A Wink and a Smile: The Art of Burlesque (2008)

  Okay, I'll say it.  I'm obsessed with burlesque now.

Ob.

Sessed.

This documentary has been sitting in my queue for almost a year and still had thirty movies ahead of it but Netflix streaming knows no boundaries!

Here's the thing:  real people do burlesque.  Women and men.  And they're not all drag queens, although drag is considered a form of burlesque.

And you don't have to look like Christina Aguilera to do it!  The documentary follows 10 women enrolled in Seattle's Academy of Burlesque. (That's a real thing.  I shit you not.)  It's a six-week course that teaches women from all different backgrounds the timeless art of the striptease.

I know what you're thinking:  any idiot can take off their clothes.  That's not art.  But that's not all burlesque is.  It's an attitude, a way of life, a glitter-filled way to poke fun at societal norms.  After all, satire is making fun of rich people by other rich people.  Burlesque is making fun of rich people by everyone else.

Let me illustrate this with a video.  Agent Provocateur is a high-end British lingerie company and this video is one of their advertisements that combines their product with a rather scathing view of American politics.  Um...it's definitely NSFW.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qWNiBaZme_w&has_verified=1

The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942)

  See?  Here's a Thanksgiving movie.  And you thought I couldn't do it.  All right, it's set over Christmas, but come on!  It was close.

This, of course, is the poster for the play and not the movie but I liked it.  It's got almost an Edward Gorey kind of feel to it.

Anyway, The Man Who Came to Dinner is a classic comedy starring Bette Davis and Monty Wooley.  Never heard of the last guy?  That's because he starred in the original Broadway version and did such a good job they put him in the movie.    He plays a man named Sheridan Whiteside, a famous critic and radio personality, who injures himself on a set of icy stairs and is forced to remain in the home of a Midwestern couple until he recuperates.  In retaliation, he becomes the worst houseguest imaginable with a list of demands a mile long, a disagreeable demeanor, and threats of lawsuits.  He even attempts to wreck his long-suffering secretary's budding romance with the local newspaper man because he can't stand the thought of hiring someone new.

It's catty and backstabby and fun and I found it to be a very nice ending to a hectic day.  I know I had to be on my very best behavior because I was a guest in someone's home and it was delicious to watch someone else be on their very worst.

Tangled (2010)

  Happy Thanksgiving!  In the spirit of not finding holiday-appropriate movies to watch, here's the newest Disney film!

This is the story of Rapunzel, the princess locked in the tower and forced to grow hair of a ridiculous length until she is rescued.  In this case, the story begins a couple of months before the princess is even born when the queen falls ill and requires the use of a magic flower to heal.  Unfortunately, the flower was being utilized by a selfish old lady to reverse the effects of aging so she's really pissed when they take it.  The princess is born and the old lady figures out that the girl's hair will perform the same trick but only if it's never cut, because if it is it loses its magic and turns brown instead of gold.

As a natural brunette, I have to say that particular plot-point rankled.

So she kidnaps the girl and locks her in a tower for eighteen years.  Right about then, the hero of the story (less of a hero and more of a thief on the run for stealing the Lost Princess' crown) climbs the tower and Rapunzel sees her ticket out.  From there, it's a pretty standard Quest movie.

This is the 50th animated film in the Disney Classics series and I have to say, it felt a little flat.  Not to say it was bad, because it wasn't, it just didn't reach the heights of say Aladdin or Beauty and the Beast.  There isn't one memorable song in the whole movie.  The only one that's close (in that I remember bits of it) is the "I've Got a Dream" song when they're in the Snuggly Duckling.  That part is adorable.

The animation is beautiful.  The mix of CGI and hand-drawn makes for a very deep world even if you go the 2D version over 3D.  And I believe that this is the first Disney animated movie to show a character bleeding, which is a stylistic change to say the least.

So I didn't walk out thinking it was a travesty but I'm probably not going to rush and buy it when it hits DVD either.  Which is a shame, really, since I own about 80% of all the animated Classics and I hate when my average starts to fall.

The Getaway (1972)

  This was a terrible movie.  It was boring as shit and made no sense.

Steve McQueen is in jail and has a ridiculously hot wife.  He doesn't want to be in jail so he tells his hot wife to go make a deal with the crooked sheriff so he can get parole.  She accomplishes this by sleeping with the sheriff.  Steve spends the rest of the movie pissed off at her about this. 
The crooked sheriff wants Steve to rob a bank because Steve is a master thief.  Maybe my concept of "master thief" is different than director Sam Peckinpah's, since in my world master thieves are the ones that don't get caught.  Crooked Sheriff sends Steve off to rob the bank with two random dudes; one is completely forgettable and the other is a dyed-in-the-wool psychopath.  Guess what happens?

/Final Jeopardy music

If you said "The forgettable guy gets capped when the heist goes wrong and the psychopath goes all psychopathy" congratulations!  /confetti cannon

Now Steve and his hot estranged wife take their marital problems on the run with a half million dollars in loot.  The Crooked Sheriff's goons and Rudy the Psychopath pursue, all the way to a hotel in El Paso...which was a terrible idea since nothing good ever happens in El Paso.

I'm already bored and I'm just trying to write a synopsis.  Bottom line:  everyone dies except Steve and Hot Wife and they patch up their differences over the border in Mexico.  The End.

/yawn

The only reason to watch this movie at all is the trainwreck that is Sally Struthers.  Oh, yes, the "won't someone feed the children and pass me another bucket of chicken" lady from the TV ads.  She gets involved as the ditzy vet assistant who takes up with Rudy the Psychopath.  It is never clear whether she's a hostage with Stockholm Syndrome or just too stupid to realize that Rudy is not a warm-and-fuzzy kind of guy.  Even if he does like kittens.

Plus, no boobs.  There is absolutely no reason why at least one of the chicks in this movie couldn't have shown something.  Hot Wife goes braless the entire film but never actually shows anything (which should be freakin' impossible.  I have only ever gone out braless twice and both times I was terrified of slippage and ended up taping my clothes to me).  Stupid Sally has no reason to be on-screen if not to display some ta-tas.  But no.  You get a flash of side-boob and that's it.  Lame.

Unstoppable (2010)

  Tony Scott has done the impossible:  he made a movie about trains interesting.  I was not going to go see this movie because my experience of trains is of sitting at those stupid little blinking red lights as I wait for an endless procession of identical cars to pass at roughly one-third the speed of paint drying.  Even after my brother recommended it to me I was disinclined to go but I figured the hell with it.  I hadn't seen a movie in theaters since RED in October and nothing else looked good at all.

It was outstanding.

The whole movie hinges on a series of bad decisions that, by themselves, wouldn't have been major but combined to form a catastrophe.  Ethan Suplee is pissed at his boss for breathing down his neck so he cuts corners by not connecting the air brake.  He gets down from the moving train to flip the track switch and the throttle slips.  Now there's a runaway train hauling toxic and highly combustible chemicals.
Chris Pine is a conductor only four months out of training.  Because he's on the phone about a restraining order his wife took out on him, he miscounts the number of cars he's supposed to add to his train and takes five more.  This will later prevent him and Denzel from being able to get onto a side track, forcing them to play chicken with said runaway train.
The people at Corporate keep trying to minimize the damage to their shareholders, refusing to be aware of how dangerous the situation really is.  They decide not to derail the train in an unpopulated area and try several other methods, each one progressively more desperate and dangerous.

The casting for this movie was spot-on.  Everyone did such a great job, especially Rosario Dawson.  They did everything they could to minimize her inherent beauty to make her more realistic, including hiding her rather large bust.

I know it's hard for women in Hollywood to make the transition from "hot girl" to "real actress" and I'm glad she's getting that chance.

The Lovely Bones (2009)

  This is one of those rare times that I remember HBO is useful for more than Boardwalk Empire and TrueBlood.  You may remember this film from the list of Oscar nominations in February.  Stanley Tucci was nominated for Best Supporting Actor but lost to Christoph Waltz for Inglourious Basterds.  Now that I've seen both films, I have to say I would have voted for Tucci but only by the smallest margin.  He was amazing in this movie.

The story is narrated by Susie Salmon, a fourteen-year-old girl who is murdered in a cornfield on her way home from school.  From her strange shifting world of Limbo, she is able to see the ripple effect her death has on the lives of her family and her killer.

Now, I watch a lot of True Crime shows and I spent several formative years fascinated by serial killers.

...

What?  Like you don't have hobbies?

Anyway, I appreciated the small details presented by Tucci's performance as the killer.  The stalking, the carefully innocuous facade, the meticulous planning leading up to the actual act and followed by an equally meticulous clean-up and trophy-taking.  It was a beautifully disturbing role and played with a quiet menace.  He was the cancer eating away at the Salmon family, twisting them into bloodless shells.

It's impossible to have a 'happy' ending when you know up front that the main character is dead, but the movie manages to be satisfying, at least on a karmic level.

Peter Jackson's eye for the fantastical seemed ever-so-slightly off to me on this film, which is really the only critical thing I can say about it.  His Limbo just seemed to be missing something.  I just don't think it went far enough into surreality but I can't really point to an example of where it should have gone further.  It's just one of those little niggling things that distracts from the overall effect, like an itchy tag on the inside of a really soft cashmere sweater.

Casino (1995)

  I was hoping to have had this posted for you last night but it just didn't happen. As a matter of fact, I'll confess that I cobbled together that TV update in one window while the movie played in another simply because Casino is about 30 seconds short of being a full 3 hours and I was never going to make my midnight deadline. 

Not that you shouldn't still enjoy A Bit of Fry and Laurie because you totally should.

This movie really exemplfies Martin Scorsese's aesthetic for mob movies.  It's flashy and loud with multiple voice-overs, rampant drug use, violence, characters that never end up enjoying their lives of crime, and the word 'fuck' (422 times!).  Seriously, the only thing that separates this from Goodfellas is the backdrop of the Vegas Strip.  That and DeNiro's wardrobe.

There is a lot of pastel. Although I do applaud any man who can wear pink.

As a movie, it's meh.  As a look back at popular fashions from 1973-1983, it's outstanding.  Seriously, I think the costume department should have been nominated for an Oscar just for Sharon Stone's hairstyles.

A TV update

I thought I'd take a minute to let you know about some of the fine television shows there are out for your viewing enjoyment.  Well...there's at least one fine television show.  The other one you should probably avoid at all costs.

Let's start there.  I'm on the last disc of the TV show Moonlight, which was mercifully cancelled after just one season.  Yeah, that's the guy from the new Hawaii 5-0 remake.  He sucks (so to speak) marginally less in that show.  I don't know if I've said it before, but I hate self-loathing vampires.  Tell me the point of being immortal and having all kinds of cool-ass powers if you're just going to bitch and moan about how you wish you were human again?  The vampires in this show don't even ash in sunlight!  Sure, it makes them all pinch-faced but still.  That circumvents the major disadvantage of the condition and you're still not happy?  That's just ungrateful.

Update 11/18:  Finished the season.  It did not redeem itself with the last episode.  Sometimes, when a show knows it's going to be cancelled it'll pull out all the stops for an epic finale.  This one went for the fizzle approach instead.  Bleh.

Now A Bit of Fry and Laurie is a TV show.  I watched the first season streamed from Netflix since I still had two discs of the worthless vampire show at home.  I do so love good word-play and this sketch comedy is probably about the most clever writing I've ever come across.  The "Leave it Out" sketch alone is worth the price of admission.

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

  This is a freakin' classic film.  And for good reason.  The older and more cynical I get, the more I like it.

If you haven't seen this movie, do yourself a favor and Netflix it immediately.  Pop it in, sit back with a glass of scotch and immerse yourself in the world of Sam Spade, private eye.

Spade and his partner, Miles Archer, are hired by a mysterious and beautiful woman to shadow a man named Floyd Thursby.  Of course it goes awry and Miles is shot.  A few minutes later, so is Floyd Thursby.  Sam has to navigate through the increasingly labyrinthine turns of the case.  At the center is the eponymous falcon statue, such a small thing to have such a high human cost.  Sam must find the object without falling prey to one of the three interested parties, each one willing to kill to keep it from the others, and also solve the murder of his partner before the cops decide to pin it on him.

It's a landmark film and one of the best ones Bogart ever did without Lauren Baccall.

The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor (2008)

 So most of my friends and family know that I take Krav Maga lessons.  Many of them suspect it's part of my plan to eventually become a ruthless dictator of a third world country.  I admit nothing.

While visiting with Christy, I had the opportunity to eat dinner over at her dad's (my mother's brother) house.  His wife, Sue, mentioned that Brendan Fraser took Krav Maga to prepare for some of the stunt-fighting used in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor.  I had steered clear of the movie because the reviews just weren't that great (13% on Rotten Tomatoes, ouch!) but since they had it on DVD, why not?

I read a review on IMDB criticizing the writing for the abysmal dialogue but I don't think that was the real problem.  I think that the writers had a decent handle on who the characters were and certain actors completely let them down.  Chiefly, Luke Ford (Alex O'Connell) and Maria Bello (Evelyn O'Connell).

In Maria Bello's case, it's not really her fault.  She took over the part from Rachel Weisz, who had really made the role her own, and I don't think she was allowed to make any real changes to the personality.  If she had been allowed to play less breathy, more jaded I think it would have worked.  But it was like seeing a bargan Stepford replacement of Evie O'Connell. 

The real turd in the punchbowl of this movie, though, is Luke Ford:  the Americanized college dropout son of Rick and Evie.  Like Sean William Scott in The Rundown but with less of a personality.  While he was adorably cheeky in the second movie (and English), his charm completely deserted him upon puberty.  He was so wooden you could have used him for a sarcophagus.   

Everybody else seems to be playing their characters the way they did in the last couple of movies.  The Chinese cast are all very professional.  Jet Li is angry and demanding as the emperor, Michelle Yeoh is graceful and serene as the sorceress, and Isabella Leong is pouty and plucky as the assassin.  You really can't ask for more from an action movie. 

Seriously, Luke Ford was so bad, every time he was on-screen I found myself pretending part of the scenery had lines so I didn't even have to look at him.

Pictured:  Luke Ford

Oh!  Before I forget:  so Jet Li can shape-shift as part of his mummification.  He turns into a three-headed dragon in order to fly down from the Himalayas and then he turns into some sort of weird-ass horned bear-thing to get through a zombie army and under the Great Wall (don't ask).  The weird-ass bear thing is a Shisa, a Chinese guardian lion.  You're welcome.

Turandot (2005)

This is not the official poster for the movie I saw, which was the 2005 production of Opera Australia, but you have to admit it's pretty cool looking.

Turandot is an opera set in China, sung in Italian, and played by Australians.  That always cracks me up.  Giacomo Puccini really liked setting his operas in new far-flung places like Imperial China, Japan, and even the Wild West.  This was his final opera and he died before he could finish it.

The story itself is based on a Persian folk tale about a Princess who demands that her suitors must answer three riddles to win her hand in marriage.  If they fail, they are killed.  A deposed king, his son, and a slave girl arrive right about the time her latest would-be-husband gets the axe.  First the new prince decries such cruelties and then he catches a glimpse of her and decides it might be worth it.

He rings the gong and announces his candidacy.  The princess is not impressed.  He has no kingdom, no money, and possibly a new government looking to kill him.  Hell, I wouldn't marry him either.  But the conditions have been set and there's no going back now.  She asks her questions and, unbelievably, he gets all of them right.  Then he turns the tables, seeing that she's not a gracious loser by any means (frankly, she's kind of a raging bitch which means she's both filthy rich and drop-dead gorgeous otherwise nobody would have bothered).  He tells her that she can still have him killed if she figures out his name before dawn.

This is really the only part of the opera that I like.  "Nessun dorma" is probably one of the most beautiful pieces for a tenor ever written.  I only wish Kenneth Collins had done it a bit more justice.  The last crescendo is supposed to be sweeping and epic and he sounded like he was reaching a little too hard for that top note.  But then, I sound like a cat shitting a rusty tin can when I sing so I really shouldn't judge.

Anyway, he completely misjudges how much she doesn't want to get married when he makes his little offer because the first thing she does is haul in his old blind dad and the slave girl to have them tortured.  Unnamed Prince probably should have thought that one through.  The slave girl volunteers to be tortured to death so they don't go after the old man because she's in love with the prince.  Turandot really doesn't understand that concept but instead of being impressed with her devotion, orders that the name be torn from her.  Slave Girl falls on a dagger rather than betray her love...who feels bad but not enough to say "fuck it, I don't want to marry you" before she dies.  Actually, immediately following that scene, he spends about 20 minutes trying to feel up Turandot so I guess he doesn't feel bad about it at all.

Royalty are a bunch of bastards.

She falls in love with him after they make out and even though he tells her his name she doesn't have him killed.  Because what independent women who resist marriage and other socially-mandated roles really need is some hot lovin'.  That'll change her ways!

The production wasn't the best.  The sets were too dark, and (although I am aware that opera is about the voices and the people are really just space-holders) Ealynn Voss was way too old to be playing a nubile princess.  Still, I encourage people to get out and see the actual opera if you can find it.

The Machine Girl (2008)

  As the picture attests, this movie practically reeks of campy fun. Like if Dead Man's Shoes had been made as a Grindhouse film. Oh, Japan. Will you never tire of scantily-clad schoolgirls-turned-cyborgs hungering for revenge? Let's hope not!

The story concerns Ami, a teenage girl who lives with her little brother Yu after the death of their parents.  Not sure if the movie ever actually says what happened to Mom, but we know that Dad killed himself rather than face the shame of being called a murderer. 

Side note:  This is a chief difference between Japanese and American films.  In America, you don't throw off a line like "I've had to look after you ever since Dad committed suicide rather than face a murder charge" without some kind of expositional flashback.   As a matter of fact, Ami finding out whodunit would probably be the whole plot of the movie.  But I digress...

What Ami doesn't know is that Yu is under the thumb of some yakuza's spoiled brat who ends up tossing him and his friend Takashi off a building.  Fun Fact:  Japanese schoolgirls turn into murder machines in the face of adversity.  Also, Japanese people don't have arteries; they have fire hoses.

Anyway, Ami gets caught by the yakuza parents and has her arm chopped off.  She escapes and seeks shelter in the machine shop of the other dead kid's family.  They fit her out with the wicked cool machine gun, which in no way is too heavy for a typical high school girl to lift.  The mom, Miki, even joins her on her quest to kill every last motherfucker standing after their shop is hit by (and I'm not even making this up) the Junior High Ninjas, and together they head off to the shrine where the yakuza family is hiding.

But wait!  There's more!  For the price of the spoiled sociopath kid, gleefully psychotic mom, and ninja-obsessed dad, you get FOUR OTHER VILLAINS!  See, the parents of the kids Ami has already killed form their own gang bent on revenge.  Outfitted in football pads, wrist pistols, and body armor featuring the faces of their dead progeny, they are probably the saddest group to ever try and deep-six a coed and her widow friend.

I'm not going to spoil the ending for you.  Just know that there are more lopped limbs, fountains of blood, gratuitous chainsawing, a drill-bra, and some pee-soaked pants for good measure.

Australia (2008)

Sorry for only getting two posts in this week.  I've been terribly behind on all my shows and I'm still trying to recover from the epic week-long vacation with my cousin and partner-in-crime.  True story:  It's going to take me three months to earn enough days off just to get back to zero.  Now that's  a vacation. 

Netflix mailed this to me on the 14th and I just got around to watching it last night while I was waiting on trick-or-treaters (that never showed up, by the way).  Normally, I love nothing more than watching an entire marathon of crappy low-budget horror films on Halloween.  In past years, I have rented all of the Horrorfest films and watched them back-to-back.  Some were good, some were shit but they were all very definitely Halloween horror.

This year, for whatever reason, I just wasn't in the mood.  Hence, you get a Baz Luhrmann extravaganza instead of Drag Me to Hell. 

And extravaganza it is.  Set against the backdrop of the Japanese bombing of Darwin, North Territory and the implementation of the Stolen Generations project is a tale of an Englishwoman trying to keep her ranch profitable in the face of a smug cattle baron and his truly evil henchman with only the help of a surly drover and a bright-eyed half-Aboriginal boy. 

**SPOILER ALERT**

In true Harlequin novel fashion, the uptight English bitch and the gruff misunderstood cowhand fall in lurve but they break up because he feels smothered and she won't let the kid go on walkabout or something.  Then the kid gets shipped off to Mission Island to have the black beat out of him, Lady Sarah the boss gets blown up, and Hugh Jackman cries.  Over the Rainbow gets sung or played on the harmonica a lot.  A plucky secondary character Sacrifices Himself so the Handsome Hero can feel bad while rescuing the children from the Evil Empire.  They sail into the ruined harbor and magically find the Beautiful Heroine through the power of song.

**END SPOILERS**

The movie was really pretty, if jumpily edited at the start, which is kind of a Baz Luhrmann signature.  Also a signature is his relentless cribbing from source material.  In this case, The Wizard of Oz.  He uses the themes of a stranger in a strange land, native magic, and the power of a home against the backdrop of war and genocide, of which apparently Frank L. Baum was in favor.

This is not a new thing for Baz.  Moulin Rouge was a technicolor explosion of La Traviata, Romeo + Juliet was a technicolor explosion of Romeo and Juliet and...well, Strictly Ballroom was pretty original, I guess.

Anyway, Australia doesn't suck but it does run 2 hrs and 45 min with no intermission so be ready with that pause button about halfway through.