Miscellaneous Movie Musings: Part XXV

As the title suggests, so forth.

The Golden Age has passed

Alas, Kirk Douglas is dead. As plans for this week’s Sunday Breakfast with Patrick Doyle quickly change to pay tribute to the last great of Hollywood’s Golden Age something that’s occurred to me is just how vivid and indelible Kirk Douglas’ performances were. When I caught up with At Eternity’s Gate recently I kept faulting Willem Dafoe for not capturing Vincent Van Gogh in the way that Kirk Douglas did, though it had been over 20 years since I’d seen Lust for Life. When I finally saw My Darling Clementine a couple of years ago I kept inwardly (and occasionally outwardly, to the exasperation of the Engineer) sighing that Victor Mature was not measuring up to the Platonic Ideal of the nervy, doomed live-wire Doc Holliday, which was of course Kirk Douglas in Gunfight at the OK Corral which I hadn’t seen for a decade. Here are ten Kirk Douglas films I’m thinking about:

Build My Gallows High (1947)

Young Man with a Horn (1950)

Ace in the Hole (1951)

The Bad and the Beautiful (1952)

Lust for Life (1956)

Paths of Glory (1957)

Gunfight at the OK Corral (1957)

The Vikings (1958)

Spartacus (1960)

Seven Days in May (1964)

The means defeat the ends: Part IV

As rumours continue to swirl that JJ Abrams originally delivered an entirely different lousy Star Wars movie to Disney than the lousy Star Wars movie they released in cinemas one strand of speculation stands out. To wit, that the grand finale was severely reworked in deference to the sensibilities of the Chinese Communist Party. I knew when watching Taiwanese movie The Assassin a few years ago that the appearance of a ghost was a provocative move, but I didn’t really understand why the mainland was so firmly opposed to ghosts. I only recently read that the appearance of ghosts was associated with disorder and the loss of the mandate of heaven, and so the Party is eager for those associations of ideas not to start associating in the minds of the people. And of course Force Ghosts would start such associations, were they to physically appear as ghosts. But why else would Hayden Christensen have been on-set if not to physically reprise his role of Anakin Skywalker as a Force Ghost? It seems likely that he and others were originally physically present in the showdown between Super-Rey and the inexplicable zombie Emperor, but that the scene was reworked to make the Force Ghosts a mere vocal montage of pep talks. That is to say Disney completely reworked the scene in an attempt to make mucho money in China. But… Chinese audiences really couldn’t have made it any plainer that they could give a damn about Star Wars in toto. The idea that a finale which would have added some pizzazz belatedly to this asinine cash grab trilogy was scrapped for the sake of making mucho money in a territory where it was never going to make mucho money, at the cost of luring back disenchanted actual Star Wars fans in the rest of the world, blows the mind.

From the Archives: Clone Wars

Another deep dive into the pre-Talking Movies archives uncovers an infuriating Star Wars movie, plus ca change and all that.

Clone Wars sees George Lucas continue his Terminator like quest to destroy our childhood memories. He trashed Star Wars, gave us an unnecessary Indiana Jones, and now the only worthwhile piece of the Star Wars prequel enterprise is desecrated, presumably for the sake of consistency. And we have two Star Wars shows starting on American TV this autumn to suffer through. He just doesn’t stop…

Clone Wars follows our heroes (I use the term loosely given that neither displays any personality) Anakin and Obi-Wan as they rescue Jabba’s kidnapped son. This film takes all the worst elements of the prequels and magnifies them. Characters without quirks, dialogue that veers between plodding and unbearable, badly shot action completely without tension as we know the futures of the characters, droids and clones that are visually silly and emotionally uninvolving, and of course plots that are so hilariously over-plotted they become tedious twenty minutes in. This film runs for 100 minutes but feels closer to 200 so boring is the story of Anakin taking on an apprentice. Just to interest kids she’s the feisty/plucky/other patronising synonym for feisty girl Ahsoka, who teaches Anakin as much as she learns from him and….yeah. It’s that bad….

What really galls is that Lucas didn’t ask Genndy Tartakovsky to direct this film. Tartakovsky, the creator of Samurai Jack, is something of a mad genius. His hand drawn animation of the Clone Wars TV series was far superior to this insipid CGI and he was far less faithful to Lucas’ boring vision. He made three minute shorts devoted to showing the Jedi Knights being awesome which are at their best the coolest animation you’ll ever see, check out the dialogue free one where Sam Jackson’s character destroys a whole droid army using the Force. When he made longer episodes his storytelling and visual flair came off like an inspired blend of Hitchockian suspense, Spielbergian action choreography, and Sergio Leone’s use of outrageous close-ups to create mythic confrontations.

Was Lucas was appalled to find someone had made something awesome under his name by going so far off the reservation and decided to fix things by making a really faithful Clone Wars feature? That’s what it feels like. This is very bad, wretched beyond belief actually. The only positive to be drawn is encountering some genuine voice actors for once as only Christopher Lee and Samuel L Jackson reprise their live-action roles. All the other characters are voiced by actors talented enough to do more than one voice (Dreamworks Animation take a hint), the standout performance being the sexy/sinister huskiness of Nika Futterman as the Sith villainess Ventress.

This may be acceptable for very undemanding toddlers but it would be infinitely better for their creative development if parents just performed the original trilogy for them as sock puppet theatre.

0/5

By the time the screams for help were heard, they were no longer funny

After belatedly catching up with Jurassic World 2, which features the nastiest moment in all 5 movies, I felt compelled to finally flesh out some thoughts I’d been pushing around.

It’s rapidly approaching 15 years since the release of Kill Bill: Volume 1. I’ve been listening to Tomoyasu Hotei’s barnstorming instrumental ‘Battle without Honour or Humanity’, which successfully took on a life of its own unconnected to the movie; soundtracking everything on television sports for a while. I’m happy it did because I felt queasy in the Savoy all those years ago watching the ‘Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves’, and revisiting that sequence hasn’t made me like it any more now. 2003 in retrospect seems to have been huge anticipation repeatedly followed by huge disappointment – The Matrix Reloaded, Kill Bill: Volume 1, The Matrix Revolutions. Reloaded and Volume 1 both had epic fight scenes straining a muscle striving to be iconic. Reloaded’s Neo v Smiths didn’t work because of the overuse of farcically obvious CGI, and Volume 1’s Crazy 88 massacre didn’t work because of its incredibly excessive gore which wasn’t funny because of the screams of agony.

Like Reloaded there is a long build-up to the actual fight, with dialogue that wants to be quoted forevermore. Indeed the showy camerawork when the 88 arrive by motorcycle to surround the Bride is great. Unfortunately, like Reloaded, then the fight ensues. Shifting into black and white to placate the MPAA, and hide an embarrassing shortage of fake blood colouring, the choreography of the actual blade strokes is generally pretty obscured. What Tarantino wants you to focus on is the great fountains of blood every time the Bride lops off a limb. Tarantino clearly thinks these blood sprays are hilarious. Also he clearly thinks that people screaming in agony because they’ve just lost a limb and will be crippled for the rest of their life is hilarious. I don’t. And the moment where Sophie; who, mind, didn’t do anything to the Bride, she’s just friends with someone who did; has her arm cut off repelled me in the cinema and continues to repel me. It’s the sadism. She’s made to stand with her arm out for a long time, just waiting for the Bride to cut it off. And Tarantino lingers for a long time on her agony, because he finds it hilarious. Could it be funny like he thinks?

Edwyn Collins and Tarantino when given stick both brandished the Black Knight from Monty Python and the Holy Grail to justify the intrinsic comedy of amputation. But if you cite that for Kill Bill Volume 1 you are deliberately overlooking the most salient point. The amputation is comic only because of the Black Knight’s complete indifference to it. There is no gushing fountain of blood, there is no rolling around on the ground grimacing and screaming in agony for a long time. The Black Knight barely seems aware he’s lost a limb, or four. It’s the nonchalance, the insouciance that makes it funny. The comedy is the total disjunct between reality and perception. This is not Anakin at the end of Revenge of the Sith. Volume 1 is meant to be funny because of the total disjunct between the reality of how much blood comes out when a limb is amputated and Tarantino’s perception of that. Hence the Studio 60 gag about how a great fountain of blood from the Thanksgiving turkey sells the Tarantino reference and is funny, but a realistic trickle of blood does not make the reference and is instead incredibly disturbing. I hold that the comedy Tarantino thought he was making was lost because of the lack of disjunct between the reality of the characters losing a limb and their perception of that traumatic life-altering reality.

And then you have JJ Abrams, who must have thought this was a good idea until some sensible person talked him out of it before this horrific little scene had made it all the way thru post-production. No doubt Abrams thought it was fan service for Chewbecca to rip Unkar Plutt’s arm out of its socket and throw it across a room because he dissed him. Not realising apparently that there’s a large difference between the comedy value of a scare story used on a droid, “Let the Wookie win!”, and the grisly horror of it being done for real against a not terrifically villainous alien who feels pain, screams in pain, and won’t be able to get that arm put back on like a droid would. Dear God Abrams… But even that qualifier, not terrifically villainous, troubles; and not just because of this sketch

 

Tarantino doubled down on his punishment of Sophie for someone else’s crime. In a horrific addendum to the Japanese version, that mercifully didn’t make it to the Irish version and which I consequently only came across a few weeks ago for the first time, the Bride cuts off Sophie’s other arm.

Jurassic World took a lot of flak, and deservedly so, for Katie McGrath’s horrific death sequence. Prolonged, agonising, and random; because her character hadn’t done anything to deserve this punishment. And yet in Jurassic World 2 we have another prolonged and agonising death, but this time the writers have gone out of their way to justify it by giving the victim Trump sentiments.

Star Wars on Grafton Street

So, Domhnall Gleeson is playing a lead role in the new Stars Wars trilogy (He’s Luke Skywalker’s son. Just kidding, he’s not. He totally is), and, almost in his honour, this bank holiday weekend Stormtroopers will descend on Grafton Street…

It’s old news that George Lucas made his money from Star Wars by hanging onto the merchandising and sequel rights, which nobody at the studio cared about in the 1970s. Well, everybody cares now. And Disney in buying the rights to the Star Wars film franchise for a fantastic amount of money were never thinking they’d earn back that outlay with a new trilogy; especially not given that JJ Abrams, beloved though he is, has to win back the trust of a substantial chunk of the following after the disastrous prequels. No, they knew the return would come from merchandising.

So it begins… Disney Stores now for the first time have a Star Wars range available. Star Wars Stormtroopers will be at the Disney Store on Grafton Street this weekend for anyone with a burning desire to get taken into imperial custody, at least in a photo. The range of Star Wars products for all ages includes action figures, luggage bags, children’s dress-up, and a range of apparel, stationery and plushies. The new offerings (with prices ranging from €10 – €48) includes Saga Legends action figures (Mace Windu, Anakin, Obi-Wan, Shock Trooper, Super Battle Droid and R4-P17), extending light-sabres, Chewbacca plushies, Star Wars Stormtrooper t-shirts, and, my personal favourite, a Darth Vader voice changer helmet. (Want…) Fans will also have the opportunity to purchase exclusive 15 inch talking figurines (Darth Vader, Luke Skywalker, Han Solo or Stormtroopers) for €30 at select stores and online. Visit www.disneystore.ie to see the full range.

To celebrate the launch of this line, Disney Stores are tying in, via a major in-store, online and social media campaign, with #starwarsday, May the 4^th, the global fan-driven celebration of all things Star Wars. Disney Store guests can enter a competition to win 12 collector cards based on A New Hope and an exclusive Star Wars pin. From 2^nd– 4^th May Disney Store guests can take part in ‘Ways of the Force’, providing children with the opportunity to learn some of the skills of the Jedi including how to use a light-sabre. All children of course already know how to make the sound of a light-sabre in action. Stormtroopers will be making appearances throughout the day at Disney Store on Grafton Street tomorrow between 9:00am and 6:00pm to meet fans. Even more Star Wars events are planned for later in the year to celebrate the launch of the much-anticipated animated series Star Wars Rebels, when further product lines will launch with the series premiere on Disney in the autumn.

And this is only the beginning. Right now someone somewhere is probably figuring out how best to render Domhnall Gleeson’s head as a soft toy.