We care decided to do something different and watch films based on one of the classics of Western Literature, Giovanni Boccaccio’sDecameron.
Like Canturbury tales, written about the same time, the Decameron is a collection of stories of all sorts. (Though they lean towards the bawdy) The main difference is rather than being a group of pilgrims’ its a group of upper-class Florentines staying in an abandoned country villa waiting out the plague. I thought this would make for lots of good material for directors. A word of warning, I haven’t read the Decameron since college and what I remember is mainly from Boccaccio is reporting on the bubonic plague‘s impact on Florence from my reading of the 14th centurey and The only story I remembered reading was the extremely raunchy tale of the friar who seduced a maid by having her “put the devil in hell.“
First film on my list Pier Paolo Pasolini’s Decameron focuses on the raunchier and down to earth tales all shot in Neapolitan dialect. It does not bother with the framing device. In fact it barely bothers to put the pause between stories. This gives the whole thing is a real stream of thought quality, that makes the first half hour a little confusing before you catch on. Another problem I found with it was the medieval world created by filming in. Buildings that are otherwise untouched makes the world seem partially abandoned and falling apart (perhaps with the context of the plague, this was intentional)
The next film, Paolo and Vittorio Taviani’sWondrous Boccaccio the framing device it is the whole point of the movie, going into great detail how the world was dying in the storytellers barely escaped of their lives.
Once they get to the estate the stories almost seem like a distraction with the young characters having quite a good time frolicking. Most of the story selected seem to lean toward more towards the romantic and the other film my favorite is the one about the Abbess who was summoned to discipline a nun who was caught with her lover. The Abbess was so distracted hiding her own lover she put her his longjohns on her head instead of her veil.
This week I decided to watch movies about wine and wine appreciation.
Personally I like good wine, though I admit I have a lousy palette. Because of this, my snobbery rarely goes beyond trying to avoid any wine that is less than two years old. My wine purchase consists of occasionally buying a bottle of Three Buck Chuck‘s. Something that would have all of the characters in the movies I watch this week denouncing me as a complete poseur.
The first movie on my list Randall Miller’sBottle Shock tells the mostly true story of the rise of California wine growing in the Napa Valley. We focus on Jim Barrett (Bill Pullman) of Chateau Montelena. The business has been going badly and Jim has just taken out a third loan. To make matters worse he’s frustrated that his son Bo(Chris Pine) does not appear to be taking an interest in the business. Meanwhile, in France, English Wine Seller, Steven Spurrier (Alan Rickman) needs something to invigorate his business and decides to investigate California wines for a blind taste contest. In the process, Chateau Montelena attracts his attention as the best contestant. Can California wines compete with the French giant?.
I enjoyed this film a lot. It had quite a few good performances and it captured some thing that I always look for where a pure love and appreciation 0f the wine tops elitist snobbery.
The next film on my list Alexander Payne’sSideways tells the story of best friends, Miles and Jack. (Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church) Jack’s getting married in a week so Miles takes him on a trip to California wine country for a week of wine tasting, golf the perfect pinot. (Also Jack wants to get laid one last time before he gets married.) The week starts well with our duo hooking up with two amazing woman Mara and Stephanie (Virginia Madsen and Sandra Oh) but as the week continues things begin to slowly fall apart.
I have mixed feelings about this one. It certainly a good film with wonderful performances (Paul Giamatti is one of my favorite character actors for a reason) But I just couldn’t get into it. Perhaps it’s because several critics I respect liked it so much I was expecting something brilliant, or perhaps having lived it, I have trouble finding humor in depression and anxiety. Either way, it’s worth checking out just be aware you might not be its target audience.
Good news everybody. After being indecisive for far too long I’ve finally set up a Patreon Account! It’s still a work in progress and I’ll be adding more benefits soon.
For now the big reward is that for a patron set of five dollars (referred to as “melody” for now you get a background (or frequently foreground) cameo in the strip.
So click that link to your left and check it out and become part of the Rhapsodies community!
While randomly going through Scarecrow’s science fiction section I settled on the theme that I chose to refer to as “fighting oneself.” When I say this I mean this I mean it literally. I’m talking about the completely fanciful scenario where there is another version of you, and for whatever reason they have it in for you.
In the first film on my list, James Wong’sThe One, multiple dimensions exist. In this setting, if any version of you dies the rest of you get that version when Gabriel Yulaw (Jet Li) accidentally discovers this, he goes on an inter-dimensional killing spree to “become a god”. Now the last of his alternate selves must fight to survive.
When I first heard of this film I was fascinated. It had one of my favorite tropes in science fiction, and Jet Li kicking ass. So you can understand I was disappointed. This film was really bad. I’ve heard that it was originally intended to star Dwayne Johnson but that only excuses so much. Neither the script or the story are any good, the rules of the setting makes no sense, and the quality of the action scenes waste Jet Li’s talents completely. Frankly, it’s so bad I can’t even consider it entertaining fluff.
In the next film on my list, Rian Johnson’s Looper, time travel is discovered 55 years from now. It immediately becomes illegal, but that doesn’t stop shady criminals from using it. Now they appear to be using it almost exclusively to dispose of bodies. The victims are transported to the past where an assassin (well… the script calls them assassins, but really, that’s giving them way too much credit, they are barely executioners) is waiting to kill them and dispose of their body afterward. (After all, how can killing someone who doesn’t exist yet be illegal?) The executioners are paid in silver bars. The catch is that this technology is so illegal, the future mob needs to destroy ALL of the evidence. That includes the executioners if they are still alive in the future. They are captured and sent to the past where. This closes the “loop”. For this they are paid in gold bars. The assassins can can run if they want but in thirty years the future mob will catch them.
Joe ( Joseph Gordon-Levitt) is one of these executioners. He’s doing fairly well. On one job, his older self (Bruce Willis)is sent. The older Joe manages to escape. Now Joe has to hunt his older self in order to close the loop while being hunted by his superiors who are trying to do the same thing.
I liked this film. It’s smart, with a good script and a plot that kept me interested all the way through. Regrettably, when I put on my science fictions snob hat, I see too many unanswered questions. What are the rules of time travel? How was the arrangement with the future mob and the present mob created? How are the executions scheduled? Why is mob executions the only thing the mob use time travel for? And so on…
Because of this it was impossible to love this film.
The first film on my list was Enzo G. Castellaria’s Keoma. Keoma Shannon (Franco Nero) is a half breed ex soldier who has been wandering the desert. He arrives in his home town that is being torn apart by fear of plague and death, controlled by a petty tyrant allied with Keomo’s hated half-brothers. Can Keoma save the town?
I was initially interested in this film because I heard it was a western version of Bergman’s Seventh Seal. And while for the most part the similarities are subtle enough that you’ll only notice if you are explicitly looking for them, this was still a very interesting film. I liked the visuals that are filmed in a sepia filter that reminded me of old colored prints. The editing was also fascinating. This is especially apparent how Castelleria handles flashbacks. This is especially apparent in the gripping opening scene. (which is awesome for other reasons) An old woman (who may or may not be Death) who is talking to Keoma turns away to look at what turns out to be a past. Such scenes have you committed to watching the entire film.
However much of this was dragged down by far too many talking head close-ups during dialogue and near obsession with slow-motion whenever a bad guy was shot.
The next film on my list, Jan Kounen’sBlueberry(called Renegade in the States), an adaptation of the comic by the late great Jean Giraud, AKA Moebius, tells the story of John Blueberry (Vincent Cassel ). A man who was raised by Indians and is now the Marshall of a small western town. When a villain from his past returns it is his job to stop them while protecting both his town and the nearby Indian community.
Despite my love of Moebius’s work I’ve only ever seen a few pages of Blueberry so I have absolutely no idea how close to the original material this is. For the most part, this was a very… pretty film. However the longer it went the less sense it made. To the point that it ended with a twenty-minute long drug-fueled hallucination.
It seems like a good idea at the time. Last week’s selection was kind of depressing. Therefore I decided to clear my palate I wanted some light, fluffy comedies. Regrettably, I did not plan ahead enough to go into the particulars. All I knew was I wanted to do some form of comedy I had not done before. So I was browsing in Scarecrow’s comedy room, hoping to get something resembiling inspiration and I stumbled over Paul on the shelves. So I decided to do comedies about Alien encounters.
The only problem with this plan was I had seen nearly every single movie that remotely fit that description. ( And not many of them are very good anyway)
The film I finally I chose, Bruce Kimmel’s The Creature That Wasn’t Nice, more frequently marketed as Naked Space, because it stars Leslie Nielsen, despite being filmed about four years before any of the Naked Gun series came out. Since I like Leslie Nielsen’s films no matter how dumb they frequently are, I decided to take a chance. Like I said it seems like a good idea at the time.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before. A band of intrepid space explorers land on a planet, unintentionally bring back an Alien sample, sample grows into huge slavering monster, runs amok in the ship killing everybody. The monster is killed by the last remaining crew members.
There really isn’t anything I can say to defend this film. This isn’t direct to video bad, it’s watch on Mystery Science Theater 3000 bad. The performances are wooden, the script is nonexistent, and most of the time they’re not even trying with sets or anything to convince us of the setting. I’ve seen low budget fan films with bigger budgets.
There are a few scenes that save it from being pure torture. Most notably the monster singing “I want to eat your face“ and the clueless idealist of a ship scientist’s (as the son of a scientist, one of my least favorite clichés in science fiction) reaction to the song. Leading one of the others to ask him if he’d even listened to the lyrics.
The next film on my list, and the film that inspired this double feature, Greg Mottola’s Paul written by and starring Simon Pegg and Nick Frost with Kristen Wiig and Seth Rogen, tells the stories about Graeme and Clive, a pair of British comics and alien enthusiasts (Peg and Frost) who have come to the states to attend Comic-Con. on the way home, they rent a motorhome and take a road trip through UFO country. On the way, they run into Paul, (Voiced by Rogen) the original gray alien who’s just busted out of Area 51. Paul is a bit of a jerk but a nice guy, and apparently all of the alien mythology of the twentieth century is based around him.
Now our heroes find themselves being chased by Government agents, hillbillies and religious fanatics to get Paul home before it’s too late.
My basic reaction to this film was Meh. I normally like just about anything that Simon Peg and Nick Frost are in. They don’t disappoint playing wide-eyed outsiders in the United States for the first time. Paul is quite convincing with good animation and texture and with Seth Rogen’s performance, you are almost fooled. ( Provided you believe in aliens) Beyond that, it’s just your standard by the numbers buddies on the road film. It’s good for something to watch on the background, but for the most part, there’s not much to recommend it.
