I just heard that Leo, one of the Silverback Lowland Gorillas at The Woodland Park Zoo just passed away. Leo was one of my favorite models at my numerous visits at the zoo and I have numerous pages in numerous sketchbooks to show for it. He had a wonderful gravitas that I loved trying to catch on paper.
Rest in peace, Big Guy, you will be missed.
Okay, I decided to do some 1950 heist films. Beyond the genre, which I’ve already done a few times before is that they both have Sterling Hayden in them. Since a heist film is almost by definition ensemble piece, I can’t say Hayden stars in any of them, but his charisma and presence are definitely the glue that held them together.
John Huston’s Asphalt Jungle is one of those films that I was certainly aware of, in that it’s on just about every list of film noir films. But other than that I hadn’t really heard that much about it. Of course with John Huston’s name attached I was expecting good things.
The story takes place in an unnamed Midwestern city where Erwin “Doc” Riedenschneider (played by Sam Jaffe) has just gotten out of prison after a seven-year stint. He has a plan to rob a jewel safe worth more than a million dollars. He needs a backer to fund his plan to pay for a driver, a safecracker, and muscle (called a hooligan here. ) He finds a backer in Alonzo Emmerich (Louis Calhern) a lawyer, and soon hires the rest of his team including Louie Ciavelli (Anthony Caruso), his safecracker along with hunchbacked diner owner Gus Minissi (James Whitmore), the only one everybody trusts, as the driver and Dix Handlly (Hayden ) as the muscle.
But Emmerich is broke and plans to betray Doc at the soonest opportunity. This along with a few other difficulties things start to fall apart pretty quickly.
This film is up to Huston’s usual high uncompromising standards. Presenting a dark setting. The cast is amazing with Jaffe as a quiet but flawed professional, and Stirling scary and uncompromisingly loyal even when things go pearshaped.
Really the only problem with it was the usual censorship of the time turning every crime film into moral propaganda. The sermon from the commissioner of police about the value of police felt tacked on especially since the film starts with him ranting about how many people have to be arrested in order to solve one crime.
After Huston, we move on to another rockstar of film, Stanly Kubrick with The Killing.
In this one Sterling Hayden plays, Johnny Clay a professional criminal who gathers together a specially picked team of insiders to rob a racetrack. On paper, it is the perfect plan and we watch the execution of the plan go together with perfect precision. But behind all of this is greed and betrayal and between this along with a little bit of bad luck, things begin to fall apart quite quickly.
Once again this is an example of an artist at the top of his game working with a fantastic ensemble team. Best performances go to Hayden as a cold methodical pro, Elisha Cook Jr. as the mousy, henpecked George Peatty whose slip of the tongue in front of his wife is the first weak link in the chain of this intricate plan.
I thought I’d start to add a few little side strips that don’t really fit into the rest of the strip, starting with Blossom and Hilda doing some Game of Thrones cosplay.
Hilda thinks she’s being typecast.
I was watching a review of the works of Satoshi Kon today, where it was mentioned that one of Kong’s major influences had been the film adaptation of Kurt Vonnegut Jr’s Slaughterhouse Five. Since that’s yet another example of a film I’d known about for years, but had never gotten around to actually seeing. So I figured, what the heck, this week I’m doing films based on the works of Kurt Vonnegut!
Slaughterhouse-Five is one of those films that has a picture in nearly every textbook about science fiction since it came out. Yet I’d never heard anything better than mixed reviews for it. However, it was a film by George Roy Hill so at least I knew whatever I thought it would be a good piece of film craft.
Anyway, Slaughterhouse-Five tells the story of Billy Pilgrim, played by Michael Sacks, a veteran and former POW who survived the firebombing of Dresden. Due to being abducted by the Tralfamadorians, alien from the fourth dimension, he is unstuck in time. Going back and forth between his time in the war, and his life afterward, and his experience in the alien zoo. Witnessing every possible tragedy along the way including the aforementioned bombing of Dresden, a war buddy getting shot in an SS firing squad, surviving a plane crash and his wife dying in a self-inflicted traffic accident… So it goes.
I think you really need to be familiar with the book to appreciate this film, otherwise, the nonlinear storytelling doesn’t make much sense. Otherwise, I thought it was a solid adaptation, though perhaps they cut it down a little bit too much.
For one thing, no one ever said the key phrase, “So it goes”, even once.
The next film on my list, Alan Rudolph ’s adaptation of Breakfast of Champions, tells the story of Dwayne Hoover, played by Bruce Willis, a successful but mentally unstable car salesman. If his slowly deteriorating mental condition wasn’t bad enough. He’s even more stressed out by “Hawaain week” (his dealership’s biggest sales week of the year) His wife is popping pills, his best friend and his sales manager (Nick Nolte) obsession with being outed as a crossdresser is affecting his work. Into this seething pit comes hack science fiction writer, Kilgore Trout who has been invited to attend a local art festival with just the right match.
I had not heard many good things about Breakfast of Champions when it first came out and regrettably, most of those critics weren’t far off. While I don’t think I found it painful, like Mr. Vonnegut did, it didn’t much for me either. To be honest I’m at a loss how a director could do such a stream of thought novel like Breakfast of Champions, right.
Still, Albert Finney’s performance as Kilgore Trout made it at least partially worth the slog.
This week I decided to clear my palette a bit with some Japanese science fiction, or more accurately live action, kaiju free science fiction. Regrettably, I kind of rushed into the idea without enough research leaving me with films where whether they where science fiction or not may have been a stretch, or they weren’t a good pick to begin with.
The first film I watched, Hiroshi Teshigahara’s The Face of Another. It tells the story of Okyauma, (played by Tatsuya Nakadai) a man who has had his face destroyed in an industrial accident. Afterward, he becomes alienated from society and straining his relationship with his wife.
A plastic surgeon gives him the opportunity to try a perfect but experimental mask, that will let him pass as an ordinary person. At the same time, however, it gives him perfect anonymity. He quickly gets intoxicated by the possibilities and plans to take advantage of the possibilities and take revenge on the people he believes have wronged him.
This was a very interesting film. It’s beautifully done. Though at the same time it’s very artsy and has the feel of a philosophy treatise so as well done as it is I don[t think it’s quite everybody’s thing.
I was aware of Machine Girl for some time. I don’t quite remember when I heard of it. It was either a poster at a video store or I saw a trailer for it before an anime film. Either way I thought it would be an enjoyable second choice when the film on my list had not been available… Really.
Ami Hyuga (Minase Yashiro) is a typical high school student whose brother is killed by bullies with Yakuza and Ninja connections (yes really) In the process she looses has her arm cut off. She replaces it with a machine gun attachment and goes on a roaring rampage of revenge.
This movie didn’t do anything for me. I have read it has been meant as a parody of a lot of schlock b-rated Japanese grindhouse movies. I even have a few friends who like it as such. For me, however, this was mostly splatter porn and difficult to watch.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvtoaOXgPsU
I’ve been a fan of the Youtube channel History Buffs and have been pointed towards several good movies by it. Most recently I was pointed towards a new film about a great naval battle against incredible odds. From there I just had to do was watch films about great naval victories.
Anyway, the film that History Buffs recommended was Kim Han-min’s Admiral: Roaring Currents that tells the story of the Japanese Invasion of Korea and how they were finally defeated by the Korean Admiral Yi Sun-sin (played by the great Choi Min-sik ) in the Battle of Myeongnyang. The Korean forces have been nearly defeated and Yi’s small fleet of 12 ships is vastly outnumbered by the Japanese. But through a combination of discipline, knowledge of the waters of the Myeongnyang strait and mounted cannons, he wins in one of the greatest victories in naval history.
This was a really cool movie. It starts slow, getting started. Letting us know exactly what kind of odds the Korean forces are up against having lost most of their navy in previous battles. It occurs to me that a lot was left out in the backstory but I assume Yi Sun-sin is enough of a national Korean hero that a lot of his biography is taken for granted, like George Washington in any film about the revolutionary war.
The actual battle of Myeongnyang, which makes up nearly half of the film is truly spectacular making you really feel like you’re there. (Though while they looked pretty cool I didn’t see the point of the “fish eye” view shots)
A lot of this film reminded me quite a bit of John Woo’s Red Cliff, complete with ships catching fire (though in this case, it was just a set back)
Since I started with a great eastern naval victory, I figured I’d head back for a similar naval victory here in the west, and the best one I could think of was the Spanish Armada. Regrettably, there were not nearly as many films on the topic as I expected. I ended up with Shekhar Kapur’s sequel to his very successful film Elizabeth, Elizabeth: The Golden Age.
Elizabeth ( Cate Blanchett) is secure in her role as queen of England. However she is surrounded by conspiracy everywhere, led by the figurehead of her cousin, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots(Samantha Morton), and in the background, Philip II of Spain is building a great armada of ships and is waiting for just the right excuse to use it to attack the protestant upstart.
This was a pretty fun film. Like Kapur’s first film it’s quite stylized and plays fast and loose with a lot of the history. (The biggest example was giving much of the deeds of Sir Francis Drake to Sir Walter Raleigh (Clive Owen)) The drama’s good with a good performance from Kate Blanchet. Even though it’s buildup to the Armada was the main point of the film, the climax of the Armada was pretty much an afterthought, with just enough flash to tell us it was impressive and that the English were very, very lucky.
