One More Bullet

Avatar From Now On

May 7, 2012

Even Worthington has had enough Avatar

Oh Mr.Cameron, what have you done to me? You take a ten year break after Titanic to live the Troy McClure dream making and directing some forgettable documentaries along the way. And then I finally hear you are coming back to what you should be doing: science fiction action films. Avatar was in the correct genre for Cameron and the long wait led up to…a decent film that is weighed down by hippie smurfs.

This frustrated me a bit as for myself, James Cameron is probably the strongest and most consistent American action film director (possibly only rivaled by Walter Hill). Cameron is best when he’s working on large science fiction action pieces like The Terminator films or Aliens. I have to admit I’ve never gotten around to seeing True Lies so I’ll hold my judgement on how he fares when he’s stepping outside science fiction. Is it better than Avatar?

Avatar for me worked as theatrical experience but predominantly as an action film. When the characters were doing things that weren’t fighting such as hugging or singing to trees I felt my dollar was well spent. I wasn’t too worried about it’s great success at the time as projects outside the Avatar universe were still in pre-pre-pre-production such as Battle Angel Alita . Just from a glance on the wikipedia article on the comic, Battle Angel looks like something that may have worked better in the late 1990s then it would in this era, but what do I know about anime? Just take a break from Avatar!

Sadly, I think is James Cameron is moving in the opposite direction that I am taste wise. In an interview with the New York Times, Cameron states that he’ll be strictly working on Avatar films from now on. Bad idea! He also goes on to mention that he was in awe of Zack Snyder’s 300 which puts me into deeper confusion on where his tastes really lie.

So…where does this leave American action films? Cameron will continue to do Avatar which makes financial sense, but it’s a bit upsetting seeing a master of action as himself will be cutting out the action in the sequels as they will have less action than the original film.

So who’s next to take the throne of the top American action film director? Walter Hill has been out of the loop for years and i’m only mildly excited that he’s making a new film with Sylvester Stallone. He feels more like just a hired gun to me and it wouldn’t really be as good as his earlier works. Is it bad that the only American production I’m looking forward to this year is Nolan’s new Batman film? I’m worried guys!

2 Comments | james cameron | Permalink

Vote in the Lovehkfilm.com best films of the 1980s!

February 25, 2012

1980s Hong Kong Flag

Greetings and Salutations to all who read this still. Just a quick post before I get into lengthy discussions on the merits of the films of Rudy Ray Moore. If you like action films, you are bound to like Asian cinema. If you like Asian cinema, you know it goes beyond action films. To help expand the word on Hong Kong cinema, I am promoting one of my favourite film sites,Lovehkfilm.com. The reviews are humorous, self-aware and escape all types of fan-boy knee-jerk reactions that sometimes occur with such country or genre specific film sites.

One of the features on the Lovehkfilm.com I frequently return to is their Best of the Decades polls which readers nominate their best films of the decade. It’s a good reference for those taking their first baby-steps into Hong Kong cinema and for seasoned vets who need to seek out the more forgotten titles. The site has already done lists for the the top 100 of the 1990s and the top 50 of the 2000s and are currently doing one for the 1980s. If you have an e-mail, you can vote so it’s easy as just following the instructions here. Be sure to take time and think of not just films you think are obviously the best but films you think that deserve more respect or support. I’m looking forward to the results and hearing about what your votes are. Be quick though as the poll closes on February 29th. Get out and vote!!

That’s all for now, I’ll try to get back to real posts on my own content sometime in the near future. Get out and vote!

2 Comments | 1980s, hong kong | Permalink

Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai DVD cover is crap

December 24, 2011

So I’m back. School is done for another semester and I can actually get down to some reviews. Despite not blogging, I did manage to catch several action films theatrically during my school time, namely Die Hard, Eastern Condors, and Attack the Block!.

But holidays are still busy times, so let’s focus on something that caught my attention. the horrible cover of Hara-Kiri: Death of a Samurai by ~~Mike Taxi~~ Takashi Miike. Let’s take a peek.

At first glance, it’s a bit generic but I’m not expecting a Criterion or Masters of Cinema cover here. The lame age warnings on the cover are typical Region 2 DVD stuff that appears on everything from Goodfellas (Gangster violence!) to My Neighbor Totoro (Gangster catbus!). There’s some just some really odd decisions on this cover. Let’s examine the most obvious glaring problems.

Well, this is difficult. For those who have been collecting Asian films on DVD for a while this kind of bad quality is sometimes expected, but why is the sword such nice quality? Is it that hard to find a decent resolution screen capture from this film? or a promo photo? Let alone one that doesn’t have some splatter brush on the sword. Eau de photoshop is what I’d refer to this if I was critiquing work at school.

Photoshop dorkery aside, let’s get what’s wrong with this filmwise. Take a closer look to the bottom of the cover of this package.

That’s odd. I don’t recall Ken Watanabe being in this film. In fact, he seems to have kept his clothes from The Last Samurai.

Yep. Surprisingly, this isn’t even the worst offender on the cover. Look who we have in the left corner.

Now we have some serious problems. That’s Toshiro Mifune who starred in several of Akira Kurosawa’s samurai films. He’s dead. Did Takashi Miike use some stock footage of Toshiro and shove him into this film?

Regardless of these problems, I took two seconds and fixed this cover from total humiliation in just two seconds.

Eh, no one cares about that Empire quote anyways

9 Comments | 2010s, hara-kiri: death of a samurai, takashi miike | Permalink

Wong Fei Hung’s Whip that Smacks the Candle

October 13, 2011

School is hard. Going to school while doing part-time work at the school is harder. Living far away from the school to complete all these things is the hardest of them all. Not only did I miss screenings of Missing in Action 1 + 2 at the Mayfair this month due to education interfering, I’ve found myself unable to even find time to blog. How horrid!

I refuse to put a blog on hiatus, so I’m going to try and provide bite-size posts inbetween the longer more visual ones (i.e:good posts). I was previously working on a post involving a good overview of the action films selected by the Hong Kong Film Archive for their list of “100 Must-See Hong Kong Movies”. That list had some strange choices (Dirty Ho over The 36th Chamber of Shaolin) and several Wong-Kar Wai films, but no Chungking Express. It’s an interesting overview at least to see how Hong Kong film experts feel are the classics compared to us Western fans.

Back to the point, I worked on a blog post that began to become a pain as I continued to try and write it. To cut it short, I’ll write about the one interesting looking film that I’ve never heard of before. Let’s watch martial arts films from the 1940s with Wong Fei Hung’s Whip that Smacks the Candle (1949).

Don’t believe me? This film is actually making rounds theatrically at festivals:

No actual candle smacking in this clip

Compare the pacing in this film to this film to anything else from the 1940s, and this is lightning fast with surprisingly competent choreography. The film was directed by Wu Pang who was previously known for making melodramas. His Wong Fei Hung’s Whip that Smacks the Candle was a big hit in Hong Kong and received a followup with an equally boss title: Wong Fei Hung Burns the Tyrant’s Lair which was also a hit.

My own reseach doesn’t tell me what Wu Pang followed these up with, but I personally like to assume his later films still involved Wong Fei Hung doing more things: Wong Fei Hung goes to Shanghai or Wong Fei Hung builds his Dream Home. Probably not the case, but someone with a better knowledge of Hong Kong films before the 1960s can help you out with that.

This film does not seem to be available on YesAsia or Amazon, but the internet savy among you will find ways to watch this. I know I will.

3 Comments | hong kong | Permalink

William Friedkin Hates Superhero Films

September 15, 2011

* “Forever” referring to 1971 to 1985

Noted geriatric director William Friedkin is awesome. Anyone who’s resume includes The French Connection, To Live and Die in L.A., Sorcerer, and The Exorcist is pretty damn up there in my books. Sure he’s filled the rest of his career with horrible films like the non-erototic thriller Jade and the evil-tree film The Guardian, but I think his good far outways his bad. Besides, for some reason I have a copy of The Guardian in my VHS collection in my old house. I never bought it so I have no idea how I got it.

Friedkin may have fallen of all but the most die-hard fans radar, but he’s still working and when he speaks people listen. Recently, he’s attacked the most popular trend of the 2000s in American cinema: superhero comic book films.

William Friedkin hates Comic book films!

Friedkin basically goes on to say that today, a film like The French Connection would not be made by a film studio. In the interview he feels that audiences have changed and are now more “conditioned by television and television is aimed at the lowest common denominator… their expectations are lower.” I would agree with Friedkin for the most part. An average modern film audience are not too bored with the output of modern day superhero films put out. I haven’t taken a look at any of this years superhero films as I find they lack action and occasionally feel a bit toothless. I think the real lack of action scenes in Iron Man 2 sort of put me on hold from them. To make a point against Friedkin, not all films are as family friendly as Fantastic Four or Iron Man. I’d say that films like Nolan’s The Dark Knight or even films that I don’t think completely worked like The Watchmen weren’t necessarily made just to put on Easter candy and kids backpacks.

Friedkin is 76 years old and it’s easy to paint him as some sort of Grandpa Simpson type figure when he’s critiquing films and modern audiences but I do notice a severe lack of teeth in modern day thrillers and action films. Thankfully, Friedkin is not attacking comic-books as a whole as one of his idols Fritz Lang was a big fan of them when he moved to America. Not to mention a lot of great films have been released that were not superhero based, such as Cronenberg’s A History of Violence As for films for adults that are still gritty and violent, I still have a good amount of Korean thrillers from my previous bargain bin hunting jaunts, so I’m in no worry of Hollywood not suiting my thrill based appetite.

2 Comments | william friedkin | Permalink