole gangster, and when her imposter fiancee tries to get revenge, he gets killed too. Now the story takes a completely different direction as Oyama travels to the countryside to bury the couple’s urns at the foot of a mountain. I thought he was gonna meet up with that kid whose father he killed in the first one but instead he gets a different surrogate nephew. The son of an abusive alcoholic, this kid steals Oyama’s bag, not knowing it has urns in it. Following the kid to his house, Oyama discovers the deadbeat dad mistreating his son and almost beats him up. But when he sees the kid’s love for even such an asshole of a father, he gets all soft. (more…)

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Karate for Life

Monday, June 26th, 2006

The third and final entry in the Oyama trilogy starts out in pretty much the most badass way possible. A narrator explains that at this point in his life, Oyama liked to go around to different dojos and make challenges to prove the power of his karate.

So he struts into this dojo wearing his karate clothes, but also with his white gangster coat draped over his shoulders for extra style points. When the students ask who the hell he is he explains that he’s come to challenge their sensei.

I think this sensei is the same guy he’s been feuding with all throughout the series. At any rate, the guy pretty much tells Oyama that he’s an asshole for going around picking fights, because that’s against the whole idea of karate. And it’s a good point. Still, the sensei agrees to a fight, sort of. He’ll fight Oyama, but first Oyama will have to fight 100 of his students. Ha ha ha.

Of course he doesn’t expect Oyama to accept. But he does. “As long as you are number 101.”

And the great thing is you really get to see him fight all these guys. I mean, I didn’t count if it was actually 100 guys, but it’s definitely up there. Of course, for artistic purposes, he defeats most of them in one or two blows. But they all gang up on him and he takes them down one by one. After a while they resort to dirty tricks, they dump a bunch of oil on the ground TRANSPORTER 1 style and put sand on their feet so they can stand up but Oyama can’t. (This trick was also used in COCKFIGHTER, the guy who has his chickens fight on a slick linoleum floor and coats their feet with rosin.)

So you think maybe this will end the fight until he can come back later for revenge. But that would be underestimating Oyama. He falls down but he starts grabbing people by the legs and wrestling them to the ground. Then he basically just creates a pile of karate guys and stands on them, because they’re not slippery. (more…)

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I’ll Always Know What You Did Last Summer

Saturday, June 24th, 2006

Howdy fellas -

I’ll always know what you did last summer. You wore short sleeves and complained about Star Wars 3 alot. Also, that’s the name of the new DTV sequel to I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER. It’s from the director of TROIS 3: THE ESCORT and the writer of OCTOPUS 1&2 and stars a bunch of young TV actors I never heard of.

When last we left our heroes (you know, the kids who ran over a guy and then lied about it), they were in the Bahamas fighting against a vengeful fisherman with a hook. There was no need for a surprise twist of who the killer was, it was still the guy with a hook. I believe Jeffrey Combs was involved, the R&B singer Brandy (who your parents used to listen to) survived due to contract negotiations, and an uncredited Jack Black grunted “it’s all good” as he was gored to death. I’m sure other things happened but that’s what I remember. Then Jennifer Love Hewitt had to leave to prepare for the GARFIELD movies.

That was 8 years ago, so the teens who were mildly entertained by the sequel at that time have blossomed into adulthood. To celebrate this new stage in their lives, Hollywood is giving this audience what they give every generation as it reaches maturity: a replacement group of teenage protagonists. Enjoy.

Obviously, since we’re dealing with an entirely new set of characters, the thing that the person knows about what they did 9 or 10 summers ago is not the same thing. At this point even the fisherman is probaly thinking ah fuck it, it’s time to move on. So we gotta start out with a new dark secret for some kids to bury.

They figured out a way to tie it in to the old series though. The movie opens at a carnival on the 4th of July, where the new group of teens discuss the legend of the fisherman with the hook who kills people on the 4th of July. Then without warning the fisherman appears and runs through the carnival, scaring the shit out of everyone. (more…)

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6/21/06

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006

Don’t worry, the BADASS 100 is still on the way. I’m almost done getting all the ballots together, but then the math begins. To tide you over I scoured the earth for an obscure action movie that would make you smile with its ridiculous title alone. And I came up with one called HARDCASE AND FIST. And while we’re at it how bout KARATE BULLFIGHTER starring Sonny Chiba?

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Hardcase and Fist

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006

When a guy like me finds out there’s an ’80s action movie called HARDCASE AND FIST there’s pretty much only one choice: watch it immediately. The box says that Hardcase and Fist are cops who are framed so they have to bust out of Folsom to prove they’re innocent. That’s a classic arc, the 1980’s version of the hero’s journey. I was hoping of course that the characters would be named Detective Jack Hardcase and Lieutenant John Fist, but unfortunately there is nobody in the movie who is named, nicknamed or even referred to as Hardcase or Fist.

But I got a good idea that Hardcase is Bud McAll (the credits say McAll, not McCall) because he’s a cop so he has to make a hard case or something. And Fist would have to be Eddy, his heartsick, kung fu obsessed cellmate. Hardcase was a cop framed by his crooked partner and Fist was in a “Hey Joe” type situation where he killed the dude he caught his stripper girlfriend with. The movie opens on Fist, dramatically lit in his cell, going through all his badass kung fu routines as a low keyboard drones John Carpenterishly and the camera slowly pulls out. Meanwhile, we keep cutting to Hardcase as he approaches in the prison bus.

When Hardcase is brought to his cell, Fist is sitting on the ground, still doing his exercises, staring menacingly into nothingness. Then out of the blue he reaches to shake Harcase’s hand and says, “Hi, I’m Eddy” in a much friendlier tone than you expect. This historic first meeting is not supposed to be funny, as far as I can tell, and is a good example of the type of weirdly inept highlights of this low budget, amateurish movie.

The director/producer/co-writer/original story writer/music editor/co-star is Tony Zarandast. While watching it I kept thinking this was just some guy with no filmatic background who decided to make an awesome action movie on the weekends with his buddies. It’s all so laughable but I figured hell, if I wanted to get together a bunch of dudes and film a bunch of car chases and shootouts it would probaly be even worse because I wouldn’t know how to set up a shot or film stunts or get a non-actor to deliver his lines properly. Mine would have better dialogue though. But the point is, for a regular guy with no experience or talent, Zarandist did an okay job, I thought. Then I looked him up and found out he had already made several movies before this, which makes you wonder what the hell the deal is. Zarandast is still at large today and has a web sight at www.tonyzarandast.com with hilarious promo photos and copy editing that makes my sight look like the god damn Webster’s dictionary. (more…)

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Karate Bullfighter

Wednesday, June 21st, 2006

aka CHAMPION OF DEATH or FIGHTING KARATE-ULTIMATE TRUTH FIST

KARATE BULLFIGHTER is the first in a trilogy starring the great Sonny Chiba as his real life mentor Masutatsu Oyama. Apparently it’s based on a comic book called The Fanatical Karate Generation. Despite all the crazy titles this movie is really sort of a fictionalized biography of a visionary karate instructor who causes an outrage by rejecting the notions of the time. He pisses everybody off by saying that modern karate is just “a dance” and lamenting that he wasted his time by training for 3 years. He does win a big trophy in a tournament that supposedly means he’s the best karate man in Japan, but when a guy compliments him he gets all pissed off and throws it down some stairs.

It’s a real interesting story but let’s be honest, you’re not gonna watch it for an interesting story. You’re gonna watch it because it’s called Karate Bullfighter. This is because in the first half of the movie Sonny is practicing karate on the beach when suddenly he hears that a mad bull is loose. He figures maybe he should help so he saves a little girl from being gored and then wrestles the bull. He literally grabs the bull by the horns, then figuratively goes for the jugular by literally karate chopping the bull in the head until a beautiful shower of samurai movie/Dawn of the Dead style bright red blood sprays out. This is actually kind of creepy because they have a real bull for alot of shots and it looks like they somehow forced his mouth shut so he couldn’t bite. (Some of it is also clearly a fake bull.)

Anyway he kills a bull with his bare hands, and when word gets out his karate rivals talk shit and say he must’ve cheated somehow, drugging th bull or something. You figure he’s gonna try to prove it by fighting another bull in front of everybody, but no. The title just comes from that one scene. Still, the rivals cracks cause Sonny’s one and only student to go completely crazy and beat the shit out of them, putting them in the hospital. As you know from Mr. Miyagi, Chuck Norris and other wise individuals, karate is supposed to be for self defense. You’re not supposed to go beat the hell out of dudes for talking shit. So the fact that Sonny taught this asshole reflects poorly on him and reinforces the idea that he teaches evil karate. And he feels real bad about it and tries to make amends. (more…)

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6/19/06

Monday, June 19th, 2006

I only do movies that start with ‘S’ now. Over on the Ain’t It Cool I have a two month early review of the new Michel Gondry picture, THE SCIENCE OF SLEEP. But just so you don’t think I’m a sissy for that one I also got the review you demanded, the review you expected, the review you couldn’t figure out why I didn’t already have last week: Steven Seagal’s SHADOW MAN.

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Shadow Man

Monday, June 19th, 2006

SHADOW MAN, I’m sorry to say, is the most boring movie Seagal has made so far. At least on my first viewing. To be fair, both THE FOREIGNER and THE PATRIOT seemed alot more fun the second time I watched them. In some ways maybe Seagal movies are like operas, you gotta understand the plot first before you can appreciate all the pageantry. But still, this is not one of my favorites.

(No, I’ve never seen an opera before, I’m just guessin.)

When they first announced this one it was called SHADOWS ON THE SUN, and it was supposedly gonna be something very different for Seagal, a drama where he’s a doctor working at a clinic in post World War II Japan. Now the movie comes out and it is not anything new for Seagal, he is not a doctor and he’s not in Japan or the past. The box says he has to save his kidnapped daughter AND stop a deadly virus, an exciting double whammy plot. But again, what we receive is not quite what we were promised. His daughter does get kidnapped, but by some lady that’s actually trying to protect her (don’t ask me to explain because I don’t really get it), and there is a deadly virus, only he just has to hide the blueprints from everybody. It’s not out there yet. He’s not gonna get to go up in a helicopter and toss it in the water like he did with the suitcase bomb in BLACK DAWN.

Why is the movie called SHADOW MAN? Good question. But it’s a question with no answer, like those riddles the zen guys collect. They don’t call him a Shadow Man in the movie. Nobody says “first you see a shadow, then you’re dead.” He’s just the usual ex-CIA aikido instructor type and his name is Jack. There is one thing that’s unusual though. He apparently runs a Fortune 500 company. I don’t know which one, or what this has to do with anything, but that’s what the CIA guys say in part of the movie. At least I think they’re talking about him, because I’m not sure who else they could be talking about. (more…)

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