BAD F*****' DUDES RIDING PUBLIC TRANSIT!!
SUNDAY MAR. 11th
The following post I gratefully recieved from BJ. Oddly enough his movie choice closely matches my and other planning geeks love of subways in film. So this sunday the B&B Proudly Presents:
7pm
THE TAKING OF PELHAM 1 2 3
A group of armed men take a subway train full of people hostage and declare that they'll kill a hostage a minute if their demands aren't met. The transit cop there to deal with the hostages and the beauratic red tape is Walter Mathau, who we love simply for being being Walter Mathau, and it's always grand to be loved for just simply who you are. Leading the hostage takers is Robert FUCKING Shaw. Now there are not many actors you can refer to and and honestly throw a 'fucking' in their name without cheapening it, the icon status has to be tough as nails. Even James Cagney, one of the toughest, meanest little bastard of the gangster golden age, made queer little movies like Yankee Doodle Dandy (writer's confession: have never seen Yanke Doodle Dandy, but it's a musical, musicals are for sissies, like Ewan McGregor, a sissy with a big schlong). John Wayne was too much of the protector. No it's rare actor that qualifies to have their name interrupted by a cuss (common though cussing is now, but hell it's been constant throughout my living history, so...), they have to be tough as nails and capable of doing anything. Any one of these actors could play a phenomenal Punisher, and I'll tell you it ain't Thomas Fuckin' Jane. To tell the truth I don't think there's a living working actor right now who'd deserve it. I got a short list of all time here:
LEE FUCKING MARVIN
CHARLES FUCKING BRONSON
HENRY FUCKING SILVA.
And Robert FUCKING Shaw. I haven't seen that many Shaw films, hell only two. He was the heavy/mark in The Sting and he was motherfucking QUINT in JAWS. If he only made one movie and it was Jaws, he'd still be Robert FUCKING Shaw, maybe with a purer 'fuck'. And Mathau, he doesn't need a cuss in his name, his very presence gives you, at least, the slight inclination to rent Hanging Up, even though you know you'll hate it.
9pm
Bullet Train
It's Speed, but on a subway! Some nefarious no-gooder has planted a bomb on a high-speed train which will explode if it goes below 80km/h. And SONNY FUCKING CHIBA is in it.
Labels: Movies, Transit
B&B Presents: Ecological Apocalypse II: Nature’s Revenge
I had so much fun the last time around, I have decided to do a second round of Man Vs. Ecology Pictures.
Again, it is going to be a documentary saddled up next to a Cheesy B-movie.
7:00 pm
Manufactured Landscapes (2006) CanadaI usually do not do this, but I will use the text out of the studio’s promotion to give you an Idea. It is just that eloquent.
“Manufactured Landscapes is a feature length documentary on the world and work of renowned artist Edward Burtynsky. Burtynsky makes large-scale photographs of ‘manufactured landscapes’ – quarries, recycling yards, factories, mines, dams. He photographs civilization’s materials and debris, but in a way people describe as stunning or beautiful, and so raises all kinds of questions about ethics and aesthetics without trying to easily answer them.
The film follows Burtynsky to China as he travels the country photographing the evidence and effects of that country’s massive industrial revolution. Sites such as the Three Gorges Dam, which is bigger by 50% than any other dam in the world and displaced over a million people, factory floors over a kilometre long, and the breathtaking scale of Shanghai’s urban renewal are subjects for his lens and our motion picture camera.
Shot in Super-16mm film, Manufactured Landscapes extends the narrative streams of Burtynsky’s photographs, allowing us to meditate on our profound impact on the planet and witness both the epicentres of industrial endeavour and the dumping grounds of its waste. What makes the photographs so powerful is his refusal in them to be didactic. We are all implicated here, they tell us: there are no easy answers. The film continues this approach of presenting complexity, without trying to reach simplistic judgements or reductive resolutions. In the process, it tries to shift our consciousness about the world and the way we live in it.”
To give you a further idea of the quality of this Doc., when I was in T.O. during the Toronto International Film Festival in September I was in an elevator with a bunch of film makers who were raving about how visually astounding this film was. When I checked it had been sold out almost right away.
9:00 pm
Gojira tai Hedorah AKA Godzilla vs. the Smog Monster (1971) JapanFor a bit of fun at the end of the evening I want to show this classic and campy Kaiju monster battle. It had not been released yet during the last Ecological Apocalypse night.
The Gojira series, especially the original, is one of the best for popularizing concern over threats to the Earths Balance. Lost in the 1950s American Version is that Godzilla started out as an anti nuclear testing statement, especially due to the activity in the pacific during the Cold War. This 1971 version directed by Yoshimitsu Banno was more intended for children and the ecological statement is fairly weak. Keep in mind that weak usually lends to more laughter. In this version: Gojira, defender of the Earth, has become a national phenomenon, akin to the Loch Ness Monster, especially for children. The monster has been ingrained into the Japanese consciousness. However, the Japanese citizens and industrialists still do not realize that destroying the balance of the Earth will summon the millennia-old protector. The story follows a young boy who finds a creature, which thrives on toxic waste, naming it Hedorah, a pun on the Japanese word for sludge, hedoro. This monster sucks on smokestacks, oozes at the screaming populace, and belches poisonous fumes. In his dreams, the boy wishes for Gojira to defeat Hedorah and for people be persuaded to stop polluting the earth. Gojira, as the great protector of the planet’s balance, fights the monster in a rage against humanity’s destruction of his ecology.
If Manufactured Landscapes is unavailable, I will alternate with:
The Day After Tomorrow (2004) USA a blockbuster disaster flick about climate change.
Labels: Disaster, Ecology, Movies
B&B Presents: Wack History Month
This Sunday we present an alternative to the innane speeches of the Oscars. Most of my friends are geeks who focus on either film, politics, or history, this Sunday we get to have a surreal mixture of all three
7:00 pm
C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America (2004 / 2006 ) (- it took a while to be distributed and was eventually picked up by Spike Lee)
What if the South had won the War?
Directed by Kevin Willmott in the voice of a BBC documentary film crew, this mockumentary is a must for the historically or politically inclined. The hilarious, yet chilling, version of history posits what the last 150 years would have been had the Confederates won the American Civil War. The most frightening aspects are the ties to actual events both past and present in American policy and culture, replete with commercials.
9:00 pm
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Wild In the Streets (1968)Max Frost, a 24 year old charismatic rocker, has just successfully lowered the voting age to 14 (Something I’ve been in support of for years), and he’s now rolling the wave of popularity from a babyboom majority right to the American Presidency. Following the 60s edict of “Never trust anyone over thirty”, his first presidential edict turns the new hippie state to a totalitarian hell for anyone over thirty by requiring them to live in retirement homes where they are force fed LSD.
This psychedelic exploitation flick riled a generation and it has Richard Prior in it as a character named Stanley X.
I wanted to show some Blaxploitation Flicks focussed on the Black Nationalist movement to match up with the CSA, but instead Wild in the Streets seemed to be a much better fit with the themes of CSA. If I can't get wild in the streets, fear not... I will book it with My first choice.
The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973) about a Black CIA agent who works throught the system to set up the Nationalist cause behind the backs of his own agency.
Labels: Documentary, Explioitation, Movies
B&B Presents: Samouraï Noir
February 11, 2007
This Sunday night we present two films about non-Japanese hitmen obsessed with the Samurai Code of
Bushido.
7:30 pm
Le Samouraï (1967) FranceJef Costello is a perfectionist hitman who never gets caught. After a hit gone wrong with surviving witnesses and an ever elusive alibi, Jef is backed into a corner. His code of solitary honour predisposes him to complete his task, yet under an air of the inevitability of death. Jean-Pierre Melville’s use and deconstruction of the American Noir Genre in this picture has heavily influenced other film makers. John Woo noted that everything about Le Samouraï is perfect, and was a central inspiration for
The Killer (1989).
9:30 pm
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai (1999) USAAcclaimed writer and director Jim Jarmusch was also heavily influenced by Le Samouraï in the development of Ghost Dog. The story follows an African American hitman, played by Forest Whitaker, who is self-retained within the local New York mob and strictly follows the Bushido code of Hagakure: The Way of the Samurai. When he becomes expendable can Ghost Dog maintain his code of honour and still confront his mob superiors? Jarmusch’s films often capture and are based around moments, yet his slow direction style in this picture is balanced by a beat heavy soundtrack compiled and composed by Wu Tang Clan’s the RZA. This is one of my favourite films, even though I haven’t seen it since it came out. I’m exited to see it through new eyes along with its French inspiration.
Labels: Movies, Noir
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