The Illuminated Lantern

Iron King

2010-04-08T03:17:22Z

A Japanese superhero program that ran for 26 episodes from 1972-73. Similar to ULTRAMAN, each episode featured a guest giant monster that must be defeated by the heroic Iron King. Sounds tiresome, but the format is redeemed in the details: The hero, Gentaro Shizuka (Shoji Ishibashi) does not become the giant Iron King, instead, his goofy sidekick Goro Kirishima (Mitsuo Hamada) does. And not only that, Iron King doesn't defeat the giant monster all by himself: usually Gentaro must come along, and using only his "Iron Belt", which transforms into a very long whip or a sword, and a handful of grenades, Gentaro must finish off the monster himself, in action set-pieces that defy all known laws of physics and have terrible problems with scale. But the leads are such fun that it is hard not to be swept along with the show.

]]> The 26 episode series is basically broken into three stories, or three groups of villains that Gentaro and Goro must face. First up is the Shiranui Clan, who control giant robots and want to conquer Japane as "revenge against the Yamato Clan", to whom they feel a "2,000 year old hatred." Heady stuff for a kids show, the bad guys are basically terrorists, and in some episodes a relative of one of the villains tries to plead for them to leave the evil group, and come back to their family, with predictably dire consequences.

The second batch of villains is perhaps a bit less serious, the Phantom Militia, who wear primary-colored outfits topped by white Bedouin headscarves. They are still mad terrorists, though. They control a group of not just robots but monster-robots, making the giant battles a whole lot more interesting. The third and final batch of bad guys are the Titanians, a group of aliens from outer space who dress like Zorro and wear white face masks. Come to think of it, a bit of V FOR VENDETTA, really. According to the comprehensive and interesting liner notes included in the DVD set, compiled by the ever-reliable and authoritative August Ragone, the show switched to aliens because the kiddies were getting a bit confused about the villains being altogether too human. Not sure if that helps, though, because the aliens immediately start "body-jacking" innocent villagers, women, and children, and fighting Gentaro and Goro while in those human forms.

I had the pleasure of watching IRON KING with a seven-year-old boy. It was his first subtitle-reading/watching experience, except for a few segments of the ULTRAMAN DVD from the same company, which appeared whenever the dubbing dropped out (certainly a horrible thing to happen on a dub track, and yet, the occasional drop-outs gave him some much needed little bits of practice that probably made him feel willing to try IRON KING in the first place). He had no trouble, though sometimes the words did go "a little too fast." He immediately idolized Gentaro - he kicks ass, plays the guitar, and the ladies love him - and slowly grew to really like Goro, too, in ways he never attached to the ULTRAMAN cast. (The stiff hero Hayata is fine, but the fact that he disappears, and is replaced by ULTRAMAN during the action scenes, makes it harder to identify with his heroism. And the rest of the team are sort of goof-balls). Basically, he thinks Gentaro is pretty much the coolest guy in the world. The girls were a lot harder to like. The first is sort of a friend/sort of an undercover spy (Chieko Morikawa), but she departs the show by the end of the Shiranui clan story, and is replaced by one-off heroines until the end of the series, when our heroes are joined by Officer Noriko Fujimori (Chiaki Ukyo), who scolds them regularly.

Too bad that Japanese children's programming from the 70's is not exactly what you might call politically correct.

Too bad that Japanese children's programming from the 70's is not exactly what you might call politically correct. Sometimes, Gentaro is a complete bastard. He ignores people in peril to focus on defeating the main villains, puts people in danger as bait to draw the bad guys in, and generally lacks compassion - maybe just outwardly, but still. In one episode, he kisses a nun just so she would leave them alone. Goro acts as his conscience, though, and the two strike a good balance.

Still, in an era when Sesame Street releases old episodes of its TV show but labels them inappropriate for kids today, and Whoopie Goldberg provides a disclaimer at the front of Looney Tunes boxed sets to warn that a few of the cartoons may have inappropriate stereotypes, a little more warning of the polically incorrect bits would have been nice. The worst moment was in episode 12, when Gentaro finally takes a little break from his adventures -- previously he and Goro were always out in the woods, camping, living off the land, and fighting the bad guys. He is depressed, and next thing you know he is sitting at a hotel bar swigging some booze and smoking up a storm. I could hear an audible gasp from the chair next to mine -- and the wheels turning, trying to reconcile the hero with this new vice. (At least, he doesn't start smoking again until episode 24). Parents watching with their kids who are not interested in promoting an interest in smoking might wish to skip those episodes. If you would rather avoid bad language, that's much harder, as outbursts of "Bastards!" and "Damn it!" are quite common, but I thought relatively harmless.

Parents may also want to be prepared for the introduction of the Titanians at the end of Episode 18. They say nothing, they just laugh, in their immobile white masks, then suddenly their shadows stretch out and grow into the sky. In other words -- pure nightmare candy. I still remember a dream I had when I was six years old about shadows very similar to those cast by the Titanians in that moment. Watch it early in the day, perhaps, or follow up right away with the next episode, which largely de-mystifies the Titanians and makes them just another bad guy group in need to of a good smackdown.

Despite these flaws, IRON KING is great fun and compares quite favorably with the classic original ULTRAMAN. In IRON KINGs favor, the two leads are really great, and I'm a sucker for regular human beings fighting against giant monsters, which I find much more interesting than the monster vs. robot wrestling matches almost every episode of every Japanese superhero series eventually devolves to. In ULTRAMANs favor, each episode has a unique self-contained story. I understand that IRON KING is more the norm in this respect, but I do find it a bit tedious when episode 1 features 10 bad guys, and the leader says, "Bad Guy #1, go!!!!", and next episode, they face #2, and so on through 10 episodes. Happily, the stories get increasingly diverse in IRON KING as the series progresses.

BCI plans to release more Japanese superhero shows from the seventies to DVD, including SILVER MASK, which was made by the same production team and immediately proceeded IRON KING, and SUPER ROBOT: RED BARON, which immediately followed. Given the quality of this release both in terms of the package and the program itself, it's likely I will be picking up the others as well, though I'm already skeptical that anything else could match the fun of IRON KING.

Kyon Ki...it's Fate

2010-04-08T03:06:39Z

Anand (Salman Khan) committed murder but was declared insane and placed in an asylum, where psychologist Dr. Sunil (Jackie Shroff) and Tanvi (Kareena Kapoor) look after him. Anand is a endearingly cute, simpleminded madman, and as it turns out, his father helped Dr. Sunil earn his degree, while Dr. Tanvi treats him cruelly at first, but is finally softened by his charm. Her father (Om Puri), the director of the asylum, on the other hand, prefers handling him with electroshock therapy, especially as punishment for his many minor infractions.

]]> Of course, the film makes a travesty of insane asylum conditions and actual mental illness, a point which made psychiatrists in Mumbai protest the film and demand edits. Apparently, they are not a very influential bunch, since none were made. It hardly makes a difference, anyway. A proper edit of the film would take about two hours out.

The first 40 minutes of the film are quite promising, though. Anand is committed, and his interaction with the other inmates is sweet. The highlight of the film comes when he tries to explain how important music is to a full life, in an attempt to get enough inmates to vote for having the sound system play music during the day.

If only the film kept along that tack, it would have been a highlight of Salman Khan's career. Unfortunately, the film derails shortly afterwards. First, Tanvi reads up on his endless backstory. How did he end up in an asylum? Well, it's a loooong story. The short version is he spotted a sexy nun-in-training and wooed her away from God to be with him, then a tragic accident occurs, and he goes crazy. Then, our Doctor heroes begin the long rehabilitation process, which involves a lot of singing and running around in the hills nearby. Tanvi's father, meanwhile, arranges for her marriage to some shmuck, but she gets all gaga for Anand, so Daddy needs to abuse his power and make sure he stays committed, even when it seems he has recovered. Too bad the other inmates were unceremoniously dumped in order to fit in all the romance. Without them, the entire enterprise gets dull quite quickly. The proceedings aren't helped by a flat performance from Kareena Kapoor and an all-out bad one from an exceptionally unconvincing Jackie Shroff.

Those who believe all Bollywood movies are cheap knock-offs of Hollywood productions will want to lick their hand to slick their hair back as they declare it to be a cheap rip-off of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST. Well, maybe so, to an extent, and certainly director Priadarshan is known to be a serial plagarist. But it isn't quite that simple: The movie is actually a remake of his own Malayalam film THALAVATTAM, which one could say was inspired by CUCKOO. Though really, it steals far more plot points from KHAMOSHI, a psyciatric hospital drama from 1969 in which a nurse falls in love with her patient, who, when cured, no longer recognizes her. But in fact I would say our plagarist-seeker is half right in this case: KYON KI bears no resemblance to CUCKOO at first -- but then, in the end, there arrives a plot twist that could only exist because it was stolen from CUCKOO, otherwise, it didn't have any reason to be there.

The Happenings

2010-04-07T20:16:26Z

Viewers of Hong Kong Cinema in 1980 could be forgiven for thinking the world was coming to an end. The old societal customs no longer held, and the new was open to endless possibility in the imagination, but narrowed by poverty and circumstance into a futile struggle to find some purpose, any purpose, worth having. In Patrick Tam's Nomad, teens hung out and tuned out of a society in which they couldn't find a place, but which wouldn't let them go except in death. In Tsui Hark's Dangerous Encounter - 1st Kind, the bored kids turn to a darker place, and get their kicks killing cats and making bombs, with however similarly disasterous consequences. Somewhere in the middle, then, sits THE HAPPENINGS, its teen protagonists neither dropping out of society nor willfully destroying it. Instead, they just carouse through life, drinking, dancing, partying, stealing, for no other reason than listless boredom. And very quickly, things start getting out of control.

]]> The kids steal a car, because it is a fancy buggy that some idiot left the keys in. A crime of opportunity, taken on a whim. They cruise the city streets, and stop at a remote gas station to fill the tank, but without any money, they need to come up with some kind of scam to get away, one which the grownups don't take too kindly to. The gas station attendants would rather fight it out than let the kids get away with a lousy tank of gas.

Accidents happen, people die, lives turn to shit. They never really knew how to fit in to society at large, how it really worked, so of course they have no idea how to handle a situation when it goes wrong.

What's worse, and what makes THE HAPPENINGS such a powerful film, is that the adults aren't particularly mature, either. No real father figures, elder brothers, wise men, sympathetic elders -- nothing. When the kids try to get away with not paying for their gas, the gas attendants go ballistic, and one (Wong Yut Fei in an early role) starts swinging a crowbar with no regard for how lethal it is. The adults lose control as quickly as the teens. When Cheung Kwok Keung takes the stolen car to show his brother, his brother admonishes him not to steal -- "unless you are going to rob a bank," he adds, while removing the car stereo and leaving with it. When one of the boys seeks shelter with a prostitute to avoid the cops, she simply tries to extort him for all he's worth. No one has much control. Everyone is self-obsessed. And as a consequence, no one can possibly help these kids.

"Don't steal -- unless you are going to rob a bank!"

But it doesn't matter, anyway, because it becomes clear the kids wouldn't know what help looked like anyway and wouldn't take it if offered, except to get out of today's jam and into tomorrow's. They, too, have no loyalty to others, no perspective, no plans. When a detective stumbles across them, one of the girls quickly starts shouting "I didn't kill! It was him! It was him!" and even though she travels with the gang, taunts that they will be punished for what they did, not even seeing that her very presence makes her an accomplice. There is no solidarity between friends, only scared bundles of raw energy that fly apart at the slightest touch.

Yim Ho's first two films, THE EXTRAS and THE HAPPENINGS, are two of the most frenetically exciting, out-of-control Hong Kong films ever made. Each feature protagonists who are unable to control their destiny, and are swept along by events without a pause to reflect or time to act. Or worse, when they finally are able to act, their actions only make matters worse. Nothing is simple in these films, every action has its consequences, and most of all, there is a feeling that no one is fully in control, nobody understands what is safe and what is dangerous, nobody can clearly explain right and wrong. The viewer experiences the utter helplessness of the protagonist's situation. The filmmaker best known for frenetically paced films has to be Tsui Hark, but in his films, the flurry of action makes the viewer giddy with excitement and eager to see what will happen next, compared to the experience in Yim Ho's films, of nervousness and alarm.

In an interview published by the Hong Kong Film Festival ("Hong Kong New Wave: 20 Years After"), Yim Ho states that his first films were "experiments" and that he didn't understand how to make a film until he made HOMECOMING, his fourth picture, in 1984. I suppose this is an understandable view for him to take, given that this film was not very successful, while HOMECOMING won armloads of awards and prestige. But I respectfully disagree. Although many of his films are unfortunately not easily available, those that I have seen suggest that these first films were among the best he ever made, and deserve a place on every Hong Kong cinema enthusiast's shelves -- provided a decent home video release ever materializes for them. For now, Joy Sales has released THE HAPPENINGS on VCD, so it will have to do.

Pyaasi Nagin

2010-04-07T19:57:58Z

A complete rip off of the classic 1976 film Nagin. While it isn't quite scene-for-scene, a la Gus Van Sant's PSYCHO, it is pretty damn close. As if pretending otherwise, the movie opens with a disclaimer that "All the characters in this film are fictitious and bear no resemblance to any communities, person living or dead." I half expected the disclaimer to also state, "And the film is nothing like NAGIN. Really, we're being totally serious." The director even puts his name above the title, so it reads, "Kishan Shah's PYAASI NAGIN," as if putting his name in front somehow helps him own the material.

]]> The story, familiar to viewers of NAGIN, is this: a writer saves a snake man in the woods, who tells him about when he's about to meet his mate. The writer gathers up a group of his friends to peep on them, but when the snake man turns into a cobra, one of the guys shoots it, thinking he is saving the girl from being bit. Not quite, though, since she's a snake woman, and they've just murdered her boyfriend. So, she hunts them down, one by one, and murders them.

The story is told in a completely perfunctory way, this time out, since I suppose the director assumes everyone knows the story already. He skips rationalizing any of it, making sense of any of it, and providing any kind of character for any of the victims to be, again I suppose assuming the previous movie had already done that. Which makes this remake completely pointless, and much, much, worse.

How much does this movie follow NAGIN? Well, lets take a look at a couple scenes.

First, the novelist saves the snake man, and asks, "How do you survive out here?" From the 1976 movie:

From this one:

Not even the songs are original, with several of the tracks lifted directly from NAGIN. The only difference between the two movies during those points, is that in this new one, there is a quick shot of a boom box sitting nearby. I guess this is meant to suggest that the characters in this movie aren't singing, the songs from NAGIN just happened to be playing on the radio nearby.

[IMAGE: "Hey, let's listen to the soundtrack of NAGIN while a snake woman dances outside, OK?"]

PYAASI NAGIN has the feel of a home movie copy of a classic that some dudes put together for a laugh and uploaded onto Youtube. The cast is uncharismatic, goofy looking, and a bit on the hefty side, even for Bollywood. And the dancing is seriously bad. How bad? How about one more comparison.

The snake people cavorting, circa 1976:

And in 2004:

[Shudder.] Theoretically, PYAASI NAGIN could be good for a laugh, but it really isn't. It is so tirelessly derivative that it offers nothing new of any interest.

Nagin (1976)

2010-04-07T18:40:42Z

Two Snake Spirits are about to consummate their love in human form when some idiot shoots the male snake (Jeetendra). The female snake (Reena Roy), deprived of a good shag, vows revenge on the people who killed her lover. It's sort of a rape-revenge film, except instead of revenging a rape, she's revenging coitus interrupted. "Those rascals changed our copulation night to a mourning night," he says before breathing his last.

]]> The snake killer meant no harm, really. They were all there because Ujay (Sunil Dutt) had saved the snake man the day before from a nasty vulture (suspended by visible wires). Ujay was writing a book about snakes who transform into men and so Jeetendra spilled the beans and let him know where he was going to be the following night. Uday got all five of his buddies together, and they went out to watch. Unfortunately, one of them had an itchy trigger finger, and when he saw the woman in human form and the man in snake form, he thought the snake was going to bite her and he shot it.

The guys leave, not sure whether to believe they are in trouble or not. But that very night, the guy who shot the snake is killed.

It might seem that such a tired revenge plot would be boring, but it isn't. Usually, when a killer is eliminating people one at a time throughout a movie, we don't sympathize with many of the victims. Often, they are two dimensional, or, if fleshed out, not particularly sympathetic. In NAGIN, it's different. The movie takes time to develop each of the men, their strengths and weaknesses, before the snake woman (or Nagin, hence the title) attempts to kill them. One of the guys is single, raising a cute little girl. Another is about to be married to a young hippie girl. A third cuts quite the rug and is also a romancer. Still another is an athiest who despises his devout wife -- at least he does, until the body count makes him think again about the possibilities of the supernatural. This character surprised me the most, in fact: I know from experience the athiest never survivies this type of film, usually they are taught the error of their ways before getting whacked. And while NAGIN followed the standard template in this regard, our friendly neighborhood athiest ends up being quite a bit more sympathetic than you might otherwise expect.

Bollywood Movie Rule #35: The Atheist always converts, or is killed, or both in rapid succession.

The Snake Woman is also handled in an interesting manner. She clearly becomes deranged with hatred. Her method of getting close to the men involves taking on the appearance of their loved ones -- giving the all-star cast of women some time both to be proper and respectable AND to vamp it up when playing the Nagin in disguise. The men have some protection: magic amulets, given to them by a fakir, and a few tricks: The Nagin apparently appears as her true self (a snake) when seen in a mirror.

The special effects are clumsy, homemade affairs compared to today's CGI work, but nevertheless endearing and occasionally effective. Cobras lunging through the air, changing back and forth between man and snake, and a snake charmer that can replicate himself are just some of the effects on display. The occasional shooting of a cobra and cobra-on-cobra fighting appear to be real, needless to say it is entirely likely that several cobras were harmed during the making of NAGIN.

NAGIN would be quite recommended were it not for the music, which is suited to fast foward. The snake woman sings endlessly about her lost love, who then makes post-death appearances in her songs to pick up the male vocal parts. One song about snake love is fine, but she just keeps going and going. In fact, almost all of the musical numbers in the film feature the snake couple frolicking. And I've got to say, one look at the snake man frolicking about and you want to take that girl aside and say, "there are plenty of snakes in the jungle, dear. Get over it."

An Empress and the Warriors

2010-04-07T18:25:37Z

For a little while, there, Chinese movies once again had international audiences, the size of which they hadn't seen since Bruce Lee. For that, they had to thank Ang Lee's Croutching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), and Zhang Yimou's Hero (2002). In addition the mainland market was for the first time wide open, provided that films were made as "co-productions" including mainland cast members, and did not concern themselves with banned politically charged topics like, say, letting the bad guy get away at the end of a movie, or showing supposedly real supernatural events, or, I don't know, mentioning Tibet. So what better way to rake in cash in both the international and mainland markets than to create a big, slick, epic, historical action picture? But the boom years are over. Chinese cinema forgot to diversify their portfolio, and the epic market has crashed. And burned. Or, if not the market as a whole, certainly, AN EMPRESS AND THE WARRIOR did.

]]> That's not to say there may still be some good epic movies to be made. Battle of Wits (2006), for example, was superb. It is simply that no one will care.

Look at the attention paid here to bring to life ancient China, with each character's armor individually crafted, and each main character with their own specially distinct sword. The image is lovingly color-graded in post production, to give it that glossy "expensive-movie" glow. Almost the entire cast plays their roles as if they were making something as profound as Shakespeare, and as visually exciting as Lord of the Rings.

Ah, but it just isn't so. The direction, by the legendary action choreographer and Director Ching Siu-Tung, is perfunctory. I waited through the entire film hoping to see an interesting angle, a new way to stage an entrance or develop a dramatic scene, but it never came. I believe that a person could actually assemble this film, shot for shot, out of movies already made. Let's see -- slow motion horse's hooves, galloping through water -- found it! And what have we here: oh! Applying medicine to a woman who is very shy about the violation -- yes, yes, here! And so on, and so on.

The direction is so unoriginal I believe that a person could actually assemble this film, shot for shot, out of movies already made.

Though the direction is disappointing, the story, such that it is, must out of all elements be the one that wears the dunce cap. Kingdoms at war, King dies, wants to pass Kingdom on to orphan general Muyong Xuehu (played by Donnie Yen) instead of his blood relative, not realizing that will lead to civil war (apparently a bit of an idiot King), so princess (Kelly Chen) assumes the throne instead. She gets attacked, then is mended by peaceful man Duan Lanquan (Leon Lai) living on the outskirts of civilization. They fall in love, she advocates peace instead of war, complications ensue.

The trouble here is in the moral conception of the world. War = bad? Peace = good? Maybe. But this isn't explored in any detail, it is just assumed. Compared to the political complexity of Battle of Wits, this movie is simply moronic.

It looks good, though even this strength turns against the film when we are taken to Duan Lanquan's peaceful home, which overspending by the Production Design department has made it look like it was built by the Swiss Family Robinson, or maybe the set from the Spielburg misfire Hook (1991). It is utterly ridiculous, and yes, while the princess is there, he also invents a backscratcher and a hot air balloon.

There are some good moments to be had. The cast is entirely competent, and though as expected Kelly Chen never quite convinces, she isn't completely horrible, either. And in the end, Donnie gets an action scene that would have made Chang Cheh proud (when reassembling this film out of previously made films, look for some Chang Cheh/Ti Lung films for this part). And it may be more enjoyable the second time around, once the expectations game has been played out. Then again, I can't really envision watching the movie a second time, considering there are no additional layers or subtext to the film. You'd be better off going back to watch a more complex historical love story, like House of Flying Daggers (2004). All style and no substance leaves AN EMPRESS AND THE WARRIORS feeling old, tired, and spent, like the Chinese historical epic genre as a whole.

China Town

2010-04-07T18:12:09Z

CHINA TOWN opens like any number of "Yellow Peril" Hollywood B-movies from the 30's: The classic "Oriental Riff" kicks off while the opening credits appear like chopsticks. Sometimes I wonder if movies are set in Chinatown just to enable a perverse desire on the part of the director to sink into these tired cliches. But CHINATOWN almost immediately steps ahead, as the opening song transforms into a delightful Ravi song picturized on everyone's favorite item-number dancer, Helen, playing the bar girl Suzie (Wong?). And then: two Shammi Kapoors, one good, one bad, prefiguring the classic DON.

]]> Bad Shammi is a gangster named Mike who has an opium addiction, treats Suzie like trash even though she loves him, and has a number of annoying mannerisms, especially a dismissive whistle and hand gesture that I am greatly relieved never caught on in the real world. He also makes dramatic pronouncements about himself in the third person, like "Time moves along with Mike, not the other way around."

But he gets caught by the police, who then haul in good Shammi, a singer named Shekhar, who was trying to woo Rita (Shakila), the daughter of a rich man who despises idle crooners. When Shekhar takes over for Mike in the gang, his girlfriend thinks he is a criminal after all, but meanwhile Shekhar's mom reveals that he had a twin, and that they were separated at birth. Could the criminal be his long lost brother? Sweet lord, it's a Bollywood film, of course he is!!!

Shammi Kapoor films are usually bright and fun films filled with songs and romance. China Town has its share of both but puts a dark noir on top. The stakes keep rising, until finally Mike's shoemaker -- its hard to explain, but the gang seems to have its own shoemaker -- finally puts it all together, leading to a melodramatic, action filled climax.

"Time moves along with Mike, not the other way around!"

Opium dens and Chinese gangsters seem a strange fit in an Indian film, but the picture takes place in Calcutta, which is in fact the only Indian city to have its own Chinatown, one with a long and rich history. The Chinese filled jobs that the locals were unwilling to take (just as they did everywhere), in this case, work in the "unclean, low caste" leather industry, among others. There were also plenty of Chinese gangsters and opium dens.

On top of everything, the movie was released in 1962, the same year as the Sino-Indian war. During this time, many Chinese left India, and those that stayed were suspected of aiding the enemy and some even sent to internment camps. That this film, depicting thuggish, suspicious Chinese, was released in this year was just one more way that the enemy was dehumanized. Comparing how poorly Pakistani soldiers come off in today's Bollywood films, though, the Chinese get an exceedingly fair shake here (and Helen is meant to play the sympathetic Chinese girl Suzie, which mines a whole different stereotype, but nevermind).

But: I love the movie anyway, from the wonderful performances of Shammi Kapoor and Helen, to the Chinese-inspired soundtrack, to the terrible "yellowface" makeup worn by some of the supporting cast. It's got enough Shammi for fans of his usual antics, and enough serious to not turn off viewers unused to Bollywood conventions.

Links for March 2010

2010-03-09T05:40:59Z

Hollywood is afraid to make movies about terrorism, so the world will learn of it through Bollywood.

Films of Pauline Chan, part one and two.

Peter Hessler writes another great book about his life in China, Country Driving.

Jackie Chan makes a strategic retreat from Hong Kong?

Typefaces of 70s Bollywood Movie Titles.

Beast Stalker

2010-02-23T03:30:41Z

Nicholas Tse is a cop searching for redemption, Nick Cheung a killer for hire. When a dedicated, crusading attorney (Jingchu Zhang) goes up against a triad killer (Patrick Keung), he authorizes the kidnapping of her daughter, and promises she will be killed unless she destroys the incriminating evidence against him. From there on it's Nic vs. Nick, fighting it out over the fate of one seriously adorable little girl. A well crafted, well acted, high tension thriller, let down only by the complete pointlessness of it central organizing conceit: a car accident in which everyone's lives are "changed forever".

]]> Before the accident, the film establishes Nic Tse and Kai Chi Liu as partners in a police squad, having just finished a bust, while the triad baddy has just busted out of jail. They happen across the jailbird just as he switches cars, and follow in pursuit, causing a car accident. When the accident happens, one of the other cars just happens to be the attorney prosecuting his case! The passengers in the fourth car of the accident are not "revealed" until the end of the film, but you would have to be particularly inattentive not to realize that Nick Cheung's glass-covered, scarred face and near immobilized wife (Miao Pu) were results of that same crash.

Still, implausible coincidence can sometimes serve a good story. Consider Kate Atkinson's recent crime novel ONE GOOD TURN, which opens with what appears to be an incident of road rage, stopped on the spur of the moment by a mystery writer nearby. He then becomes the target of a killer, while many of the onlookers to the event end up woven into the tale neatly and we learn, among other things, that "no good deed goes unpunished". Not so with BEAST STALKER. The accident really changes almost nothing in these characters lives, other than their physical conditions. They are: aggressive cop, dedicated attorney, triad bad guy, and hired killer before the accident, and they are the same afterwards. Sure, our lead cop is having a bit of a mental breakdown because of all the damage he has caused, but it feels more like a leave-of-absence sort of problem rather than something long term. So what was the point? Why build up such an elaborate set piece but leave the audience with nothing other than maybe thinking, boy, that sure was clever? I'm asking, I really have no idea.

So what was the point? Why build up such an elaborate set piece but leave the audience with nothing other than maybe thinking, boy, that sure was clever?

It's frustrating because just little script changes could have made the whole thing work. Make Nick Cheung a reformed ex-con, trying to go straight, who has to then turn back to crime to pay for his medical expenses. Make the accident the cop's fault, to make sure he has someone to resent. Have the attorney pick up the case AFTER being involved in the accident, not before, and her obsession leads to the dissolution of her marriage, etc. (I could be wrong with this last point, she might have been assigned to the case after the accident as it is. The subtitled dialog suggested that she had been on the case, and the opposing council wanted her dismissed because of her involvement with the accident, but she was kept on the case. Perhaps the spoken dialog is clearer). But see! Now the accident really is a pivotal event!

Oh, well. Enough with the back-seat directing. Because of the script failures, this film doesn't have legs quite in the same way that Dante Lam's classic BEAST COPS, which this film clearly connects itself with. But it does have some very good points that make it worth seeing, now, including great action sequences and very strong performances by the whole cast.

Nick Cheung bagged himself a Hong Kong Film Award for his multi-dimensional portrayal of a killer for hire. Seems like every time you turn around he's being celebrated again, but what the hell, he's paid his dues and he is certainly in his prime. Nicholas Tse delivers on his end as well and though he sometimes overplays, he nonetheless shows his strengths and he remains the one I most look forward to see in films among actors of his generation (sorry, Daniel, Edison, Eason, & etc). Kai Chi Liu also took home a HKFA for his supporting role, which is hardly fair as he's pretty much good in everything these days. I found no fault in the performance of Jingchu Zhang, except that she is distractingly beautiful, and in a film in which there is no romantic connection, couldn't they have cast a more normal looking actress for a change?

The action sequences are the real highlight, though. In an age of digital-everything, hyper-everything, action movies are ginned up to such extremes that sometimes I despair of ever seeing what a real person running down a real street might look like. thankfully, Dante Lam and action director Bruce Law has come to our rescue and has delivered a few painstakingly, carefully choreographed, realistic action sequences that are absolutely thrilling. The central car accident is just about perfect, but a couple foot chases between Tse and Cheung are where the film really delivers.

Links for the Week of February 2, 2010

2010-02-02T06:32:27Z

The most influential Chinese movie of the decade.

The future of Hong Kong Cinema.

Duriandave on the hunt for movies featuring Forbidden City cabaret performers from the 40's.

Bollywood band leader Ted Lyons, of Jan Pehchaan Ho fame, checks in with MemsaabStory.

The Beasts

2010-01-27T03:25:17Z

Siblings Ah Ling (Patricia Chong) and Ah Wah (Eddie Chan) join a fresh-faced group of city teens to take a weekend camping trip in the mountains outside of Hong Kong. Alas, the villagers don't care for visitors, much, and a group of vile, thuggish, "disco boys" have taken up residence in town, where they steal hens, hunt and butcher wild boar, and drink snake blood. They also like to rape girls, as no doubt consensual sex is pretty much out of the question for them. When these beasts run into the campers, the encounter leaves one girl brutalized and insane, and another camper impaled on a boar trap. When the police are unable to convict the gang, the teens father (Chan Sing) takes it upon himself to make sure justice is served.

]]> THE BEASTS is a brutal film about a depraved group of thugs who live in filth. While the campers neatly dab their sweat with a wet towel, these men clearly haven't bathed in a long, long time. They live with animals, reach their hands into vats of dead snakes, carry a pet baboon around on occasion. Director Dennis Yu is remarkably even able to convey the stench of their world, not only by having it remarked on when they go to a bar, but also in the reactions of the characters themselves. One rushes out of an outhouse when the police are coming, and later, when his hands are near his face, he smells his own shit. Another time the stench of a rotting corpse is so foul that after handling it, one character wipes his face with the back of his hand, and the smell makes him vomit.

Blood, vomit, shit, it's all there. But the Pearl City VCD version of the film is, I suspect, an edited version of the film (the rape scene, for example, contains no nudity). And it is not as harrowing as its American predecessors, TEXAS CHAIN SAW MASSACRE, or DELIVERANCE, in which the entire running time is given up to the hillbilly murderers chasing down and brutalizing their victims. Here, that's only the first half, the second half switching to more of a Charles Bronson DEATH WISH sort of sensibility.

Playing characters with mental disabilities is something of a regular sideline of Cheng's career.

The casual viewer might not recognize any of the actors in THE BEASTS save one, Kent Cheng, the "fatty" of countless Hong Kong films, in one of his very first movie roles. Here, he has shaved his head and plays the mentally handicapped cousin of one of the thugs. Playing characters with mental disabilities is something of a regular sideline of Cheng's career (WHY ME? (1985), BELOVED SON OF GOD (1988), HAPPY GO LUCKY (2003)), but he really does do it incredibly well and THE BEASTS is no exception.

While watching this landmark HK New Wave film it becomes apparent that a cleaned up, restored DVD release is desperately needed and in fact warranted. But I suspect this may not even be possible in this day and age. The soundtrack alone would make a quality, cleaned-up DVD release problematic, as everything from Genesis to The Police gets played on the boom box the city kids bring with them camping.

Lethal Ninja

2009-11-29T19:09:25Z

The Iga and Koga ninja are at each other's throats again, this time because Dr. Kikuchi, head of the Iga ninja, has developed a serum that cures everything, and an evil arch-villain named Brian (Waise Lee) wants it, and has the Koga kill Kikuchi to get it. Only trouble is, the serum is in a box that can only be opened by the "key" -- an unemployed, flute-playing street musician named Copy (Dayo Wong). Purple, red, and green-clad ninjas led by Hong Kong action veteran Eddy Ko hop about trying to save, kill, or kidnap Copy.

]]> A low-budget Japanese/Hong Kong co-production of the kind we're likely to see less of in the near future, as B-list Hong Kong actors don't exactly attract any box office in Japan, and Japanese actors don't help a production to get released in Mainland China. Which is too bad, because kickboxing champ Masato and cute Hisako Shirata turn in pleasing performances. Waise Lee is suitably villainous, as long as you can stop laughing every time someone calls him Brian. The star is without a doubt Dayo Wong, though, who does a good job being a sort of realistic slacker thrown into a weird ninja world. He gets all the best jokes, and is completely rude in the politest manner possible.

About the level of a typical straight-to-video production, its not surprising it sat on the shelf for a while (the end credits list the copyright date as 2004). The most problematic element of the production is the music, by Kiyoshi Yoshikawa, who scored the film with slow, echoey, cut-rate Kitaro. This undermines the credibility of Dayo Wong's character -- are we supposed to think his original music is good, or not? Because holy crap, it is awful. But overall, LETHAL NINJA is an inoffensive Saturday-afteroon ninja film that maintains a certain camp charm throughout, and ends with a winning postscript.

Under Construction

2009-08-30T16:16:44Z

This site suffered a complete loss of data; while many of the static pages still exist, the dynamic pages have been erased. The blog will be undergoing renovation for the next few months to clean up the mess.

Spooky Bunch, The

2004-03-30T20:54:14Z

A Cantonese Opera troupe gets mixed up with a platoon of ghost soldiers seeking revenge. Lots of atmosphere, little action.

]]>
The Cantonese Opera troupe version of Community Theater is invited to perform on remote Cheung Chao island by a Mr. Ma, under the condition that Ah Chi (Josephine Siao), a player normally confined to bit roles, plays the leading role in the performances. Mr. Ma also invites his nephew, the unfortunately named Dick Ma (Kenny Bee), to the island to watch the performances. He hopes by arranging this that his nephew Dick will marry Ah Chi, because of a curse that her grandfather placed on his grandfather. The curse was that they would bear no children. Uncle Ma feels that if they married, the curse would surely be broken. Dick Ma, quite the young gigolo apparently, is none too pleased with the idea.

The troupe parades through town, advertising themselves. One of the acrobats invites a pretty young woman to the show, who then mysteriously disappears. Was she a ghost? Well, naturally. Once they arrive at the theater the players halfheartedly go through the traditional rituals, such as burning incense for ghosts, but they don't really believe. Uncle Deng (who has what the others call "spooky eyes") believes, because he can actually see the ghosts. He tries his best to ignore them and stay out of their way, and keeps his ghostly visions to himself.

The opera troupe performs a selection from The Romance of the West Chamber. In it, Ah Chi plays the Hua Dan role of Cui Yingying's maid. The maid carries love letters between her mistress and her lover, Zhang Jumrei. The performance verges on unwatchable, but the audience is in a good mood and just heckles them and laughs. The play staggers along for only a short while when suddenly a spirit possesses the actor playing Zhang Jumrei, who they refer to as 'No. One.' The spirit, it turns out, is very playful, very much like a child. Her name, which must have caused her all sorts of grief at school, is Cat Shit. When she isn't busy possessing No. One, Cat Shit eventually becomes friends with Ah Chi.

For all intents and purposes, this film is a kind of horror-comedy. But every time it seems like something really funny is about to happen, someone horribly dies. Enough people die in this film to put a damper on any comedic qualities it might have had.

Once Cat Shit arrives, all kinds of possessions, murders, and spooky goings on start taking place. It is then that we learn Ah Chi's grandfather's curse is not the problem for Ma's family. Dick Ma's grandfather and Ah Chi's grandfather worked together. They gave 'forged' medicine to an entire military platoon, who were poisoned by it and died. The ghostly platoon then swore revenge, and have been haunting and killing off both families ancestors ever since.

When Dick's uncle winds up dead, he finally starts to take the situation seriously. He tries to help Ah Chi, who doesn't really believe any of it. Or, perhaps belief or disbelief does not come into play for Ah Chi. After talking to her for a while, we come to understand that Ah Chi has a brain the size of a pea. She's honest, innocent, naive, and extremly, wildly stupid. It comes as somewhat of a shock that she hadn't forgot to breath one day and died long before this. But, she's so endearingly cute that Dick is charmed by her anyway. Maybe she makes him feel smart.

The soldiers weren't the only ones who took the medicine. There's also Belle, a former prostitute. When it seems the opera troupe is out of a job and must pack up and leave, she pays the troupe to perform another day, and she requests two specific plays: Emperor Han and Wu Song Kills His Sister-in-Law. Then the spirit of an army Colonel possesses the lead actor, No. One. Poor guy, he spends most of the film possessed.

Wu Song Kills His Sister-in-Law is a powerful piece, and one which was carefully chosen by the ghostly players. In the story, Wu Song's sister-in-law commits adultery, then with her lover kills her husband in cold blood. We see the players perform the 'Deathbed Watch,' in which Wu Song is sitting in a chair, holding his brother's spirit tablet, when his brother's spirit appears in the form of a dwarf, and tells Wu Song what has occured. Afterwards, Wu Song slays his own sister-in-law (who is to be played by Ah Chi), an act which causes him to be sentenced to exile. The spirit soldiers use this play to air their own grievances, and exact their revenge on the living.

There are a lot of small touches in the film that allow the audience glimpses of old traditions and superstitions. The opera troupe is not allowed to talk backstage during their opening act, it's considered bad luck. The God Guan Yu, frequently a character in Chinese Opera, also has the power to defeat ghosts and other supernatural beings. When confronted by a vicious ghost, a cast member attempts to quickly don the costume and weapons of Guan Yu in an attempt to defeat the spirit. And at one point, when Cat Shit whines that she wants to watch TV, Dick Ma has some paper TVs made and burns them for her so she can watch them in the underworld (Incongrously to this old tradition, she tunes into a quick English lesson).

The Spooky Bunch explores the burden of history and tradition in modern China. Our heroes, Dick Ma and Ah Chi, are forced to take responsibility for a past that they had no part of, for the actions of people who they, too, despise. The absurdity of this responsibility is shown all the more forcefully in Ah Chi's character, who so clearly doesn't have a clue. Josephine Siao brings a remarkable level of charm to her irritating character, while 'new wave' director and auteur Ann Hui allows the story to unfold quietly and without fanfare, giving the picture an almost documentary quality. An entirely different approach to the supernatural than Sammo Hung's horror-comedy Encounter of the Spooky Kind, released in the same year.

Princess Chang Ping

2004-03-30T20:50:24Z

In John Woo's Peking Opera film, a scholarly Lao Sheng slides down a banister in slow motion, a gun in each hand, mowing down the Jing in an explosion of blood and doves...well, no, not really. This is a classic retelling of the well known Chinese Opera story, The Emperor's Daughter.

]]> The opera takes place during the Manchu invasion of China at the end of the Ming Dynasty (1644). The emperor Chung was doomed. With the Manchu warriors surrounding the palace, neither the emperor nor his family could escape. To preserve the honor of their dynasty, the women of the imperial household must kill themselves, as tradition demanded. The emperor's daughter is Princess Chang Ping. She was about to be wed to the scholar Chou Shih Hsien, whom she had just been all flirty and happy with. The emperor instead gives her a red scarf with which to hang herself, but Chou Shih Hsien stops her. Frustrated, the emperor kills her himself, to protect the family honor, then pops off to kill himself as well.

She doesn't die, though, and a court official recovers her and hides her away. Later, when that official decides to give her up to the new regime to get a nice promotion, she slips away and assumes the role of a Buddhist nun, where she lives a life of hard work and toil, in secrecy.

One day, Chou Shih Hsien comes by and spots the nun who looks so much like his beloved. He confronts her, and she reveals her identity, and they are reunited at last.

But, as is always the way with tragic love stories, their happiness does not last long. The new emperor, who looks identical to the old (here comes the new boss, same as the old boss) learns of their existence and invites them to marry and live happily together in his palace. This doesn't seem like too bad a turn to me, but in fact it would dishonor her father's dynasty and help justify the new emperor's claim to the throne. They pretend to go along with it for a while, to secure a decent burial for her father. Then, they pop off to the garden, they drink poison together and wait beneath a tree, to die. Has there ever been such a sad tale of star-crossed lovers since Romeo and Juliet? Or, since this is a musical, West Side Story?

The joy of an audience in watching an adaptation like this is not in the suprise of the story line. Most everyone would have heard of the story before, and know its general outlines. Rather the joy is in the production. How well is it directed? How are the sets, and the costumes? How well do the actors play their parts? On all of these accounts, Princess Chang Ping acquits itself nicely.

The stars, Loong Kim-Sang and Mui Suet-Si, were prodegees of the most famous Cantonese opera film stars of all time, Yam Kim-fai and Pak Suet-sin, who appeared in an obscene amount of films together during the 50s and 60s. Loong Kim-Sang, a woman, plays the role of the scholar Chou Shih Hsien, with Mui Suet-Si as Princess Chang Ping. Thus the two star-crossed lovers are both played by women. Some of the most famous opera stars of the mid 20th Century were women who played mens roles, just as at the beginning of the 20th Century, the most famous opera stars were men playing the womens roles. Times change, but at least cross-dressing remains a constant.

In the 70s, when this film was made, the opera film genre was all but dead, being replaced by the kung fu film. Nevertheless Princess Chang Ping became a box office success, under the steady and clean direction of John Woo, who would not become famous until a decade later when he directed the classic A Better Tomorrow.

Unfortunately, although I waited patiently for Chou Shih Hsien in true John Woo style to melodramatically mow down hundreds of opponents in slo-mo, guns in both hands, preferrably in a church with doves desperately fluttering the hell out of the way, it never happened. John Woo directs a pretty straight theatrical version of the story, though there are a few interesting moments. I especially enjoyed the end of one tragic love song, when the principals are holding each other tenderly, and all eyes are on them, when suddenly two men, completely covered in fire, stagger into the room and die. Nothing like two flaming soldiers to spoil a romantic moment. In general, though, this is a 'direct-by-numbers' film, with no particular style discernable.

The music is all traditional opera music. The drums play each time a character leaves the stage. The principal characters sing most of their lines. Everyone is in perfect costume, from the shape of their hats to the size of the large, jade belts worn around the waist. It's an excellent movie to watch to get a sense of Chinese Opera costume styles and acting conventions. It's also a great movie to pop in when you've gathered a bunch of friends over to your house with a promise to watch a "great, old John Woo movie I found!" Just make sure you've got Heroes Shed No Tears or A Better Tomorrow ready for when everyone threatens to bail out on you.