Halloween Wednesday Double Feature – Zombie Comedies

by on September 25, 2019 at 8:00 am
Posted In: Rhapsodies

So, after the first batch of this year’s Halloween marathon, I wanted to watch something with a bit more quality, and to really clear my palate with something funny. So this week I watched two zombie comedies that, coincidentally, were also two films on my “what do you mean you’ve never seen this?” list.

Halloween Wednesday Double Feature - Zombie Comedies-Fido

The first film, Andrew Currie’s Fido tells the story of a slightly different 1950s where a Zombie apocalypse had occurred. It had been safely contained and now humanity lives in very pleasant gated communities safe from all of the zombies that have not been enslaved for humanity’s use. 

One of these enslaved zombies (Billy Connolly) is bought by the family of a lonely boy named Timmy. Timmy immediately makes friends with the Zombie that he names Fido. Unfortunately, Fido’s restraining bolt breaks and he kills a few people. How will Timmy help his new best friend

This was a fun parody of the standard nineteen fifties boy and his dog formula. I mostly knew Connolly from his wonderfully manic standup comedy and seeing such a restrained (sorry!) performance was a pleasure to watch. 

After that, the best part of it was the darkly satirical and remarkably well thought out world that at first glance looks like a pastel Leave it To Beaver setting, until you look at it a little closer and see that just across the fence surrounding this wonderful town is a zombie-infested wilderness, and children practice firearm skills at school

Halloween Wednesday Double Feature - Zombie Comedies - Zombie Comedies

The next film on the list Edgar Wright‘s Shaun of the Dead tells the story of Shaun (Simon Pegg a 29-year-old slacker who lives with his best friend Ed (Nick Frost) who is even more of a slacker than he is. Things are not going well for Sean. His job is terrible, his step-father (Bill Nighy) is getting on his case and his girlfriend just dumped him for being a slacker. Is it any wonder he completely missed the start of a zombie apocalypse until it was too late?

Shaun of the Dead was so much better than I expected. Don’t get me wrong, I knew it was good, I just didn’t expect how good the cinematography and direction would be. The rise of zombies is wonderfully subtle gradually increasing over the first half-hour.

The only scene I didn’t care for was a rule of funny scene where Shaun and company do a terrible job fighting their zombified favorite bartender. I would have found it funny if I hadn’t watched Shaun master killing zombies for the last half hour.

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Halloween Wednesday Double Feature – Eastern Monsters Meet Western Monsters

by on September 18, 2019 at 8:27 am
Posted In: Test

Well the Halloween season has begun. So to start things off, my first theme is what I like to call Monsters; east meets west. That is to say eastern monsters meet, and possibly fight, western monsters. At least that was the plan.

Halloween Wednesday Double Feature - Eastern Monsters Meet Western Monsters - Kibakichi

So the first movie on my list, Tomo-O Haraguchi’s Kibakichi, tells the story of  Kibakichi, (Ryuji Harada) a wandering Werewolf Ronin arrives in a gambling town. It turns out to be run by yokai who are hiding from humanity. While at the same time using the their gambling house as a trap for unwitting humans. What can a sword fighting werewolf to do?

This was… okay. Not much of a story, but fairly good monster effects. As far as this week’s theme was concerned it more or less fit. While Kibakichi is very much a western style werewolf in the context of the film, werewolves are treated like another kind of Yokai. 

Halloween Wednesday Double Feature - Eastern Monsters Meet Western Monsters - The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires

The next film Chang Cheh and Roy Ward Baker‘s The Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires has Dracula contacted by the minion of seven chinese vampires for help. Instead Dracula takes the form of the of the minion and travels to China to take over. One hundred years later Professor Van Helsing (Peter Cushing) is lecturing in China where he is contacted by Hsi Ching (David Chiang) whose village is being attacked by the vampires. Van Helsing has to travel with Hsi Ching and his brothers and sister to fight dracula and his associates.

A joint venture between Hammer Studios and Shaw Brothers Studios, this was pretty much an excuse for Hammer Studios to do a martial arts film and it does not work. There’s a reason this was Hammer’s last Dracula film.

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Wednesday Double Feature – Cyberpunk Revisited

by on September 11, 2019 at 8:51 pm
Posted In: Test

Recently, I was re-reading William Gibson’s collection of short stories, burning from. Burning Chrome introduces Gibson sprawl setting period the setting that provides the background for such box as new romancer period it also provides a source material for one of the disaster is a science fiction film, Johnny Mnemonic period while I was reading burning chrome, I found out that Johnny Mnemonic wasn’t the only short story from the collection that was made into a film period so I went to scrape the barrel and see if there were any other good cyberpunk films that I had not seen yet.  

Wednesday Double Feature - Cyberpunk Revisited - New Rose Hotel

The film adaptation was New Rose Hotel. This tells the story of Fox and X played by Christopher Walken and William Dafoe to “extraction experts” and specialize in relocating scientists from corporations. Their current target is a scientist named Rosie. To do this they recruit the beautiful sandy to use as a Honey trap period but in the meantime X falls for her as well period 

This was an adequate adaption plot-wise period unlike a lot of sun cyberpunk films, it focuses on the drama rather than the action period there is absolutely no effort made in the setting itself. The only attempt at making anything looking look futuristic is them waiting period for the most part, the only reason to watch this film is defer when walking in the same film period 

Wednesday Double Feature - Cyberpunk Revisited - Hardware

The next film on my list, Hardware , Tells us of a rundown city after an apocalypse period I’ll scavenger fines remains of a killer robot in the desert period he gives it to be scope to girlfriend and of course it comes back to life and reeks havoc period 

Basewomen Judge Dredd shored, this story is probably better than some of the other attendance with bigger budgets period for what that’s worth.  I’ve even heard it as being described as Mega-City one without the judges. Other than that in the tone, though. It’s pretty much just another monster movie.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nr9M7_UGmho
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Wednesday Double Feature – The Adult Cartoon of Ralph Bakshi

by on September 4, 2019 at 9:00 am
Posted In: Test

Recently occurred to me that despite having watched Wizards, Lord of the Rings, Cool World, and the Mighty Mouse cartoon show, I have never watched any of the animated films that Ralph Baksh built his reputation on… You know… Adult cartoons. 

Over the years, my opinion of adult cartoons has changed. While it’s something I would have leaped at in adolescence, after a while it seems that sex and violence in films for their own sake is the slightly more grown-up version of all the ice cream you can eat. That’s not adult, that’s juvenile! So, I thought I’d try and get past all of that and look at Bakshi’s art.

Wednesday Double Feature - The Adult Cartoon of Ralph Bakshi - Fritz The Cat

The first film on our list is Bakshi’s adoption of Robert Crumb’s Fritz The Cat. In the 1960s New York, Fritz is a student, poets, and idealist. In reality, he just a poser who uses his political philosophy as a way to pick up chicks, stumbling through one disaster after another. 

Once you get past the shock value, this film was… Okay. I like Crumb’s original designs with a stark pallet of dark primary colors. The backgrounds are done in a pen and ink colored in watercolor, giving the film, as a whole, a wonderfully unique look. 

I have mixed feelings about the narrative. The plot was all over the place, to the point it’s easier to look at it as the sum as a collection of scenes, with some scenes being much better than others.  All in all, while I’m glad this was done, I just don’t believe the experiment was a success.

Still, it led the way to better things.

Wednesday Double Feature - The Adult Cartoon of Ralph Bakshi - Heavy Traffic

The next film on my list, Heavy Traffic, tells the story of Cartoonists Michael and his girlfriend Carole as they try to survive life in the big city. Like Fritz, this felt like it was all over the place and once again felt like a collection of shorts that couldn’t decide whether they were being brutally realistic or over the top surrealism. These vignettes tied together to create its own story. At the same time, this is very much felt as if it was Bakshi’s personal vision with his own designs and his own look for the film. My favorite being Carole herself who dominates every scene she’s in.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_tEpd9qMEjc
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Wednesday Double Feature – Old vs New – Dog Day Afternoon

by on August 28, 2019 at 8:59 pm
Posted In: Test

I was watching a documentary on Network whitch pointed me towards Sydney Lumet’s other classic, Dog Day Afternoon. While looking for an appropriate companion, film, I found out there was a remake of it. So I decided to watch them both and do it all versus new.

Dog Day Afternoon tells us the true story of a bank heist in New York City. Sonny Wortzik’s (Al Pachino) plan was simple. All he had to do was hit the bank right after they received a fresh delivery of cash. Then it would be a quick in and out, 10 minutes tops. 

But then, one of his accomplices flakes out and leaves, then it turns out the delivery was actually a pickup and the bank barely had enough cash on hand for the rest of the day, and somebody called the cops. This leads to a 15–hour hostage situation with no air-conditioner on a dog day afternoon. 

This was an awesome and morally complex film, with great performances from everyone, dealing with issues like Stockholm and Lima syndrome, gender (handled remarkably well for the seventies) and media. Also, it showed how a situation can be blown out of proportion by miscommunication and media. Sonny becomes a cause celebrate not so much because people are supporting him, as they are bored and find it amusing to stick it to the man.

In  Nick Cassavetes‘s John Q the story is updated to the next millennium. Denzel Washington plays John Quincy Archibald whose son is dying from an enlarged heart. Having done everything he can to pay for the operation, he holds up the emergency room in desperation. 

John Q isn’t bad, and Denzel Washington’s performance is up to his usual standards. However, the story goes out of its way to make it clear that John Q is in the right, and ultimately everybody is eventually on his side. All the moral ambiguities of the original movies are cleaned away, leaving nothing but a vanilla criticism of the health industry.

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