A week or so ago I railed against Turner Classic Movies for chopping up Philip Kaufman's glorious The Right Stuff, forcing me to boycott the channel (a sacrifice that irked me a few days later when they showed Bad Day At Black Rock, a movie I have yet to see). I wouldn't have thought it possible, but our list of boycotted channels just doubled, as Diva TV, which until today was pretty much a permanent fixture in our house, has made the grave error of cutting back broadcasts of Late Show With David Letterman, filling its weeknight slot with a repeat of Oprah that had been aired earlier in the day, and just cherrypicking "the best" of that week's shows and airing them on Saturday and Sunday in much the same way that Late Night With Conan O'Brien is shown on MSNBC. That show had been aired daily once upon a time, but obviously extra editions of Business Daily Featuring Suit-Clad Pro-Market Cyborg #71253 are more popular than broadcasts of a show featuring a man once described with a straight face by the Sky+ EPG as a "flame-haired mad man", a description that gave us much amusement.
You'll note that I put The Quote Marks Of Derision around "the best", as according to a message sent to a commenter on the lovely Late Show UK blog, the show has been sidelined due to its focus on guests that are not familiar to UK audiences, thus redefining "the best" as "the most likely to soothe the confused mind of the random UK viewer, who we assume to be perplexed by new experiences". While I will admit any UK viewer stumbling across a typically unfunny appearance by Chris Elliott and Gerard Mulligan would probably be so alienated by the experience that he or she would block Diva TV forever, it's patronising to think that just because Dave is interviewing one guest who is unknown to a UK audience, that they won't stick around.
For the record, I'm not averse to dick jokes, but if that's all you've got, then you don't deserve a show, or the adoration of fawning media types with their large collars and cocaine habits. I can only imagine Letterman is considered anathema to UK audiences because his "slick, glossy, American" shtick might be thought of as unappealing to our cynical selves, but his show is more odd than its professionalism suggests. Letterman himself might seem like an empty joke machine like Leno on first glance, but his onscreen persona is half spoof/half homage to the Johnny Carson school of presenting, taking Carson's style and giving it a post-modern twist. At times the show is practically dadaesque; recent running jokes like Old Turkey Buzzard and Len Easton, California Highway Patrol would not be out of place on Vic and Bob's insane Shooting Stars. We're pretty sure the show would have caught on eventually, but I guess we'll never know, as the show gets sidelined once more.
It's become part of our daily routine to such an extent that Canyon had a total flameout earlier, complete with profanity, and I back her 100% in that judgement. So, somehow we're going to have to find some other way to watch our hero Dave, not to mention Alan Kalter's Celebrity Interviews, Great Moments In Presidential Speeches, Fun Facts, Will It Float?, etc. etc. etc. Perhaps we'll use magic! It's worth a try. Diva TV may still be showing it, but if they're going to ignore some of the more US-slanted nights in favour of nonsense like the recent embarrassing interview with that excruciating foppish twerp Russell Brand fidgeting in his seat like a greasy tube of electrified Goth hair, we'll avoid, thanks, partially as a fuck you, and partially because it will be nice not to have to put up with the insipid and overplayed Diva TV jingle, which haunts our dreams. Even the cats meow it to us, it's on so much.
It's off our Favourites list, and as we now have a gap, I guess we can add something. It's going to be either Anime Central, FX (until it gives up on The Colbert Report and renders itself utterly useless), or Supreme Master TV. My love of whales and not dying because of the end of the world means I might plump for the latter. While I ponder my options, here is Dave interviewing his "nemesis" Richard Simmons, an interview that wouldn't fit Diva TV's criteria and would therefore not be broadcast.
Tonight, UK TV became 1000% better than it was yesterday. We have The Daily Show With Jon Stewart on More4, The Late Show with David Letterman on Diva TV, Late Night With Conan O'Brien on CNBC (though sadly only at weekends), and now we can thank FX (of all the channels) for bringing us The Colbert Report. At last! Extra bonus, while Letterman and Conan are delayed by a week or two, both Daily Show and Colbert Report are only delayed by a day. Finally we get to recreate the experience of watching late night Comedy Central, though hopefully no one will bring Mind of Mencia over too. That would just be cruel.
Tonight's show (last night's, if you're an American) was great. Alpha Dog of the Week, a dance-off with Korean superstar Rain, and Colbert pimping out Speed Racer, slowly accruing more critical praise but sadly not winning over the nerds who think it looks stupid. Here's what Colbert thought:
If you want a feel for what this movie is like, here's all you do. Put 80lbs of fireworks into an industrial dryer, crawl right in there, turn it on, and light the fuse. It'll give you a good idea of the visual onslaught you'll be enduring. It's a good movie, I enjoyed myself. It's the classic story of boy meets seizure-inducing lights.
Friday afternoon I'm gonna endure that on IMAX, baby! Oh yeah! Colbert, Downey Jr. and Wachowskis all in the same week. I'm officially a happy man.
Many moons ago I considered starting a chain of posts regarding my favourite movie explosions, because I get a big kick out of film pyrotechnics, and had hoped to start with the crazy bridge explosion from the end of The Long Kiss Goodnight. Sadly, I took it for granted that it would turn up on YouTube, and ended up posting about something else.
Well, as a result of faffing about all day and not getting anything constructive done, I thought hey, time to be lazy and post a YouTube clip and wonk on about it! Easy. This blogging business is a piece of piss. Sadly, the internet has let me down again. Why oh why oh why has no one put the amazing helicopter explosion from Andrew Davis' Under Siege on YouTube? I can find a million clips from Black Dawn, for crying out loud, but only a couple of badly recorded clips from Under Siege. This is as good as it gets; the trailer, featuring a quick shot of the stunt at the end.
His most successful film! It's probably Warner Brothers pulling them down, which is understandable, but very sad for those of us who want to pay tribute to the awesomeness of Steven "Blues and Explosions" Seagal taking out a Huey (or something) with a knife, a can of paint thinner, and a grenade, and then jumping over the side of an aircraft carrier as it bursts into a ball of orange flaming death. It really is something to behold. So, another post ruined, for which I am eternally sorry. To make up for it, I figured I should post a clip that is arguably even better; the gratuitously brutal bar scene from Seagal's masterpiece, Out For Justice, directed by the late, great John Flynn.
Out For Justice was the first Seagal movie I ever saw, and it never got topped, which is kind of a shame, but it was good enough that I would continue to follow his career even when it went wonky and unpredictable. So good that I would buy Ticker, possibly the third worst movie ever made. So good that I would strongly consider buying a copy of Out For A Kill, the second worst movie ever made (the first is Lars Von Trier's pompous burning-turd-bag of a movie, Dancer In The Dark, which sadly does not feature Seagal). So good that I'm going to buy another copy of Vern's Seagology even though I already downloaded the ebook a while back. So good that I actually like his Thunderbox album, Mojo Priest. He's no B.B. King, obviously, but it's kind of a fun album, if you're willing to be forgiving.
There is so much to love in this scene. The outrageous brutality, the stick fight, the running gag with the phone booth. Introducing a killer pool ball is a magnificent touch; the sound effect of it banging against the stone floor being replicated whenever it crashes into teeth and skull is sickening and intimidating. Even better is Seagal's line readings and dodgy accent, something that sounds off throughout the movie but goes totally berserk here. "Anybody seen Rich-EEE? Anybody know why Richie did Bobby Lu-PO? I'm gonna keep coming back til somebody. REMEMBERS. Seeing Rich-EEE!"
My personal favourite moment is when he preceeds an order to the gathered bad guys to stand on the pool tables with the whiny line, "You know Vinnie, ah'm startin' to get inuh bad mood, you know. Maybe it's my moodswings, or my hormones, I dunno. Maybe it's my need to impose my will." Obviously this doesn't faze anyone, and when he fires two bullets into the ceiling to get everyone's attention Vinnie chastises him about it because there might be people upstairs. I love that he genuinely seems confused for a moment, like he forgot where he was. Anyway, check it out.
Enough about Seagal. Turns out this week there was another fight that happened this week, one that gives even that epic battle a run for its money. Conan vs. Colbert and Stewart. Obviously it shows that without writers the show hosts have really started to run out of ideas and only a fight pastiche could adequately fill the air time, but that doesn't dim its brilliance, nor the novelty of seeing TV hosts pretending to kick the shit out of each other, or Colbert's startlingly good impression of Bruce Lee's nimble footwork.
Remember, Steve, don't concentrate on the finger, or you will miss all that heavenly glory. [/Obnoxious Enter The Dragon reference]
As is often the case, my mood-o-meter has swung from MustWatchFilms to MustPlayGames. Partly that's due to, you guessed it, Guitar Hero, an addiction-creating experience so potent that, if the US late night talk shows are anything to go by, would have already jeopardised their existence even if the writers had not balloted to strike. Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert both commented on its hold over the staff this week, David Letterman interviewed Slash and the Guitar Hero digression they went on ended up derailing the show, and last week Conan joyously gatecrashed a Rock Band session to play a real guitar and then sing Sabotage in the style of Edith Bunker. It was the TV highlight of the past few weeks.
Add to that Canyon's amazing Christmas coup; defying a Nintendo drought and buying a Wii for both of us to play Wii Sports (possibly the best free game ever offered with a new console) and Super Mario Galaxy, which is a hellishly addictive and scarily vertiginous masterpiece. It dominated Christmas almost totally. We only stopped playing so we could watch films (many of which were brilliant), or the Doctor Who Christmas special (which was anything but brilliant, and smelt like fried sewage). There's not many other Wii games I'm that interested in right now, but those two games (plus WarioWare: Smooth Moves) are plenty to go with for now. So yeah, with a controller glued to my hands, it's that much harder to blog, and the medium rarely lends itself to introspection. It's much easier to write about films, TV, or books (or magazines, as our new contributor Masticator will undoubtedly find). How can you write about a game? "I played Gears of War for five hours today and I totally shot a bunch of aliens in the face!" is a valid enough statement, but it's a more immersive and less nuanced experience, which makes commentary harder.
Still, let's try. This week has been devoted to John Woo's Stranglehold, a semi-sequel to Woo's bullet-ridden extravaganza Hard Boiled, which came out a few months ago. Thanks to the miracle of sales, I got it last week, along with Zhang Yimou's underrated courtly soap opera Curse of the Golden Flower, in a Chow Yun Fat double-bill. The game was received with a muted welcome, mostly because it's a pretty unambitious shooter released at around the same time as Call of Duty 4, Halo 3, Super Mario Galaxy, The Orange Box, and many other big event games. However, I'm a sucker for shooters (I've lost count of the hours I've spent replaying Black), and this has a very big draw; Woo-style action, which is, of course, the best and sexiest kind.
With Chow Yun Fat onboard to recreate his toothpick chewing gun expert Tequila, you control him through an increasingly frenetic series of chaotic battles, using a variety of weapons to destroy everything in your path. As in Max Payne and the Matrix games you can enter a slo-mo mode called Tequila Time, but the fun comes when you use the left trigger to dive or interact with objects in the environment, such as sliding down bannisters. If a villain is in range, Tequila Time begins automatically, and killing your enemies at that moment gives you points for style, which are translated into special attacks, including Precision Aim, which triggers some gory cutscenes of guys staggering backwards with blood shooting out of their throats, and the room clearing Spin Attack, unleashing a slow-motion cut scene filled with death and doves and a manically shouting Tequila. It's awesome.
Perfect for fans of Woo; Simon Pegg, Nick Frost and Edgar Wright would love it. That said, it triggered a burst of nostalgia for that wonderful period at the start of the 90s when Woo became known to Western audiences with The Killer and Bullet in the Head, something that I can imagine happened to many people when this game and the recent Dragon Dynasty Hard Boiled reissue came out. I had to have yet another copy of this amazing film! So I went internet shopping, and sadly found that despite its iconic status, its treatment on DVD is simultaneously reverent and appalling.
Criterion adapted their old Laserdisc, which included commentaries from Woo and others, along with documentaries and an old student film. Great stuff, but apparently the screen is not a proper anamorphic transfer, and the subtitles are actually dubtitles, meaning we're still getting the terrible translation of the dialogue that plagued the original releases. I hoped it would have a better treatment by Dragon Dynasty, a DVD distributor owned by the evil, callous Weinsteins, who have a terrible track record of delaying the release of edited versions of acclaimed Hong Kong films and then bitching about people in the West trying to find the originals. (For film distributors, they sure don't like people actually watching movies, do they?) This time the transfer is better, but not perfect, and still it has dubtitles. Plus, the extras aren't as good as the Criterion ones.
Though it's good to know the reputation of the film is such that it keeps getting reissued in new packages, why can't it get done 100% right? Here is a comparison of the many versions released, showing no one disc has the whole package. Dragon Dynasty seem to have done a fairly good job with it, though many of the other films in their library seem to be getting an even better treatment. As for Criterion, why they dropped the ball is beyond me. Every other set they've released is exceptional. Don't they realise it's a bad idea to piss off millions of John Woo fans who do nothing but rewatch his expertly edited and hyper-violent scenes over and over again?
So which DVD did I end up buying from Amazon Marketplace at a ridiculous price mark-up from some dodgy geezer with a 81% feedback rating over the past 12 months? Neither of them. What, am I made of money? Besides, my Woo-love was reignited to such a crazed extent that I couldn't wait another second to see it, and ended up in HMV just an hour after completing the game, where I bought the cheap-as-chips Tartan UK version with the proper anamorphic transfer, proper subtitles, and not even a single extra.
Who cares? I rewatched the teahouse scene last night, and it was as jawdropping as I remembered. Canyon was similarly impressed. During the lulls in the action she gasped, "Is it done yet?", and "No really, is it done yet?", not to mention, "Why does anyone consider Chow Yun Fat cool? All he does is jump through the air with two guns. Anyone can do that." [It's true!!!! -- Canyon] (I'm being a big meanie. She's looking forward to seeing the whole thing, especially as a big fan of Face/Off. Perhaps I shouldn't have hassled her moments after returning home from a nasty commute with, "Look at the 'splodey two-gun crazy!!!" Sorry Canyon! [I'd had enough of crazy on my commute, it's true. I do want to watch it, though. Btw, if Stranglehold really is a sequel to Hard Boiled, it should have been called Over Easy. No, I never get sick of saying that. -- Canyon])
One of the things I love most about his style is the way he is willing to move the camera right into the carnage. At times you get the feeling that the battle isn't just raging in front of the camera, but all around as well. Especially in Hard Boiled, which looks like a war has broken out and Woo happened to have ten cameras under his command. Also, they're not always ground-level, point-of-view shots. In the warehouse fight the omniscient camera cranes over the characters and follows them into fire and shrapnel and clouds of smoke. It's wonderfully effective. The shot below is one of my favourites. Tony Leung leaps through an exploding car to escape certain death at the hands of Tequila, and the camera tracks with him (well, his stuntman). It's a two-second shot, but it is more exciting than most movies in their entirety.
To anyone who has only seen his American movies, you really have seen nothing yet. Face/Off came fairly close, though it was on a thematic level that the movie worked so well as a John Woo film (not saying the action wasn't incredible too, but it still lacked that berserker edge his Hong Kong movies had). Broken Arrow and Hard Target are a guilty pleasure. Though they're not that great, at least John Travolta in the former and Lance Henriksen and Arnold Vosloo in the latter seem to be having fun. Worst of all, Mission Impossible II was a disaster. Whoever made the decision to hand the film over to Stuart Baird for re-editing at the end of the shoot knows nothing about filmmmaking. Okay, so apparently Woo's original cut of the movie was about 210 minutes long (that's a lot of doves), and even I would baulk at that, but getting Baird in is an insane move.
It's like hiring a modelmaker to construct a beautiful piece of art, getting as far as allowing him or her to sculpt all of the individual pieces, all of which, while beautiful, mean nothing without the other pieces attached to it, and then handing the project over to someone else who doesn't know how it was meant to be put together, but has his own ideas and just jams them together willy-nilly. And then goes on to direct Star Trek: Nemesis. I think you catch my drift.
Woo's action scenes have a very specific rhythm, and he shoots knowing how the editing will go when he gets there. If you look at his raw footage you'll wonder why on earth he has some minor shots in slow-motion instead of just focusing on the big dramatic shots, but that's because the rhythm of the scene would only work with certain shots moving at a certain speed. It's hard to explain, but look at a scene from one of Woo's other movies, such as the shootout in Gina Gershon's flat in Face/Off (couldn't find a good enough YouTube clip, so you'll have to watch your own copy, and if you don't have one, then I weep for you). The action flips from fast to slow in an unorthodox pattern that hits every correct emotional beat without drawing attention to what is being accomplished. Then look at any action scene from Mission Impossible II. They seem to be randomly cobbled together with no relation between shots, and any momentum that might have been generated keeps being interrupted. Oh man, I know what I'm talking about, even if I can't explain it. It's like that dancing about architecture thing. Just go and compare the two. His style works well in one film and not the other because Baird. The End.
Weirdly, one of the things I liked most about Stranglehold was that during the battle scenes, I could click on the right button and activate Tequila Time manually, adding slow-motion moments whenever I thought the action needed it. It is a useful addition to your game, but more than that it's an aesthetic one. Obviously I'm not saying I'm a better editor than Baird (who is usually excellent, when not asked to mess around with material by someone with so precise a vision as Woo), but I felt that the game replicated the experience of watching a Woo movie more effectively than watching Mission Impossible II even though it actually is a John Woo movie. Hell, I even liked Paycheck more than that. I've not seen Windtalkers, as a good friend has told me on several occasions it's the worst and most laughable film ever, but even if it's John Woo's worst movie, I doubt it is Nicolas Cage's.
If you're new to Woo, check out the clip below, from the beginning of Hard Boiled. As has been said many times, when it came out many Western action movies ended like this. Hard Boiled starts this big, gets bigger, and ends with a 30 minute action scene with babies peeing, buildings exploding, a duel with one of the best movie villains ever (the incredible Mad Dog), and a five minute unbroken shot in the middle of the carnage that should be taught at film schools.
1: Robert Smigel as Arnold Schwarzenegger on Conan O'Brien:
File this alongside Great Moments in Presidential Speeches. Cheap, stupid, and utterly inspired, every time it gets dragged out. (Special bonus cameos: Mike Tyson and Don King!)
Also notable, Conan's own impression of Arnie, complete with obligatory sausage chomp.
2. The many faces of Carolyn from Tell Me You Love Me
As one of many characters in the huge ensemble on Lost, Sonya Walger was hard pressed to make much of an impression, through no fault of her own. Playing Desmond's great love, Penny Widmore, daughter of shady pharma-millionaire Charles Widmore, she turned up mostly in flashbacks, usually to cause the poor Scot some grief. I had no strong feelings about her either way. However...
We've gone on about Cynthia Mort's Tell Me You Love Me a lot here, because it is an insidious show that seeps into the brain and won't let go. There is a lot that annoys us: the oppressive and mannered lack of music; the glacial pace that makes Lost look like 24; Michelle Borth's pronunciation of the word, "fuck" ("fuuuuuuuuhk"). As it has progressed, though, there is also more and more each week that we like. Some performances have grown on us, but I've resisted one until now. Yes, Sonya Walger as show Gupta Carolyn. Because she is crazy, and selfish, and mean, and oh boy, because she has the weirdest facial expressions.
Whenever she suffers a big shock to the system, her face goes stiff and slack, her head slowly oscillating back and forth. It is the acme of incredulity. Most performers don't get much chance to look shocked at things as regularly as she does, but Carolyn is so self-absorbed she doesn't realise that the things she assumes are hers by right actually aren't, so when anyone (especially cowardly sleazebag husband Palek, played by Adam Scott) denies her her God-given right to get impregnated, like, now, dammit, she goes all durrrrrr.
For a long time we thought it was funny, especially because co-star Tim DeKay was prone to the most peculiar, unactorly facial tics. Was the show trying so desperately to be "real" that actors were being given directions to be as uncomposed as possible? If so, it was an odd direction to give. It added nothing to the veracity of the show, serving only to distract us. However, as the weeks dragged on, and with the help of Tyra Banks, I began to realise that Walger was doing something notable. In America's Next Top Model, the contestants are repeatedly told they should get out of their comfort zone and pose in ways they think might look crazy in order to chance upon a great pose. The results are often funny, but it does work. Many of the show's best shots are created by goofy posing.
In Tell Me You Have Countless Facial Tics, Walger is playing a really unappealing human being, and that alone takes acting courage, before we get into the issue of her many explicit nude sex scenes. Her crazy face is another method of pushing that envelope. Vacant stares, slack jaws, shaky head; it's all in the service of the performance. As the show has progressed, it's become obvious that Carolyn is severely screwed-up, and needs more help than just the occasional trip to see the cosmically awful therapist Dr. May Foster. Walger may seem to be going over the top with her performance, but compared to the naturalistic quietness of many of the other actors, her gurning stands out, adding to the audience's unease at her actions. Over time I've started to think that while Tim DeKay and the amazing Ally Walker deserve the awards, Walger is actually the show's secret weapon. Hey, Sonya! I just complimented you. Can I get a smile?
Nice one.
3: Trailer for Cliffhanger:
I recently watched a trailer for Jumper at work, and while it looks like a lot of fun, a colleague standing on the other side of the room commented that even though he couldn't see the trailer, he could guess what was happening as it sounded like it replicated the beats and rhythms of pretty much every trailer made in the last few years. He had a good point.
It got me thinking about great trailers, and how the style of them has evolved over the years. I love watching old trailers, and will probably seek some out and post them here in the future, but a while back there was one trailer so amazing, so different, so goddamn exciting, that it will almost certainly remain my favourite trailer forever. It was 100 times more exciting than the movie, and it was only ever ripped off once (the trailer for Stephen Hopkin's Blown Away which was also better than the movie). It was the Handel's-Messiah-powered trailer for Renny Harlin's thoroughly average Cliffhanger, and I cannot watch it without getting goosebumps.
That, my friends, is how you edit a trailer.
4: The first four pages of The Brave and the Bold #7
I've said before that Mark Waid is one of my favourite writers, with his celebrated run on the Flash and invigorating spell writing Fantastic Four with the late, great Mike Weiringo on art duties, and I'm glad to say his star still shines brightly. The Brave and the Bold is a revamp of an old DC title which pairs up heroes who don't usually work together (certainly not as a duo). This format allows the writer to bring out the best qualities and characteristics of the heroes by placing opposites together, and Waid has worked wonders with this conceit. In the first six issues of the title he paired up Batman and Green Lantern (not friends), Supergirl and Lobo (really not friends), and Batman and Blue Beetle (some grudging respect from Bats), and though that was all magnificent, Waid and world's best artist George Perez may have outdone themselves with the opening of the latest issue. (Click on the images to enlarge.)
The rest of the comic spins off from there in the most alarming ways, with every page holding at least one surprise or character revelation. I've heard people say both Wonder Woman and Power Girl are dull characters, but in Waid's hands they become two of my favourites. If only he could write them forever. I heartily recommend the title (though this is meant as a standalone it does have some connection to the first six-issue arc), though surely a prologue as awesome as that should be enough to drive even non-comic fans mad with anticipation. Right? Er, hello?
5. The super-pretty HTC Tytn II.
I once had a phone. It was the little phone that could. It didn't have GPS laser targeting, or a taser like in Tomorrow Never Dies, or a special connection to the Pentagon, but I loved it. I had no need of gadgets, I just wanted to text. And text I did, like the veritable wind. My connection to it was so strong that I often texted without looking at it. It was a powerful bond between man and machine, not unlike the bond between Michael Knight and KITT, only with less backtalk.
And then I broke it.
Damn, man, that wrecked me for over a year. Not just because I was upset, or because I lost all my numbers and texts and photos, but because I lost that amazing text synching. The next three phones I owned have been a disaster, with dead and unresponsive keys, fiddly shortcuts that make everything take four times as long, and batteries that hold enough charge for up to ten minutes usage. I was Chuck Yeager, grounded before his time, forced to give up hope that I would ever recapture that joy.
So I did the next best thing; buy a phone with a proper keyboard and a proper browser, not to mention Word. The Tytn II is a bloody gorgeous piece of kit, with a flippy screen and a keyboard way better than the Blackberry and a 3 megapixel camera and a touchscreen and so many other wonderful features I should probably shut up now. When the worst thing I can say about it is that both Canyon and I are finding it hard to type on it because we keep thinking we have to use the old text method of multiple button pushes for each digit, that doesn't even count as criticism. It's so helpful and lovely that this section of this post is being written on the Metropolitan line! ZOMG! Exactly what I've always wanted. I'm sure this blows no one's mind but mine, but it makes me very very happy (see post title), so that's all that matters. Except for the bit where I accessed this blog and flagged it accidentally. Ah, it's not the phone's fault. I can't stay mad at you forever, you beautiful gadget!
