Just got back from comedian Fortune Fiemster’s show up at Thunder Valley (one of the nearby casinos). We went with another couple as a bday present to one of them. She’s VERY funny. There’s a ton on YouTube, and she has at least a couple of specials on Netflix.
If she’s appearing near you, it’s a fun time.
The Bear. Watched Season 3 in one go which was a bit stressful and have just started Season 4, which is essentially Season 3 Part 2. I’ll probably post in more detail on the dedicated thread for The Bear.
Hidden Fortress (1958) - dir. Akira Kurosawa
Poor Tahei and Matashichi. These two peasants went to earn their fortune in war, and ended up broken, destitute, and stuck burying bodies after being taken prisoner. Through various machinations, they escape, and are soon pulled into helping General Rokurota (Played by the always fabulous Toshiro Mifune) to help protect Princess Yuki.
These days, the film is probably best known for being one of a few that George Lucas CLEARLY ripped off took inspiration from for the original Star Wars. From the animated wipe scene transitions, to the princess rescue plot, it’s all right there. Tahei and Matashichi, specifically, are direct sources for C3P0 and R2D2, a tall/short bickering couple. The entire opening sequence of them being split up, captured, and reunited is taken beat for beat for Threepio and Artoo’s initial landing on Tatooine. There’s a similar redemption arc for the main antagonist as for Vader.
But while it’s impossible not to notice these things, the film has plenty of its own appeal. Mifune is, as always, a delight to watch. He can be commanding, intimidating, and deadly serious, and in the next moment crack a smile and play to the comedy perfectly. He’s a remarkable presence, and it’s clear his character and Han Solo share a lot of DNA.
As expected, the photography is gorgeous. Kurosawa knew how to work in black and white, emphasizing the texture of the stunning natural locations. Grass itches, rocks feel like their scraping your legs in sympathy with the action on screen.
The pacing isn’t as dead perfect as, say, The Seven Samurai, but that’s like faulting a Porsche 911 for not being as fast as an F1 car.
4/5 duels for honor.
Reminds me I have a Kurosawa box set, somewhere…
Im pulling them one at a time. I give myself TWO at each 50% Off Criterion sale.
This month’s just started at Barnes and Noble. I’m trying to get 4K’s for when I upgrade from HD.
I got these:
Still need The Adventures of Baron Munchausen.
I’ve been watching Gangs of London. The first 2 seasons are available on Prime in Canada. It’s ridiculously violent in parts.
To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything! Julie Newmar (1995) - dir. Beeban Kidron
1995 seems like a million years ago. We had a dotcom bubble that was still happily inflating, we could meet our loved ones at the airport gate, and though we were still 20 years out from marriage equality, things all seemed to be heading in the right direction. Still, it was certainly no sure thing to cast 2 of the most het straight macho leading men (Patrick Swayze and Wesley Snipes, along with John Leguizamo doing his best Rosie Perez impression) as road tripping drag queens getting stuck in a small town and bringing enlightenment to the hinterlands.
This wholesome comedy feels utterly toothless today. These are “drag queens” who never step out of drag, played by straight actors. There ARE actual drag queens that appear in the film, including RuPaul, but they are simply miscellaneous contestants in on-screen competitions. And these ostensibly gay men are of the utterly sexless variety. I don’t even think there’s a same-sex kiss shown on screen. The plot feels like a movie-of-the-week copy of The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, that had become a surprise international hit the previous year (though Wong Foo was in production well before Priscilla’s release. The similarities were coincidental.) But even so, back in 1995, this debuted at #1 at the box office and held that spot at least one more week, and proved very successful. I can’t imagine the same film , even with all its faults, being made today without massive online campaigns of people losing their minds because, I dunno, Hugh Jackman and Will Smith wore dresses for a couple of hours. But it’s SO sweet (my teeth kinda ache, frankly), and means well SO earnestly, that you can’t help but like it, much like an older dog that can’t exactly guard the house, but still makes a show of barking half-heartedly at the mailman. Sometimes the effort is enough.
3 of 5 amusing situations where a female-presenting person is unexpectedly strong
This was shown as part of a Pride ‘takeover’ where my beloved local micro-cinema Dreamland (26 seats) was given a last minute opportunity to schedule a weekend of programming at the Crest theater (900 seats!), the local classic Art Deco theater. It’s had a number of management related issues in the past decade, and this block was looked at as way to build a relationship between theater mgmt and Dreamland. It seems to have gone quite well, and I’m hopeful that they’ll get the chance to do more events there. It’d be great to not have to worry about things selling out in minutes, and access to a full size theater opens up enormous possibilities for their annual film festival.
Pink Flamingos (1972) - dir. John Waters
About as far away as you can get from the wholesome sexlessness of Wong Foo, we have Pink Flamingos, John Waters’ justifiably infamous 3rd feature, the first of the “Trash Trilogy” (along with Female Trouble and Desperate Living). And, let’s just get this out of the way now: This is the one where Divine eats dog shit.
That alone would be quite enough, but it’s just the final squishy brown exclamation point to a litany of offenses to… well, everything, really. There’s Divine’s character giving unsimulated oral sex to her son. There’s a black market baby ring. There’s a party where a guy shows off a trick he can do with his anus. There’s castration. There’s televised homicide. A great time for the whole family, y’know?
The plot involves Divine as “the filthiest person alive” and the efforts by a couple, the Marbles (David Lochary and Mink Stole) to take the title from her by being even MORE offensive and disgusting.
Waters’ filmography follows a fairly clear arc, even through his early work. Where it was just him and his Dreamland Players, shooting for no money, he could be as outrageous as he wanted, and Pink Flamingos is absolutely the peak of him playing to those instincts. From here, it would very gradually step back from the brink of a pit filled with bodily fluids. As his funding got better, each film would be just a little less outrageous than the last, as we “graduate” from feces and semen, to pee and puke, to spit and popped zits, to the positively banal (in comparison) comedic gore in Serial Mom.
To his credit, he seems to have realized that being edgy for the sake of edginess is a young person’s game. A sneering 20 year old flipping the bird at the world is expected, and even applauded. A 70 year old, not so much. But through it all, his message has always been remakably consistent: The people at the margins of society are just as important, funny, sad, and clever as those in the middle, and deserve to be celebrated, investigated, and laughed at just like everyone else. 50+ years later, Pink Flamingos still has the power to shock and remind us that rules SHOULD be broken, and that under the right circumstances, ANYTHING can be funny.
4 out of… you know what? no rating. You are either on the John Waters train or you aren’t. No shame either way. Coprophagia isn’t for everyone.
That was an awesome Duster finale. I sure hope they renew it for another season.
I finally got around to watching Hundreds of Beavers. It was funny for about the first half hour, but after that it just seemed to be the same old thing. I’m sure I would have enjoyed it tremendously if I’d been high. It should have been a short.
This.
I think I mentioned before I got about 10 min in before turning it off. And I had plenty of medicinal help to make this funny. Nope.
I was, and am, a total booster of Hundreds of Beavers. I think it’s clever and inventive, and does INCREDIBLY elaborate gags on a very limited budget by making smart stylistic choices. I’ve watched it more than once.
Mind you, I was definitely high the first time I saw it.
Finished watching Mercy For None, super duper, ultra violent Korean gangster revenge limited series.
Lots of twists and tuns, so many that I kinda got lost on the plot near the end. Couldn’t keep track of all the gangsters and why they wanted to kill the main protagonist. I did still enjoy it so I’ll give it a 6.5/10.
Also watched “Train Wreck, Mayor of Mayhem”, I’m from T.O so I remember what a fk up Rob Ford was. 4/10.
Still can’t get into Somebody feed Phil, tried watching episodes 1-2, but gave up after 15-20 mins. I can’t even force myself to watch the Basque country episode, which is a shame because that’s somewhere I’m very interested in visiting.
The new Let’s Make A Deal with Wayne Brady. A guy got Zonked and as Wayne was walking away from him he said. “And don’t write to tell us it’s our fault you lost. You wouldn’t believe how many people do that.” Can you imagine. All those long winded handwritten letter/emails detailing how a three minute deal went south. Too funny.
Ballerina 2025
This is the review I just put up on Letterboxd:
BF and I argued, well, I guess, disagreed and debated about this movie. He felt that, and he may chime in at some point, that if we are to be watching a John Wick film (spoilers - John Wick is involved in most of the third act), then we should be watching a John Wick movie.
This is set in the John Wick Universe, but this is not a John Wick Movie.
I am ok with this.
Now, I do absolutely have my issues with studios wringing every ounce of energy and soul from their IP and franchise nostalgia to get that fat cash. I do. I find it oddly hilarious that South Park was the one to bring everyone’s attention to “Memberberries”.
However, I am totally ok with world building. You start with your core universe. You tell your writers, “Hey. Here are the character specs. They have these particular traits. X# hit points. Armor class “Y” with this particular magical item or inherent “plus2” for using a lute or some shit. Don’t kill my characters off, but you can use them in your story. And, I’ll use yours and promise, for the most part, that they won’t end up pantsless in an alley in Greater Fistyurface.”
And, that’s how you get Thieves’ World. Sure, everyone mostly only cares about Hanse and Tempus, but you also get the opportunity to get flashes of fun with someone like Jubal or Ischade.
Or, for you Star Wars nerds, Mara Jade.
I see you, Star Wars nerds. I see you.
Is Eve a Mara Jade? No. Not yet. And she may never be. But, if we are going to live in a world where studios insist on avoiding risks and playing in their extended IP universes, then I am ok with trying to create some characters that we might be able to use to build out on existing worlds. Eve is flawed. Honestly, the biggest take away for her character is that she has a lot of pent up rage and a 8 out of 10 skill set, but she almost always needs someone to take out that one pesky character she missed when she should have been properly sweeping the site. That’s not an heir to John Wick. But, to be fair, he’s got an outsize rep as the Baba Yaga and he’s dead at the end of Chapter 4. No one is ever going to be John Wick again. Not even John Wick.
Not everyone in the John Wick Extended Universe needs to be John Wick.
But, you can create a character that was not originally part of an existing IP and take it for a spin in an entertaining way that might move the franchise forward a bit. Norman Reedus, who makes an appearance in this movie for a bit, did that in The Walking Dead tv show. Daryl Dixon is not in the comic book. But, Reedus’s character is arguably a reason the show stayed on the air as long as it did.
Ana de Armas’s Eve was a fun watch and if they decide to make the next movie (I’m just assuming there will be another movie in this universe at some point) about her as an exhausted foster mother to Ella, the other orphaned grandchild of crime she found full of hate at the end of this movie, I’m ok with it.
Just be true to the specs on the character sheets, don’t kill another writer’s character off without permission, and, for the love of God, stay true to the idea in the John Wick-i-verse, as in Thieves’ World, that there are no heroes, only survivors."
Just saw that the Great American Recipe on PBS is coming back on July 11. I’ve enjoyed previous seasons with good judges and the chefs are all regular people who love to cook from various regions of the country. Very multicultural food, low key and no one gets kicked off every week. I think everyone goes to the finals.
We finished S4 of Hacks. Looks like there will be another one about this highly dysfunctional female friendship. At least it’s still occasionally LOL funny.
We continued the new season of Resident Alien, which has lost a bit of its luster IMNHO. Good distraction from stuff, in any event.
Started Documentary Now. It is truly excellent. I’m late to the party, but enjoying it quite a bit.
We needed some silly distraction, and this fit the bill.
Was it too long? Hard for me to judge, even though I generally prefer directors who can tell a story in 90 min or less… but I’d also had two beers and a shot of scotch at band practice (another kind of silly distraction from our malaise), and struggled to stay awake when we still had 50 min left in the film 
I’ve not seen much of Pattinson’s work & thought he did a swell job — especially (but not limited to) on the American accent front, one of my PIC’s major complaints about every movie these days “what, they couldn’t find an American actor?” 
Broad strokes? Sure. But it seems like we’re living in a world of broad strokes these days, so it didn’t bother me as much as you. And I’d completely forgotten that this was a Bong movie until the credits.
Being able to watch it in the comfort of our home, in our pajamas on the couch also allowed for ice cream trips to the kitchen to keep me awake till the end.
