Movie Stars

That's it. The fun's over. My 10 days off have evaporated like a mirage in the sun. I'm back to work, sitting in the AC as the city melts away its "livres en trop", planning the end of the world (as we know it) and waiting for my shift to end.

Plenty of crazy adventures happened to me in the course of these ten days, and I'll get to that later on. Today, however, you'll only hear about the movies I saw, so that those of you I throw my tapes at know what's coming to them. I am giving away lots of shit, you know I'm pretty generous when it comes down to VHS tapes.

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Porn lovers know the Mitchell brothers pretty well. You've at least seen Marilyn Chambers emerge from behind the green door, repeatedly, to get banged. Emilio Estevez knows them as well, since he directed RATED X, a Showcase TV movie about them. He stars as Jim Mitchell, and his pal Charlie Sheen plays Artie, his lil' bro.



This is not the best biopic I've ever seen, but then again, this is not a genre I really appreciate. Knowing about other people's lives is questionable, and a thirst for gossip can be, to my eyes at least, pathetic. The story's interesting, of course, but you never know if what you're seeing is the truth, with these Hollywood impostors romancing every toilet bowl around.

So there you are, with Estevez & Sheen both playing goatee'd & bald porn producers. We see their carreer evolve the moment they buy their studio, and then the O'Farrell theater. The success of BEHIND THE GREEN DOOR, the coke snorting, Artie's multiple crushes, children & downfalls. Jim Mitchell seems to have a devoted wife, who at one moment simply & conveniently disappears. It kind of gets annoying to see Sheen go crazy, after a while, and even though I know some people really act like that, I can't help but wonder how his peers could keep up with all his crisis. A pacifist with a gun.

And the ending ? It's never clearly explained. It almost looks as if Estevez brutally realised he was getting towards the end of his running time & budget, and abruptly shot a conclusion that doesn't even conclude shit.

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I had never seen IN CHINA THEY EAT DOGS, although I have seen its follow-up, OLD MEN IN NEW CARS, at the Fantasia festival a couple of years ago. When I rented it in May, I didn't get around watching it, so I taped it on an old VHS lying around, and there I was, last week, looking for some shit to watch. Fell on it. Saw it.



Well, of course it's very funny. Darkly funny. It's set AFTER the 2nd movie, so it's some kind of sequel-prequel. Kim Bodnia & his two cooks still come up with the worst plans ever, and they work. But they don't get away that easy this time around. People die. Lots of them, in fact. Arbitrary executions. Brutal accidents. Random, unexplainable violence. Lasse Sprang Olsen plays with the gangster clichés and amplifies the violence usually associated with them to an insane level.

Danish gangster flicks are a blast, they're moddy and refreshing, and I keep coming back for more. So gimme more !

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Speaking of "darkly", I won passes (I know, I know...) for the premiere of Richard Linklater's A SCANNER DARKLY at Paramount, last Thursday. It was a packed house, and we had a group of adult retards sitting behind us, making lame jokes and talking to their friends on their cell phones for a while, but when the movie began they shut up, to my great surprise, and let us enjoy.



I haven't seen WAKING LIFE yet - somebody "borrowed" my copy and never returned it - but I had heard about the technique which consists of drawing on the images of a "live action movie" to make it a "cartoon". I must say it's pretty well done and it adds a certain dimension to the movie, especially in the case of this paranoïd Philip K. Dick adaptation.

So here in L.A., somewhere in the near future, an undercover narc agent (Keanu Reeves) lives with a bunch of deadbeats (Woody Harrelson & Robert Downey Jr.) and dates an asexual cokehead (Wynona Rider). He is basically trying to make his way to the top of the distribution chain of Substance D, a drug that destroys its users' brain in an unprecedented way. The dialogues are funny, the events are fast paced, the tone is serious when it needs to be, and goofy otherwise, and a "cartoon version" of Keanu Reeves probably acts better than the guy himself.

A special mention goes to Rider's cleavage, that's been very much exagerated, thank you.

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Another biopic I saw was Mario Van Peeble's BADASSS. Now this is the kind I like. It's honest, doesn't promote an agenda - at least none I uncovered - and was directed by the main subject's very own son. Yes folks, the movie is about Melvin Van Peeble's struggle to independantly write, direct & produce SWEET SWEETBACK'S BADAAASSS SONG, the very first "blaxploitation" flick of the 70's to break through.



Mario Van Peebles plays his father, with his perpetual cigar in mouth, as he suddenly comes up with the idea to shoot a movie about a brother on the run from the law, who stands for himself and his peers, with an ending that's not tragic and gives hope. The shooting, entirely financed by Peebles himself, will prove difficult. Melvin almost lost his left eyesight from exhaustion during editing. And the movie was partially rendered popular thanks to the Black Panthers.

Miss Bijoux pointed out two familiar faces I perhaps would not have noticed : Six Feet Under's Arthur plays Van Peeble's hippie buddy, and he doesn't rub heads - he screws well endowed black girls instead. And Seinfeld's own Uncle Leo - hello !! - appears as a pair of twins, owners of the only north american theater willing to show BADAAAASSS. It's a small world.

See ! All this and much more. Van Peebles does a pretty good job, actually. The movie almost went unnoticed when it was released last year, but I'm sure you can find it easily and have a blast watching it.

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America - fuck yeah ? After all these praises, doubts & rumours, I finally found a proper setting & timing to watch Matt Stone and Trey Parker's latest, TEAM AMERICA. Pretty much inspired by "Les Sentinelles de l'Air", it features some pretty sick puppets, and the infamous duo's humor, both scatological and political, hits hard.



We are presented with this rescue team, in which every member has his unique strength, as they get France rid of some terrorists, blowing up every landmark in sight in the process. Upon learning of a major terrorism menace, Spottiswoode (an hommage to Roger ?) recruits a young Broadway actor in his Lamborghini limo and gives him a job in the team. He will have to act his way to infiltrate a terrorist group in Cairo, but things go wrong, of course, and mayhem ensues.

The tone is delirious and the action non stop, but it's still not my favorite Parker / Stone piece. I still don't know why, and I'm afraid I'm not going to meditate a lot on the reasons.

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Another disappointment o' mine was Tom de Simone's HELL NIGHT, starring Linda Blair. Don't ask me why, but the opening got me hooked, and the first 15 minutes are so promising it hurts. Things go downhill, however, and soon hit a tree or two on their way to the bottom of the slope.



Four teenagers - Blair, another hot chick & two random guys - who want to be part of fraternities & sororities are initiated during "Hell Night", a small town celebration that kicks the school year off. They are to spend the night in an enormous abandoned manor - very well preserved, by the way, for a deserted dwelling - where some bourgeois gone mad are rumoured to hide. It's all folklore, anyway, right ?

So the guy who organised all this happens to be a master prankster, and soon the teen's night is not so calm anymore. They hear screams. They're interrupted in their fornications. And so forth. And it's not all due to pranks...

While it could have been more gruesome and sexy, De Simone makes it bland and unsuspenseful. He's got some very cute chicks who stay clothed, and who keep their various body parts on - except a girl losing her head straight away, but that's nothing. The humour is good natured, and Linda Blair is as ugly as usual, especially in that big dress she wears all the way. The ending isn't bad, but it comes way too late, unable to redeem the other failures.

And this, folks, means that you will inherit the tape it was copied on, because I sure ain't keeping it.