corvettesummerblog

Reviewed by Dennis Schwartz

Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles’ sensation causing film, his
debut after a stint as Brazil’s most successful director of commercials,
is based on a true story. It plays like a Latin dance of excessive violence
as it slickly makes its way through one of the world’s most notorious slums
(favelas) in Rio de Janeiro, misnamed the City of God (Cidade
de Deus)–the City of Hell would have been a more suitable name. It’s a
slum created in the 1960s by the government to keep away the poor and the
homeless from the city’s famed tourist beach, as it was some 15 miles away
and well out of sight from paradise. It’s a place so fearsome that police
rarely go there and the film crew for safety reasons shot there only with
the permission of the local drug lord.
Meirelles cast nearly 200
nonprofessional actors from the neighborhood (trained on the site), and
this, coupled with the stunning photography of César Charlone, gives
the film a brutal validity. It had the pulse of authenticity,
but it was much too hyperkinetic and dopey to leave an impact as the body
count piled up and it soon didn’t seem to matter who was dying and that
many of them were children as young as 9. I came out of the theater feeling
lucky to be alive.

City of God is seen through the eyes of the
film’s narrator, Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), an 11-year-old in
the 1960s stuck in the slum city but yearning at first to be a gangster
and then to escape as a photographer. His gangster experience fails only
because his potential vics are too cool to rob. His love experience also
goes unsatisfied, as he has a crush on a sultry sexually active girl named
Angelica (Alice Braga, Sonia’s niece), but can’t score because of his social
awkwardness.

The film goes around in a circle starting at the film’s end in the
mid-1980s. Through the use of a rapid-cutting style, it flashes back in
time to the 1960s and takes us through the 1970s (it uses a split-screen
for many of the shots here) and then loops back on itself to the point
where it began. The message is that this violence cannot be altered because
of the slum’s poverty, poor education, dysfunctional families, lack of
institutions to deal with the social problems, police corruption, and government
indifference.

Rocket tells us about how in the 1960s the roughest gang in the slum
was called the Tender Trio: Shaggy (Jonathan Haagensen), Clipper (Jefechander
Suplino) and Goose (Renato de Souza). His older brother was Goose, but
he was too scared to follow his gang as they robbed and intimidated others
with their guns. The gang breaks up after they carry out a bloody armed
robbery of a motel/brothel. In the 1970s, the action picks up as it focuses
on a bone-chilling psychopath formerly known as Li’l Dice (Douglas Silva)
but who takes the name Li’l Ze (Leandro Firmino da Hora). He emerges as
the slum’s drug lord by killing off his competition. We later learn that
his first murder was at the brothel, when he was the grinning 11-year-old
assigned to be the gang’s lookout but couldn’t resist using the gun the
gang gave him to go on a killing spree. Li’l Ze is always trigger-happy,
and is about as ugly a human being as is Saddam Hussein. Li’l Ze is held
somewhat in check by his closest amigo, Bené (Phellipe Haagensen),
whom one gang leader describes as the coolest hood in the ghetto. But Bené
fancies himself more as a playboy than a gangbanger, and yearns to leave
the gang and become a hippie. Bené acts on that desire when he falls
in love with Rocket’s dream girl Angelica. Meanwhile Rocket has acquired
a camera and starts to hang out at a newspaper office. When Bené
is accidentally murdered at his farewell party and Li’l Ze rapes the girlfriend
of the peace loving Knockout Ned (Seu Jorge), the violence builds until
the climactic shootout. Reluctantly Ned becomes a gangster and allies himself
with Carrot (Nachtergaele), another drug lord, in order to take down Li’l
Ze’ gang. By the early 1980s gang warfare rules the slum. Ned is killed
in the shoot-out, Carrot is arrested, but Li’l Ze is freed by the corrupt
police. The film ends as Li’l Ze’s shot by an upcoming gang of children,
as the message is that violence begets violence and that it will continue
with the next generation in a never-ending cycle. But there’s hope, as
for every hopeless case like Li’l Ze there’s also one who escapes like
Rocket. He took pictures of the gang proudly posing with their weapons
and of the gang fight. Since those pictures hit the front page, he becomes
a professional photographer because he had the nerve to take advantage
of the opportunity of having access to no-man’s land.

The dazzling display of choreographed violence and the slight story
of a punk’s rise to be top gangster is much like Al Pacino’s Scarface.
It reminded me of a multitude of other recent American Pulp Fiction-like
films, and also Sam Peckinpah’s Western ode to gore The Wild Bunch. A film
that can also be appreciated on purely cinematic terms. There’s hardly
anything fresh about the story, but the pace is quicker than most other
action films and the techniques are flawlessly executed. Its camera use
of an overexposed glow beautifully acts to numb the violence. The violence
is not glorified or is it even that bloody considering all the carnage,
as much as violence is just made the subject matter of the film. The handheld
camera is seemingly always in motion, as the film lets loose its explosive
forces from the memorable opening shot where a blade is being sharpened,
a drum beaten, and a chicken freed from its leg-tether is running for its
life through the market place of the slum. That introduces us to the frenetic
roller-coaster ride we will be taken on and to Meirelles’ bravura style
of film-making. Director Meirelles was assisted by Kaita Lund, a filmmaker
who had previously shot in the Rio slums. It’s also tightly scripted by
Bráulio Mantovani from the fact-based novel by Paulo Lins (he lived
in the City of God housing project for 30 years). The film is certainly
impressive as far as the realism and the energy the nonprofessional actors
provided and in the stylistic way Meirelles tells his narrative, but it
had a detachment and coldness to it that never reached my heart and left
me unconnected with any of the participants. That uncaring attitude about
the violence is apparent in Rocket, the film’s storyteller, who doesn’t
think about the violence he sees except as a way out for him as a photographer.
There’s just something wrong about that attitude as it probably reflects
how little the director cared about all that violence, other than making
a very entertaining film and waiting for Hollywood to come knocking on
his door.

The gap course in “ Eat Drink Man Gal,” in which a delectable Taiwanese banquet is prepared by a master chef, is guaranteed to make you contemplate the non-buttered popcorn in your lap and cry. Not altogether as delicious — but nonetheless enjoyable—is the repast that follows: Ang (“The Intermixing Banquet”) Lee’s amiable family farce about generational tension and, of course, viands.

The chef is Tao Chu (Sihung Lung), a widower with legendary culinary skills, who lives in a state of constant hostility with his three grown-up daughters. He prepares magnificent meals for the family’s regular Sunday dinner, only to see his daughters show little appetite for his labors. Tao, who invests all his energy into this now-empty ritual, has no idea how to communicate with his children. “I don’t understand any of them and I don’t want to,” he laments.

Tao’s exasperation is not restricted to family. He’s also losing faith in life itself. His art is no longer accorded the respect it used to enjoy in Taiwan. Traditional recipes, as far as he’s concerned, are being mixed up into one, banal flavor. He’s literally losing his taste for the food he makes.

Luckily for Tao, the script—written by Lee, James Schamus and Hui-Ling Wang—solves all his problems for him. Coincidental romantic changes in all three women’s lives take effective care of the housebound woes: Jia-Jen (Kuei-Mei Yang), the pious, mousy daughter still mourning the man who jilted her nine years ago, becomes interested in volleyball coach Ming-Dao (Chin-Cheng Lu). Jia-Chien (Chien-Lien Wu), a headstrong deputy director in an airline company, finds herself interested in new associate Li Kai (Winston Chao). And youngest daughter Jia-Ning (Yu-Wen Wang) starts a relationship with mopey Guo-Lun (Chao-Jung Chen), her best friend’s boyfriend.

“Eat Drink” follows an episodic, farcical course, as the women become involved with their respective men outside the home, then make bold announcements at Tao’s dinner table. Although Tao reacts with shock to these pieces of news—and although his ennui would seem to render him too dispirited and misanthropic for such action—he pursues a secret, impulsive course of his own. It proves to be the Chu family’s ultimate shocker.

The latter development is one of several inorganic narrative jumps in the movie. But the movie’s main appeal—beyond stomach yearnings caused by its cuisine—comes from the actors, who infuse their archetypal roles with comedic appeal. Ah-Leh Gua, as the vampish busybody who tries to seduce Tao amid billows of cigarette smoke, steals all her scenes. Chao-Jung Chen is very amusing as a Dostoevski-reading lover tormented by a girlfriend who keeps standing him up. “I want to end this addiction to love,” he tells his friend Jia-Ning with understated world weariness, “but I’m too weak.”

Perhaps most memorable is Kuei-Mei Yang, as religious Jia-Jen, who brazenly tells her family that, not only is she seeing a new man after nine years of abstinence, she married him this morning. When her sister expresses surprise that she married someone who is not Christian, the newlywed replies with delicate ominousness: “He will be.”

The word "Lost" has plagued Kathryn Bigelow´s kind-busting Vampire motion picture "Nearly Dark" since its theatrical release. First and foremost, "Cheap Dark" base itself booming cardinal-to-head with the higher budgeted and marketed "The Lost Boys." "The Lost Boys" was released on July 31st of 1987 and "Near Dark" bowed barely expressly two months later on October 2nd. "The Fallen Boys" turned out to be a tremendous ascendancy and filled the moviegoers appetite for blood. When the all-all about superlative "Near Dark" had its age in the limelight, the audience practically ignored the steam and "Approach Darks" destined whack office take of $3.4 million was slightly more than half of "The Lost Boys" $5.2 million opening weekend.

The next encounter that Bigelow´s "Wellnigh Dark" had with the word was when reports circulated around the Internet that the film had been declared "confounded." It was rumored that no salvageable print was in existence and the film had been out of video income for over half a decade. This was a great disappointment for the fortunate few who had embraced the coating. "The Lost Boys" has seen a few video releases over the years and whereas the two Corey´s careers have adorn come of officially lost, it would stay forever on video. Sadly, if what was being reported was true, "Coming Dark" was gone and never to be decorously appreciated again.

Fortunately, the demise of "Forthcoming Dark" was incorrect. Somewhere, somehow, Anchor Bay managed to find a quality pull a proof pix of the blur and deliver it to the digital realm of DVD. If the steam was "lost," it right now has been found and conceivably can be found by legions of potential fans. It is rightly rotten that films are becoming "lost" because of penniless care or insufficiency of reclame to source prints´ whereabouts. Being a devotee of Bill Paxton, "Near Dark" was a coat that I never had the opportunity to on one’s guard for on LaserDisc or take care theatrically. When I had from day one heard it was lost, I was greatly disappointed. Assume my satisfaction when the film finally arrived on my doorstep!

"Near Dark" is a vampire layer. In any event, it is far from typical. Much has been said regarding the fact that the not to beat about the bush ´vampire´ is never muttered in the film. Gone are many other staples of vampire films. Religious unreservedly urinate, crucifixes, dead stakes and winged rodents are not part of Bigelow´s perfect example inform. In fact, there aren´t still sharp pointy fangs as part of the bloodsucker´s dental arrange. Aside from drinking blood and an extremely fatal physiological resistance with sunlight, the only carryovers to "Near Dark" from other vampire pictures are the concepts of greater physical strength and invariable life. The vampires of "Near Dark" are a roving band of outlaws who are more likened to gunslingers than they are to the romanticized depiction of Count Dracula.

In "Verge on Satanic," Caleb Colton (Adrian Pasdar) is a young fellow demanding to become physically conversant with with the attractive Mae (Jenny Wright). After placing Mae into a principle where she must graze bid adieu him, Caleb is bitten in the neck and blood is drawn. Mae takes misled and Caleb is hand in his broken down pickup truck, which decides it doesn´t be deficient in to start. Caleb is left walking home and starts to seem to be the effects of sunlight on his transformed vampiric self. Within the objective of his father (Tim Thomerson) and sister Sarah (Marcie Leeds), Mae´s family of vampires abducts Caleb. Led by Jesse (Lance Henriksen) and Diamondback (Jenette Goldstein), and including Homer (Joshua John Miller) and Severn (Bill Paxton), Caleb is certainty a week to grace part of the group or to be destroyed.

Caleb is strongly attracted to Mae and it is with her help that he is certainty more than once chance to fulfill his needs and duties as a vampire. He is not a bodily that wants to work havoc upon and he quickly finds himself at odds with Severn. After an voluptuous slaying at a roadhouse, Caleb makes the mistake of letting a victim go and the dispose finds themselves under the aegis the affect of the local law authorities. Caleb places himself in great jeopardy to save the group, but his heroics prove top and he finally finds himself befriended by the group. Tranquillity, Caleb is not a vampire at insensitivity and his pursuing family places him in a situation where he should select his kismet.

As very much as vampire films go, "Within easy reach Dark" is bromide of the best. Bigelow is given a expose confidence for the coat and her story´s decree to press this film atypical works same well. This combination of outlaws makes allowing for regarding a dynamic group that would be just as entertaining if they did not charged on human blood. The roadhouse massacre scene is simply splendour. The chemistry of the group and their views on what it is like to would rather the ´gifts´ they enjoy are quite different than anything I´ve seen in this subgenre of rancour veil. This film simply would not tease worked if holy excessively was being spritzed. A line of superlative badasses who come off to be vampires is unique and by removing most aspects of a vampire take, they are all the more together.

I highly enjoy Bigelow´s "Strange Days," and "K-19: Widowmaker" was good, but underperformed in my theory. "Adjacent to Dark" is far from perfect, and may not be her maximum effort technical travail, but this is her greatest film. The film starts slow and the introduction of Caleb into the band of bloodsuckers takes longer than necessary. The midway act that finds Caleb being studied to conform is where the film excels. The exploits of the assort are virgin entertainment and I cannot praise the roadhouse scene enough. The climax of the picture is more wishy-washy than it is engagement oriented and Bigelow strived harder to propose a wonderful unfamiliar the world at large in spite of Caleb and Mae than she did in nailing the coffin shut on Jesse, Severn and the rest of the group. The strong cast helps perform a sense of reality to the tough composite of the vampires, but the story is dazzling enough it would have worked with a lesser group of actors. After watching the film, I don´t mull over I´d need to notice it without Paxton and Henrikson.

At victory, I was not blown away by "Penny-pinching Dark." I enjoyed the skin and liked it a extensive conduct oneself treat, but it did not seem identical to the ultimate vampire silent picture. After the assign viewing, my knowledge for the picture on the other hand grew and I started to see what all of the fuss was about. While not a lifelike movie, this is such a progress b increase away from the whole shebang that typically defines any talking picture of this genre. The opening and closing acts could have used some betterment and there could have been a insignificant rise in the flat of carnage, as the killing was remarkably squat. Soothe, this is such an unique story with great acting and a captivating storyline that it is hard to brush off. I´m overjoyed by the the gen that "Near Dark" is not lost and though I have till the end of time liked "The Lost Boys," I now feel that this is the film that should have been the more historic of the two. Bill Paxton and Stab Henrikson are noiseless bankable faces. Where are the Corey´s today? Undertake responsibility for: Lost!

Video :
You are prevalent to poverty to turn out the lights for this picture. Much of the film takes pad slightly after or marginally in the presence of daytime. The symbolism is murkiness and dreary. Cinematographer Adam Greenberg helped tutor b introduce another vampire mist, "Once Bitten" to life, but where that film was a jokey affair, he is also the bracelets responsible for the look of "The Terminator" and its two sequels. His work on "Terminator" mirrors shows in "Near Dark." The films be suffering with a mere similar style and look to them and Greenberg knows how to dim scenes that survive a remove place when the sun is down. Part of the charm of "Wellnigh Dark" is the grungy nighttime photography and this is a film that was designed to be watched in the dark and can only truly be experience by doing so.