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Rose brought over this DVD when I was sick at home with food poisoning. It's not until now I realize it was directed by the son of David Bowie!
The film's premise is a doozy. Of course the film starts out where the viewer is just as much in the dark as our protagonist, Colter. So there has been a terrorist attack, and military man Colter must figure out who did it, because they will strike again.
It appears Colter is in some sort of a pod where he can travel through time to get to the very scene of the crime. It winds up they can do this because the human brain keeps the last 8 minutes of it's memories for a short period of time. And people have figured out how to preserve that. And they have also figured out how to get other people's brains into that brain in order to look around. Crazy. So they are going to use this technology in order to find out who placed the bomb.
The problem is that for this to work, logically the original brain must have seen and done things the other brain is doing. So Colter goes in, and digs around, gets off at train stops where the other guy didn't get off. Despite this, he eventually gets the terrorist (who is a home-grown terrorist, in a little bit of face-saving for movie terrorists everywhere).
In another twist the other brain is actually a man who is close to death. They've saved the shell of his body to keep his brain alive so it can jump into these other brains somehow. The pod that he appears to be in is the way his brain is coping with the fact its in another brain. The problem is that the government has this great technology, but they are still bastards. They have told Colter's dad he's dead, and even shipped him some fake ashes.
Soon Colter learns he's dead and that he'll re-live the terrorist explosion until he solves the crime. Along the way he gets sympathy from a soldier who is running the experiment. She allows him to go in one more time in order to save everyone. He does this and falls in love. What is the reality now?
This was a fun movie whose plot has many logical holes. It was great for a sick afternoon at home. #
This is about four unlikely partners, a gambler, a whore, and crazy black man, and a drunk, who are run out of town for being no good. They are the lucky ones, since they aren't dead. The town was ransacked the evening before, for reasons that aren't too clear to me.
We learn the prostitute is pregnant, and she and the gambler pretty much fall in love. The meet Chaco, played by the same Cuban actor from "Run Man Run". He's sadistic. They are attacked by a sheriff, and Chaco tortures one of them by skinning him alive and pinning his badge in his chest. He steals everything they have after giving them all peyote. He then rapes the prostitute Bunny. Meanwhile he has painted red crosses of blood under his eyes.
Our partners wind up in an abandoned town. It's raining a lot and the drunk dies from his wounds suffered during the fight. Our partners are hungry and the crazy man comes back with some meat that they all eat ravenously. The gambler goes out and finds the body of the town drunk with a big chunk of meat missing from his butt. The crazy person has served them drunk man meat. So the gambler and the prostitute leave our crazy man in the ghost town.
They find themselves up in the snowy mountains, and the prostitute goes into labor. The problem is that they wind up in a mining town only full of tough men. Fortunately they all have hearts of gold (and one knows how to be a midwife). The prostitute dies during childbirth, and the gambler leaves the baby with the miners, as they as a group are better fathers than he will be. He then goes out and finds Chaco, and killing him in a bloody scene. It's probably one of the last Italian westerns.
I read more about the characters and the woman who played the prostitute was married to Peter Sellars when he died. He had divorced her, but not yet updated his will when he passed away. His children have none of his estate and her mother has it now, ever since she died of alcohol-related reasons. Crazy story. #
I went to see this at the fantastic Paramount Theatre in downtown Oakland with Suze. They had the organist playing beforehand. They also had newsreels and a cartoon. Also a giveaway with a corny MC. The film is odd. A very young girl decides to buy a horse and with the help of a vagabond who just happens to be an ex-jockey, trains her horse for the biggest race in Britain. Unfortunately when they get there, they find out all jockeys are foreign and not good enough for her horse. They both separately decide they will be the jockey in the race, but Velvet wins out. She wins the race and passes out. Which is when the doctor learns that a girl has won the race. This is not acceptable, but Velvet and her horse become famous. One of the odd highlights of the film is Velvet completely crazy younger brother. What an odd character, he made no sense. #
This was a crazy Italian Western. My Netflix queue seems to be in a big vein of Spaghetti Westerns right now. This one stars a Cuban actor who lives in Italy, playing a Mexican peon. All he uses for a weapon are knives. Through circumstance, he becomes the only one who knows where the Mexican revolutionaries have hidden all of their gold. There are several others (including a woman from the Salvation Army who tries to clean him up) also all trying to get the gold. Cuchillo is over the top, and there are quite a few odd torture scenes. There's a fantastic stand off at the end that ends with a knife fight. The film ends indicating this is just one of many adventures that Cuchillo will embark upon. #
This is one of those modern comedies that seem to revel in making the viewer very uncomfortable. The premise is that a loser divorced guy is dragged out to a party by his ex, so that he will get laid. He meets a fantastically beautiful woman and they hook up. She leaves quite early, but she comes back again another day, just to leave early again without an explanation. So he follows her home to discover that she lives with her 20-something son. They have an oddly close relationship, and the son is predictably very upset his mom has found someone new. Then the hijinks ensue. It was a very uncomfortable movie, only compounded by the strange hand held camera jerky zooms all the time. Next time I go over to Sova's to watch a movie with Junse, I'm making the pick! #
Another fantastic Bill Callahan show. It's been awhile since the show, so this will be brief. The opener was a fantastic guitarist who told a story about knowing John Fahey, and that song was very Fahey-esque. Bill Callahan came out in a light colored suit. He played acoustic guitar, and his band was a drummer and an electric guitarist. So the arrangements were minimal. Of course, this allowed him to change up songs from how one is accustomed to hearing them. He played plenty from the last few years, and a couple from the Smog days, including "Bathysphere." Meli had heard Smog, but she had never seen him play before. It's always fun to introduce great music to people. I decided I now know how to re-mix a Bill Callahan song for live performance. If the line is "This is the line to a Smog song" then you sing each verse adding a new word each time. So it would go "This", "This is", "This is the line", "This is the line to", "This is the line to a", "This is the line to a Smog", "This is the line to a Smog song." I love his songs, but I can see that as a valid criticism.
This is an interesting Japanese film. It was unusual starting right from the opening shot. The young doctor's assistant is speaking directly to the camera about the stages of life for a man. He then says he's familiar with this and he'll show us how. The camera pulls back, and he walks towards others in the doctor's office and the story begins.
The doctor's assistant is familiar with everyone in a small traditional Japanese family. The parents still wear kimonos and wooden platform shoes. The assistant knows the father is having trouble in the bedroom. He knows that wife knows that the father is having sexual problems too, but tries to hide it from her. She believes it is her that is causing his problem. The assistant is also dating their daughter, and he's a little closer to her than they may suspect. He hopes the money he thinks her family has can help him out in the doctor business.
So the father invites the assistant over to dinner, and proceeds to get his wife very drunk. She pounds the hard alcohol when he tells her, because she is a good traditional obedient wife. The problem is that she can't hold her liquor and passes out in the bath tub. The father and the assistant go to help her out. Then the father realizes he gets turned on by how attracted the assistant seems to be to his wife. So he does this again. He also takes nude photos of her while she's passed out that he shares with the assistant, who then shares them with the daughter. Lots of odd power struggles and sleeping arrangements and secrets continue until everyone is dead at the end.
Suze and I were both impressed by how interesting this film's subject matter was especially for a movie from 1959. It was showing at the Pacific Film Archives in Berkeley for its "Japanese Divas" series. #
This is a crazy Western that takes place in the snowy Utah mountains. Everyone is always wearing fur and scarves during the film. Lots of the fur is so long that it looks like long hair. It gives things a very odd look. The main bad guy in this film is played by Klaus Kinski. He's a murderous freak bounty hunter known as "Loco". Apparently bounty hunting is the law of the land that is about to be superseded by trial by jury and assumption of innocence. The bounty hunters are out to get their money before that happens. The Governor of Utah assigns a new sheriff to a county where "Loco" is running a gang.
There are many bandits hiding out in the mountains. They steal the new sheriff's horse for food, leaving him alive to get back to town. There he finds a Justice of the Peace who is more than willing to pay bounty hunters. A stranger comes to town who is known as "Silence". This is because he doesn't talk. He's also the fastest draw in Utah. And his modus operandi is to annoy his target to the point where they draw first. Then he shoots then faster and he can get off safely, since it was clearly self-defense.
Meanwhile Loco kills a black man in this Utah town. His widow is determined to get her own vengeance against the vengeful bounty hunters. So she hires Silence. Of course, they soon fall in love. He shows her that he cannot speak because he has a large scar across his entire throat. A flashback tells us that his throat was in fact slashed by bounty hunters who killed his father. They wanted to keep him silent. They succeeded but he became as driven by vengeance as his tormentors. Soon the Justice of the Peace rapes the widow, while Silence is tortured while watching. We learn again via a flashback that Silence had in fact shot off the thumb of the ex-bounty hunter Justice of the Peace. Silence manages to break free of his torturers and kill the Justice of the Peace, but not before he is injured in the shoulder.
Sometime later, Loco is busted by the sheriff for something like not following the due process of law. He's then taken up to the hills to show the bandits that the bounty hunter is caught, and they can safely come to town for some food the town put out for them until amnesty and the blizzard pass. As they are headed back to town, Loco says he needs to pee. The sheriff un-cuffs him. He tells Loco to hurry up since they need to cross this frozen lake he happens to be standing on before dark. Meanwhile, Loco has conveniently chosen to pee at a location where he's hidden a rifle in the snow. He then draws on the sheriff and shoots into the ice at his feet, causing the sheriff to sink into the frozen lake.
Loco he finds his bounty hunter buddies to get the bandits as they head to town to get their food. They round them all up. They hold them hostage so that they can get Silence out into the open. Silence is bound by duty and just as strong a sense of vengeance as the bounty hunters, and heads to the saloon where the hostages are held. He's ambushed and shot in the hands, so he cannot shoot back. He's then brutally killed by Loco. The widow runs up to her love and is also shot by Loco. Then he tells all the bounty hunters to kill the hostages they have tied up in the bar. They are massacred. As the movie ends Loco takes Silence's gun and heads off screen.
This is a pretty film with all the snow capped mountain horseback scenes. Klaus Kinski is enjoyably deranged. The dialogue and dubbing are forced at times, but you can tell some are handling their own voices. The ending is violent and harsh. I'd simply say the theme is everyone is driven by vengeance. Everyone also has their own correct sense of justice and law as well. Nevertheless, you know watching the film that the filmmakers do not believe vengeance to be any solution to the worlds problems. #
iOS 5 is going to be cool. That was announced on Monday. I have some code shipped in there.
I've seen 300 shows in San Francisco now. I think that's been true for a month or so, but I just realized it tonight myself. #
So you want to see a Spaghetti Western starring one of Orson Welles' Mercury Players (Joseph Cotten from "The Third Man") as a crazed former Confederate general? Well then this is the movie for you. It's a tale of ex-Confederates roaming the Southwest. They steal some cash from some Union soldiers they massacre and stash it in a coffin. They have a prostitute acting as a sorrowful widow so they can get the coffin past authorities without them asking too many questions. The problem is that the prostitute is an unreliable drunk, and she is killed by one of the general's sons, who is a serial rapist. Another dashing young son goes to town to find another woman to play their widow, and convinces a far fairer maiden to take her place. She and the good looking son eventually fall in love and don't like what his father is up to. So they manage to get the coffin buried at a Union fort, after they are saved from bandits by Union soldiers. But that night the sons are all forced by the father to go back and dig it up in the rain, while the fair maiden is forced to stay in the cold rain by the crazed Confederate general for making his good looking son turn on him. She gets pneumonia, and is debilitated. So they drag the coffin closer to their destination. Then their horses are all killed by a crazy hobo. Now they need to get new horses and decide to send the rapist son to buy some from a friendly nearby tribe of Indians. Instead of buying a horse, he rapes & kills the Chief's daughter. He comes back to camp without horses, and says we got to get going. The Indians catch up, and the rapist is killed by the other greedy son, who is in turn killed by the good looking one. In the meantime the general is mortally wounded. So he's dragging the coffin on his own to keep the money in it. It soon pops open, and there's a body of the main bandit in there instead of the cash. The end. #
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