Bullet Trains & Bullet Holes

One of these days, you'll have to explain why reasonable alternatives to cars, and efficient public transit systems, always seem to be built everywhere all over the world but not near us. It has recently been brought to my attention that Taiwan's Bullet Train was finally inaugurated on Friday Jan. 5th, after the idea first emerged in 1980. Not bad - it only took 27 years to plan it, and set it up. This train will now travel - litterally like a bullet - through the length of the island of Taiwan at 289,6 kilometers / hour, a speed that is almost 20 kilometers faster than my car's hypothetical top speed. And I write "hypothetical" because I have never dared to verify that fact, found while digging in the original '82 user's manual I found in the glove compartment when I bought it. But that is quite fast, believe me.



Which means that the train can go from Taipei to Kiohsiung in 90 minutes. While flying takes 30 minutes. The train is consequently 1/3 as fast as a plane. And it has no stops on some of the departures. Talk about efficiency. The financial cost, however, isn't as friendly : it costs 44$ US for a one-way coach ticket from Taipei to Kiohsiung, a sum that represents 2/3 of the cost of an equivalent flight.



It also has positive consequences on the environment; if the train is fully loaded while traveling, official calculations show that passengers will use 1/6th of the energy they'd use if they were to travel alone in a car, and release only 1/9th of the carbon dioxide they would in a car. But what if the train is not full ? Or if the passengers of the car used as an example travel as a family of four, in the same vehicle ?



The final cost of this system is estimated at 15 billions. That's a shitload of dough. But stations had to be built, and the whole train travels on an impressive 60 foot high viaducts to avoid crossroads and trafic. Not quite air travel, but close.

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I am in the process of watching the FRIDAY THE 13TH series in chronological order, and will feed you more details later on, but I was surprised to see that Joseph Zito had directed one of the installments. After watching it and deciding it was one of the best so far, I suddenly remembered that I had his THE PROWLER (1981) somewhere on VHS and dug it out of its dusty hiding place at the bottom of a long-forgotten box. The process of getting rid of numerous VHS tapes is well on its way at my place, and Miss Bijoux & I can sometimes watch as much as two turds in one evening, repeating the pain several nights in a row.



So this PROWLER begins and you get the immediate feeling that it highly ressembles Georges Mihalka's MY BLOODY VALENTINE. But echoes of the similarities fade fast enough. It is about a soldier who killed his treacherous fiancée and her new lover, at the end of WWII, with a pitchfork. The soldier is never identifier, and the credits roll. We are then taken to 1980, where a graduation party is about to take place. Teenagers are excited, and lust is in the air. When the sun goes down, however, the killings start...



What we then have is a pitchfork carrying soldier with a mask over his face, slaughtering attractive youngsters for kicks. All coming alive, of course, courtesy of Tom Savini's effects. It is unfortunately not the best work he's done. The killings aren't as imaginative as you'd think, and the rest of the plot is rather tiring : the prowler prowls, young people dance (to some really pathetic rock band) and the lead (Pam MacDonald) and her cop boyfriend drive around ina beat-up police jeep. Perhaps the legend made this one seem better than it actually is, or perhaps I am watching too many quality slasher these days and it has affected my judgement, but I was less than impressed.

What remains : attractive young ladies & gentlemen, and not much more.

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After seeing Crispin Glover dance like an idiot in the Joseph Zito-directed FRIDAY THE 13TH : LAST CHAPTER, I had no choice but to grab another 1984 movie in which he starred : TEACHERS. I was given that tape when Mathieu Prudent & me parted ways after living together for two years. And it's safe to say that my VCR is probably the last device this tape will ever visit in its lifespan.



The movie pictures the everyday struggle that teachers of an average US high school face when coming to work. Kids are bratty, but they're not the worst. The administration doesn't care about the kid's learnings, having a policy not to flunk anybody. What you get, then, is : Nick Nolte playing a deluded and burned out drunk hunk; JoBeth Williams (POLTERGEIST) a lawyer and ancient student of Nolte's with a "great ass"; Ralph Macchio as the most unbelievable baby-faced gangster ever filmed; Laura Dern as a misleaded young girl sleeping with a butt-ugly gym teacher; and Crispin Glover as a young and impulsive rebel.

It's a "feel good" teen movie with a social message, and while it's easy to watch and enjoy, it gets tedious and has its flaws, all related to the fact that it didn't age very well. It has its moments, though, and it is densely narrated, never allowing you to catch your breath with a multitude of masterfully directed sub plots.



It was directed by Arthur Hiller, a Canadian originally from Edmonton, Alberta, who's been active since 1955 and who, among many other titles, has directed the original 1970 "OUT OF TOWNERS", written by Neil Simon, and starring the late Jack Lemmon.

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Closer to home, even if I have never seen Denis Chouinard's first feature CLANDESTINS - don't worry, it's also sitting somewhere on a shelf at my place - I rather liked L'ANGE DE GOUDRON (even if I could have done without its improbable ending) and I have recently seen DÉLIVREZ-MOI, his third one, and my favourite so far.



In it, Céline Bonnier plays a released convict, having just done 10 years after killing her lover, who also happened to be the father of her daughter. Her daughter has grown up in her grandmother's custody in a small industrial city, and refuses to move in with her when she comes back to get her. Bonnier's character will do her best to get her back, fighting in a world that was never tender to her, while walking around town in mouth-watering mini-skirts & tank tops.

The vindictive and pious grandmother, played by Geneviève Bujold, still feels vengeful after 10 years and can't forgive her son's assassin. Patrice Robitaille, playing a small time loser who lives in his parent's basement with hemp posters hanging on the walls, is not insensible to Bonnier's skirts and does all he can to "befriend" her. Her lesbian parole officer is also pretty interested, which makes Bonnier pretty busy in between her daughter's visits.



The exterior locations in which the movie is shot are gorgeous pieces of land, and it gives the movie an overall poetic feel. Rivers, island and industrial cityscapes all contribute to the visual enjoyment. If you like Rodrigue Jean's rural dramas, chances are you'll also enjoy this. There's something very weird, though, and it's the inclusion of a yugoslavian neighbor who teaches Bonnier lessons about life, death and friendship. Has Chouinard hung out too much with Kusturica lately ? Whatever his reasons are, it is rather unrealistic that a yugoslavian's settling choice would be this far away shit town, as gorgeous as it is.

This rather intriguing piece of film makes me wonder what Chouinard will come up with next. All eyes on him !