Let's Start Dying: Death Wish (The Original)

Let's Start Dying: LSD . . . get it?

Hold it! One - more - wrinkle - and - you're - DEAD

 T  he story is legend by now: Charles Bukowski, a.k.a. Chuck Bronson, in the seminal Michael Winner film, Death Wish.

Yeah, I know: seen there, been that. But I'll bet you've never seen it on Acid.

There are some mistakes in life you just don't want to repeat, and watching Death Wish for the first time, sprawled on a shag rug carpet in front of your parents, who are reclining with their evening scotches in their easy chairs -- you, eschewing the scotch in favor of a particularly strong hit of Blotter - well, I guess ya just hadda bin there.

Now, some forty years later, I watch it with a much more jaundiced eye -- one that is not busy seeing small patterns move in the wallpaper.

We all know the story, but what do we really know about this movie? There are a bunch of superlatives. This was a true groundbreaker -- it did, after all, spawn three sequels -- and pretty much put Charles Bronson permanently on the A-list of Hollywood.

He had had a storied career so far, in such legendary cinematic triumphs such as Once Upon a Time In The West and The Dirty Dozen -- but this was his crowning ouevre.

Let me start by noting here is that this is a movie that is a period piece of New York in the 1970s, along with others such as Mean Streets, The Out-of-towners, and Serpico. The grit is real, the store signs are authentic and even the subway trains have Winston cigarette ads.

I am very familiar with this territory because I lived in Manhattan between the years 1970 and 1973, on what is now a ritzy Upper East Side. It wasn't so ritzy in 1971. In fact, New York was in the midst of a low-grade war.

Although I was just in my early teens I do remember that living in New York at that period of time was somewhat stressful, to say the least; schoolyard bullies ruled the roost and the Public School system was a nightmare to be in.

So Paul Kersey, the protagonist in this movie, is the proverbial embattled Everyman, whose wife is murdered by a youthful (and uncredited) Jeff Goldblum, his daughter left a vegetable.

We all know the story: Paul channels his inner Charles Bronson and goes on a vigilante rampage, creating a Who Is Killing The Great Muggers Of Manhattan classic.

What is interesting here is to watch director Michael Winner's cinematography. It screams Kubrick, Kubrick Kubrick -- but this is a full six years before The Shining.

Heeeeere's a fairy!

The classic Kubrick wide shot where all angles lead to the geographic center of the screen, in which stand the two main characters, is used with great abundance here. It's hard to say whether or not this was a typical trope in the Director's Bag of Tricks at the time or particular to Winner and Kubrick but let's just say that Kubrick could have been the director of this movie.

Lots of odd angles and strange closeups of bugged-out villains populate the landscape and The French Connection also makes its first true reappearance in this movie, although that was done by William Friedkin, and there are no car chases in Death Wish.

Hmm. Now where have I seen this in the future?

Otherwise, it's Mix and Mash The Early 70s Directors Week at the cinema here; I suppose, like all film eras, this one has a name: "School of newly minted widescreen classics" or something similar.

But a forgotten gem in this movie is the soundtrack, by jazz giant Herbie Hancock, in a classic Fender Rhodes and synth soundscape that yells "Never been done before," like so many other things in Death Wish.

The story is predictable but we forget that this was the first to do it -- all others since have merely quoted the master -- and let me tell you, watching this movie on very good LSD was an experience that Timothy Leary would have been shut the fuck up for.

In retrospect, maybe it wasn't such a mistake. But I'll pass on the blotter tonight -- San Pellegrino is the New Acid.

I don't recall what my mother thought. I was too busy counting Wall Lions.

Animated

Someone should document the Rise of the Animated Gif.

Here is one that I created way back at the dawn of Gifs, 1996, on a Proto-Blog I had that was a FULL SEVEN YEARS BEFORE THE RISE OF THE BLOG . . .

 . . . and one I did of my son Taishi a couple of years ago:

Ideas For Posts Part II: Movies About Mars

"Skipper, I think we have an anomaly." "No shit! Can I still get a Mars McMuffin or is breakfast over?"

(Image manipulation Durknit Pentex)

 T  he Martian Conicals.

I've always wanted to use that in some regard, be it a band name or the title of an article, but whatever I do, I'm determined to examine the Copper Planet's role in the movies.

Movie Mars has stood in for all sorts of situations -- as a jungle environment with alien Amazon-type women to allegories about desert-living peoples (did I just use the word "allegories?" I don't know what it means in relation to this article! But it sounds great, don't you think? I'm going to be a film critic for the NX Times yet, just you wait! How can I fail by sprinkling film reviews with lofty words like "allegory" and "lofty"?)

(Another word I'll try to use a lot is "skewers," because it has great edginess and cinematic drama! In fact, I should write some movie-reviewing algorithm where you just plug in the movie name and push "random," and up pop sentences like "with an often too-broad a sweep of the cinematic brush" and "the component angst of Scott's premise" and fuckin' A, you have a meaningless movie review that looks GRRRREAT!)

But I digress.

What was I saying? Oh yeah, Movies about Mars.

Perhaps the most famous line concerning Mars in cinematic history must be Arnold Schwarznegger's unforgettable line in Total Recall: "Honey, LET'S DOO IT! Let's move to Mahsss!"

Coming right up! A few whips of the cat on Dane and I'm sure a great article will result.

BREAKING NEWS: KUBRICK'S JUPITER PROBE FOUND ON DWARF PLANET

Remains of Discovery One on dwarf planet Ceres

 I  t's official: NASA scientist have confirmed that the mysterious lights on the dwarf planet Ceres are, in fact, the remains of the Jupiter spaceship Discovery One that was piloted by Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood in 1969.

"We don't know quite how it ended up there, but it seems clear from the movie that Keir Dullea experienced some bizarre hallucinations just before we lost contact with him and the ship was certainly in that region of space."

NASA has not published the closeup photographs of the wreckage out of respect for the families involved.

Discovery One near Jupiter

"Keir was a good friend, a great astronaut," says retired NASA director Gene Kranz, who oversaw the launch and mission of the Discovery One. He was also the last person to have had any contact with the ship. "It took almost eight hours for our transmissions to reach the ship," explains Kranz, "so when I heard Keir's last transmission the ship had probably already crashed on Ceres. He wasn't making any sense at that point—he was rambling about disabling HAL and seeing lights everywhere."

"He asked if someone had perhaps spiked his Tang with LSD as a joke. I assured him that was not possible," Kranz continued.

"He will be missed."

Disney's Latest Vision of Hope is a Mess

 M  any of the world's most brilliant minds came wrapped in packaging that could definitely be considered less than perfect. Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking and Alan Turing can all be considered flawed but brilliant, and the public has a generalized vision of them as being physically incapable of being pinups in the latest fashion magazines riddled with perfect bodies and beautiful faces. It would appear that the makers of Disney's latest version of hope for the future — Tomorrowland — have not seen the latest ad campaigns for Dove, encouraging real beauty (yes, most women do weigh more than 120 pounds!) as a source of confidence, not anxiety.

Tomorrowland is about a parallel world, where the best and brightest, and in this case most beautiful, can get together and share their ideas and change the world. In it there are boring ships that of course fly, futuristic jetpacks that bounce its users around like pinballs, and buildings that predictably look like the buildings of tomorrow.

Its star recruiter, Athena, played by the perfect looking Raffey Cassidy, sets in her sights on a young version of George Clooney's character, played by another perfect-looking boy, and brings him to Tomorrowland where he can show off his newly built jetpack made from some kind of neutrons and an Electrolux vacuum cleaner.

In the years that follow, something goes wrong and the world, our real world, is doomed. Enter another perfect looking heroine — Casey — who teams up with a now aged Clooney — still considered one of the sexiest men alive, and they embark on a half-assed, poorly edited hour of boredom, in an attempt to save our world from ourselves. It seems that Disney believes we love destruction and doom and would rather watch things get destroyed than try to change them (a great idea for kids eh?) unless we are gifted and belong in Tomorrowland, but that would require us to look perfect as well. 

As the villain in the film puts it, we are in a land that has an epidemic of obesity and starvation at the same time and our destruction is inevitable. 

But, not so fast. If you get a retro-looking pin from a recruiter from Tomorrowland, there is hope for us after all.

At well over two hours in length, with a score ripped off from John Williams and his effort in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, with one boring action scene after another chock full of CGI drivel, if it weren't for my 11-year-old daughter, who for once I had some time to spend with, and the great time we had ralphing down pizza, chicken fingers and fries during this oxymoronic film, I'd have walked out like about ten others who got fed up of it after about eighty minutes. 

Mind you, the extra few pounds we might gain from the junk food we ate would exclude us from saving the world as our wastelines would ban us from entering Tomorrowland, like a three foot high toddler is denied entrance to the latest rides at Disneyland because he or she is not tall enough.

My daughter liked Tomorrowland and said it was far better than that clichéd Cinderella, which I actually enjoyed. But hey, what do I know?

Quentin Gets a Hardon

This is about as close as Brad Pitt gets to acting

 O  kay, so this site is not exactly about the latest and greatest. We like to chew over movies, sometimes for months. Sometimes for decades. We like it that way. Time sorts out the good from the hype.

Which brings me to Quentin Tarantino and Inglorious Basterds.

I have to say, there is not much love lost between me and Quentin. After the shock of Reservoir Dogs wore off and I realised it wasn't shock, but schlock, then the rest followed in a miserable parade of cinematic excess. You've seen them: Kill Bill, Pulp Fiction, maybe even his little "Grindhouse" debacle.

Well, I never much cared for Tarantino and his strutting ego; to me he'll always be the Guy Who Rewinds Other People's Rental Tapes.

He's beyond smug. He's a caricature of a filmmaker. He's a poseur pretending to be an edgy dude, and he's not shy about ripping off everyone who's anyone just so he can come off as the Film Buff's Film Buff. His violence is always crudely staged, but in a way so that he lets you know it's crude. He doesn't want to have any polish or style with it; he wants to rub your nose in it, because, well, that's actually all he knows how to do. He knows that he doesn't possess the skills to bring off anything resembling a serious cinematic effort, so he covers it up by doing the opposite: deliberately making it so clumsy and badly written that that is what you applaud him for; kind of like a Bizarro World director who makes bad movies so badly that he wants you to think they're good.

So we come to Inglourious Basterds.

Oddly enough, I want to like this film, mainly because Nazis are a favorite subject of mine, and I like nothing better than to see them bashed -- in fact or in fiction. I like the premise of the film, which is basically, payback by the Jews Times One Hundred.

But it's curious to me why Tarantino, a non-Jew, picks the Jews to be the Nazi-bashers. Why not the Italians? They hanged Clara Petacci by the heels, after all. However, as one is no doubt aware, Tarantino doesn't like to follow any rules or logic -- he just emotes, like a small child. This is why all of his films end up looking like Tintin on steroids . . . a nasty, brutish Tinitin, usually with a Haddock-like sidekick who's equally brutish, but both cartoon characters nonetheless. And that's what Inglourious Basterds is, from the ground up: a cartoon fantasy straight from the childish, one-note mind of Quentin Tarantino.

His casting choices are poor. and puzzling at the same time. Brad Pitt is hilariously miscast but that's a minor quibble compared to the mishmash of other casting choices: Mike Myers might be occasionally funny, but his British accent is actually one of his best jokes, and Rod Taylor as Winston Churchill . . . Mr. Time Machine of Morlock fame as the portly prime minister . . . well, I rest my case.

Tarantino's Hitler is basically an eight-year-old's conception of the strutting dictator and can be immediately dismissed as such; nothing about the German actor's performance goes an inch above parody.

It's obvious Quentin idolizes this dwarf

Tarantino's laborious unter-plöt about Kinema in Frankreich is absurd, but it's a transparent vehicle for Tarantino to name-drop all his cinematic heroes. However, his attempts to be subtle are completely overblown; he just can't do "subtle." He tries desperately to riff on Leni Riefenstahl and her Triumph of the Will but just ends up sounding like one of Dr. Joseph Goebbels's sycophants.

It's clear he admires WWII German propaganda films with unusual enthusiasm, even as he attempts to mock them, as in his parody of a Nazi propaganda film about the young German soldier who kills hundreds of Americans singlehandedly. It's obvious he loves the over-the-topness of the Nazis, but it becomes unclear just how much is actual admiration and where the mockery begins -- I'd vote towards the former. Like I said, Tarantino can't Do Subtle.

The storyline, while satisfying on many levels -- after all, who doesn't harbor secret fantasies about blowing up the entire Nazi regime with a single blast? (Indeed, a certain Von Stauffenberg actually attempted that feat in real life) -- ends up being a clumsily assembled comic book where every scene is a panel with speech balloons. You can almost see the Comic Sans font spewing from every actor's lips, along with the BAM! POW!! WHOMP!! of the old Adam West Batman series.

And sadly, it just doesn't work. It doesn't work because Tarantino is incapable of making it work. He's just not good enough, not professional enough, to rise above his own mediocrity, and this is not just with the look and feel or the storyline but everything: casting, violence, dialogue, concept -- the entire movie never rises above the level of a Road Runner marathon. And this is what I have come to expect from every movie he has ever made.

I just don't buy it. As with popcorn, Tarantino is mostly hot air.

UPDATE 06/03: We make it a rule here at DJ&DP@themovies never to read someone else's review before writing our own. We don't want to have to be influenced by other people's opinions -- including each other's! However, post-writing this review, I've read a few other opinions supporting my own and posted appropriate links to them. Also bear in mind that Dane and I do not always agree on each other's reviews. THAT would be sacrilege! In those cases, we amicably agree to fucking punch each other's lights out.

That said, here's some wag's hilarious comment about Quentin: "Tarantino now talks about his 'oeuvre'. Apparently he’s spent his remaining talent buying vowels."

48 Hrs. for 12 Million Dollars

 T  hirty-three years ago, before YouTube, the Internet, and CGI (computer-generated imagery), movie makers absolutely had to be good at their craft in order to make something of value. They relied on real actors, music, editing and above all, timing, in order to make movies that could stand the test of time and entertain viewers who actually stood on line to see them.

In 1982, Walter Hill took a young Eddie Murphy, paired him up with former football player-turned-actor, Nick Nolte, and made what is possibly the best cop-buddy movie ever made; 48 Hrs. From its opening chain-gang scene that starts off with an incredible, award winning James Horner score, to its use of editing, timing and the physical presence of its actors, 48 Hrs. was technically perfect. With just 12 million dollars (1979's Star Trek the Motion Picture had a budget of 46 million) Hill was able to put together ninety-six minutes of film that should be shown in film classes around the world before future directors even start thinking about CGI.

Essentially, the story of a convict and a cop chasing a psychotic cop-killer through the streets of San Francisco who is hell-bent on getting back a whole bunch of money stolen from him in a drug sale gone wrong, what made 48 hrs so special was they way it used each of its characters' physical movements, gestures and dialogue, and timed them all together with dynamic editing, jazzy background music by the Busboys and Ira Newborn, chase after chase involving Nolte's old Cadillac, a stolen bus, and two crazy gun- and knife-wielding maniacs, giving the viewer what should be considered a genuine masterpiece. 

Eddie Murphy is physically slick as he jumps over turnstyles with ease in the subway and when he unleashes his quick combination punches against Nolte's face. He steals the movie with his infamous redneck bar scene which would later catapault him to stardom and turn him into a human cash register for Hollywood. Nolte, like his car, is brutish but reliable while relentlessly searching for the killer who stole his gun in a fantastic hotel shootout. Albert Ganz, ruthlessly played by James Remar, invokes genuine fear as the viewer is never sure what he will do next in his grey wifebeater sweater and slicked-back hair. His partner in crime, a musclebound indian named Billy Bear, is just as scary without saying more than a few lines the whole movie.

Brilliantly edited to Horner's visceral score with tympanic drums, blaring saxophones and a synthesizer for the climactic scene, which sounds like it was dragged out of the gates of Hell, 48 Hrs. stands alone as an example of what can be done in the editing room without a computer or microchip but just the vision of a director who knew how to maintain rhthym and keep time with his actors in a way that was incredibly intimate. This vision is sorely lacking in most of the movies made today by a slew of directors who rely on special effects to save them from a YouTube generation that makes movie-making far too easy.