Foreign Film February: Iphigenia (1977)

iphigenia

I’m a big fan of Radiance Films. They put out really cool releases of relatively obscure films. My understanding is that one of the guys who used to run Arrow Video now runs Radiance, and that checks out. Arrow made a name for themselves by doing some very nice restorations of low-budget cult films and giving them loads of cool extras. Radiance is doing the same but with obscure arthouse European films. 

I try to get as many of them as I can, and I’m never disappointed.

Iphigenia is based on a Greek legend about Agamemnon having to sacrifice his firstborn child in order to win the war with Troy. It is a really beautiful, wonderfully made film, and I’m so glad I watched it.  You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

Foreign Film February: Kagemusha (1980)

image host

The 1970s were a difficult decade for Akira Kurosawa. In the late 1960s, he spent years working on two projects that never came to fruition – Runaway Train was cancelled after months of prep work, and he was fired from Tora! Tora! Tora! after three weeks of shooting.

He struggled to gain financing for another picture, but with the help of some friends, he made his first color film, Dodes’ka-den, in 1970. It was a commercial failure.

He attempted suicide in 1971.

He only made one other film in the 1970s, Dersu Uzala, and that had to be made in Russia with Russian financing. It did relatively well both critically and commercially, but he would not make another film this decade.

With the help of George Lucas and Francis Ford Coppola, he was able to make Kagemusha in 1980. In some ways it feels like a warm-up for the director’s next film (and his last truly great movie), Ran.  Both films are set in the Sengoku period of Japan’s history and feature epic battles, political cunning, and samurai. 

Ran tends to get all the glory, but don’t sleep on Kagemusha.

A petty thief (Tatsuya Nakadai) is set to be executed by crucifixion, but when Takeda Nobukado (Tsutomu Yamazaki), the brother of Takeda Shingen (Tatsuya Nakadai), the daimyo (or warlord) of the powerful Takeda Clan, realizes that the thief looks a lot like Takeda, he stays his execution and uses him as a double, or political decoy: a kagemusha – or shadow warrior.

While laying siege to a castle, Takeda is mortally injured. Before he dies, he tells his generals to keep his death a secret for three years. Much of the film is spent with the generals trying to fool everyone –  Takeda’s grandson, his mistresses, his enemies, and even his horse – that the thief (who is never given a name, so we’ll call him Takeda from now on) is the daimyo.

This proves surprisingly easy, and the double is quite good at impersonating the real Takeda. At first the grandson recognizes he is not the real Takeda, but the double is so much kinder and more playful than his real grandfather that the boy quickly takes to him and soon doesn’t care if he is real or not.

The mistresses either don’t notice the differences or are smart enough to realize that if they make a fuss, they will likely lose their jobs or their lives. In a meeting the double proves himself sly, besting the son in words when he balks at the whole scenario.

Most of the clan and their enemies have never seen their leader up close, and since he is careful to wear the full daimyo armor in public and is only seen at a distance by most, nobody seems to realize they are being duped. 

Over time, Takeda begins to think he is the real deal. He starts to give orders as if he is truly boss, much to the chagrin of the generals. As part of the real Takeda’s orders, the clan was supposed to suspend all fighting and keep to themselves for a time.  But the double starts pushing toward war. The film ends on a poignant and utterly devastating note.

At 180 minutes, the film runs long. I found myself struggling to keep up somewhere in the middle. The story is a bit difficult to follow. Many of the characters are based on real people, and I have no doubt that many of the historical and cultural nuances went straight over my head.

Where the film excels is in its visual storytelling. There is a great scene where the rifleman who shot the real Takeda demonstrates how he was able to do it, shooting with a rudimentary gun at a great distance in the dark. It is Kurosawa storytelling at its best.

The film used hundreds, even thousands, of extras for the battle scenes. Kurosawa was a master at staging, and he does so brilliantly here. Sometimes there will be long lines of horses that march across the back of the screen, then the middle, and the foreground. Between them are foot soldiers marching in opposite directions. It must have been quite a feat getting them all to move in the way that looks visually interesting.

His use of color is astounding. There is one scene where all of these soldiers are marching. The sun is setting behind them, and it is so stunningly beautiful I almost cried.

Famously, there is a dream sequence where the fake Takeda faces the real one. Because it is a dream, Kurosawa paints it with vivid colors. The background is a psychedelic landscape of primaries, the ground is the stuff of fantasy, and it ends with Takeda staring at himself in a mirror like pool of water. 

Every moment of this film is beautiful to look at.

I just wish the story held my attention more. In the end, this isn’t top-tier Kurosawa, but there is so much beauty to be found I must highly recommend it.

2 Minutes Late (1952)

2 minutes late poster

Pretty much whenever I watch a movie, I internally review it. More often than not, once the movie is over, I’ll spend some time mentally writing a review. Sometimes that makes it onto the page, and I post it here or elsewhere. Sometimes I get distracted, and it never goes anywhere.

Every once in a while I’ll mentally write a review and think that I have actually posted it only to discover, later, that I never did write it out. This is one such occasion. I sure thought I had written a review for this film, but alas, I have not.

The trouble is I watched this a couple of weeks ago, and the plotting details are already foggy. And because this is a fairly obscure Norwegian film from 1952, there aren’t a lot of details of the film online. 

But it is still Foreign Film February, and I wanted to write something about it, so here goes. 

The Criterion Channel is running a little collection of Nordic Noir, and I’ve been enjoying it. The first two films I watched weren’t all that noirish, to be honest. There were hints of noir in there, but you have to stretch the definition a little bit to categorize them as such. But 2 Minutes Late is straight-up noir, and I loved it.

Max Paduan (Poul Reichhardt) is married to the nervous, clingy, and extraordinarily jealous Grete (Grethe Thordahl). She’s even jealous of her sister Beth (Astrid Villaume), thinking her friendship with her husband might be something more. 

One day Grete goes to an old bookstore to find something to read while she’s getting her hair done. She accidentally leaves her purse behind. When she returns, she finds the owner has left for lunch, but a little push on the door and it opens. She smells something strange in the store but shrugs it off, grabs her purse, and leaves. 

Later she’ll learn someone was murdered in that store right around the time she was in it. Suspicions fall on Max, and it is Beth who does some investigating to find out who really did it. The plot gets all sorts of twisty, and it’s filled with lots of interesting little details. This is where my memory gets fuzzy. I don’t remember exactly where it all goes, but I do remember I quite liked it.

If you like film noir and have the Criterion Channel I highly recommend it.

Stranger On the Third Floor (1940)

stranger on the third floor bluray

I freaking love me some Peter Lorre. I am a huge film noir fan. Stranger on the Third Floor stars Peter Lorre and is often cited as the very first noir. Several times now I’ve gotten all sorts of excited thinking about that and put this movie on only to be disappointed by it. 

It isn’t a terrible film, but it is definitely a B-movie that never expected to be talked about some seventy years after it first appeared on screens. And Peter Lorre is in it for less than ten minutes.  He’s great, and there is a pretty cool dream sequence in the middle, but other than that it is kind of dull.  Anyway, you can read my full review here.

Happy Twin Peaks Day

image host

My wife and I were latecomers to Twin Peaks. I never watched it when it first ran. We picked it up sometime just after we first married, but we didn’t finish even the first season. But just about a year ago we watched it from beginning to end (you can read more about my thoughts here).

Most of the series revolves around the murder of Laura Palmer (Sheryl Lee) and the authorities attempt to catch her killer. The pilot episode begins on February 24. We know this because Agent Cooper (Kyle MacLachlan) rolls into town and announces the date into a small recording device.  This has become something of a meme for fans (as you can see in the image above), and so today has become Twin Peaks Day.

We decided to start a rewatch today. Watching that pilot episode now, which pretty much introduces us to all the various characters that fill Twin Peaks, knowing what is to come. Knowing who the murderer is. Knowing the absolute horror Laura Palmer will be subjected to really makes the pilot hit so much harder.

It is a great introduction to this series. It is  funny and weird, heartbreaking and thrilling in equal measure.  I can’t wait to catch all the details I missed the first time around.

Excalibur is the Pick of the Week

image host

I write a pick of the week almost every week. Beyond the actual pick I talk about at least two or three other interesting releases, often talking about many more.  It is actually quite rare for me to buy any of the things I talk about. I just don’t have the money. 

While writing this week’s pick, I actually talked myself into purchasing it. I don’t even like Excalibur all that much. But it is stunningly beautiful, and weird, and I dig that. And this set of it by Arrow is pretty awesome.  You can read all about it and more over at Cinema Sentries.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: The Cat O’ Nine Tails (1971)

image host

This was one of the first Dario Argento films I ever watched. I had definitely watched The Bird With the Crystal Plumage before, and probably Suspiria, but I was not well versed in Argento or Giallo at that point.  I watched it on an old DVD that I bought on the cheap. It was one of those packs of multiple films all put onto a couple of discs where the quality is god-awful. This was a pack of like ten slasher films on two discs.

I didn’t know anything about the film; I’m not even sure I knew it was an Argento, but it sounded interesting, and I gave it a go. I mostly liked it, but I didn’t love it. 

I’ve seen it a couple of times since and have come to enjoy it more. Having now seen almost all of Argento’s filmography and a whole lot of Giallo, I can better see how it fits inside those things and appreciate it more.  It still isn’t anywhere close to my favorite, but it’s a long way from the worst.   I do find it interesting that I watched it so early.

The Cat O’ Nine Tails was the second film Argento ever directed and is the middle part of what has become known as his “Animal Trilogy” (the first is Bird With the Crystal Plumage, the last is Four Flies on Gray Velvet.)

This film suffers from it leaning more towards the murder mystery aspects of the Giallo and away from the more lurid and stylistic parts of the genre. 

Someone breaks into the Terzi Medical Institute but steals nothing. The institute studies genetics and has just made a breakthrough. It seems that individuals with an extra Y chromosome—making it XYY – have a much greater tendency toward violence. That extra chromosome is quite rare, but a study inside a prison found that those convicted of violent crimes had it at a much higher rate.

Since nothing was stolen, the police basically shrug. But a newspaper man named Carlo Giordani (James Franciscus) takes an interest in the story, as does Franco “Cookie” Arno (Karl Malden), a blind man who loves working puzzles. 

Before they can figure it out, the bodies start piling up. Someone is strangling people that at first seem random, but they ultimately are found to have some connection to the institute. 

There are lots of groovy scenes featured from the killer’s point of view, usually as he’s killing someone. In the midst of this, Argento often gives us extreme close-ups on the killer’s eyes, but until the end we do not see who the killer is. With that and Cookie being blind, Argento’s themes about what we see and what we don’t are none too subtle. But still effective. 

The editing is rather fascinating. Between scenes, the film will often give us flashes of what is to come. As one scene is ending, we’ll see the beginning of the next scene  flash cut into the previous scene for a few seconds.  There are a few nicely staged scenes and some typical Dario style, but mostly he plays it straight. Which is too bad because the actual story doesn’t quite have enough in it to keep me completely interested.

It is well worth seeing if you are a fan of Argento or Giallo. It isn’t the first film I’d turn to if you are interested, but it is definitely a nice way of seeing how things developed.

As an aside note I’m counting this as part of Foreign Film February even though the copy I watched was an English dub. Like a lot of Italian films from this time I believe Cat O’ Nine Tails was filmed with everyone speaking in their native tongue and then in post production it was dubbed into English and Italian (with the main actors using their own voice when possible – so Karl Malden speaks in English, and was presumably dubbed by an Italian for that version.) So this was a foreign made film directed by an Italian so I’m counting it.

Spencer Tracy 4-Film Collection

image host

Spencer Tracy is one of those actors whom I like in just about everything but that I’ve never really gravitated towards. I have no idea why. I got this four-film set the other day and quite enjoyed it (well, three of the films, anyways).

You can read my review of the entire set here.

My Life in Music: Europe – The Final Countdown

europe the final countdown

I used to write a series entitled “Random Shuffle.” This is where I’d literally put my entire music collection (all ripped to iTunes), put it on shuffle mode, and then talk about whatever songs came up. Sometimes I’d talk about the music, but mostly I talked about the memories the music brought to mind. It became kind of an emotional journal, a history of my life in music.

I love the way music does that. How a certain song can take you back to a specific moment in your life. It is transportive. I love that sometimes it isn’t a specific memory but a feeling. There are songs that remind me of being sixteen and driving around in my beat-up Plymouth with the windows rolled down and not a care in the world.

I loved writing those posts. I think it’s still some of the best writing I ever did. I often think about starting it again. But the thing is I just don’t listen to music like I once did. I no longer buy an album and listen to it over and over and over again. Those long nights where I’d lie on the floor with my headphones on, letting the music take me far away, never happen anymore.

These days I generally listen to music in my car as I’m riding around for work or at home while I’m cooking dinner. Or in my office while doing some work or playing a game. I hate to say it, but more often than not I’m letting Spotify or Amazon Music, or some other streaming service, pipe in a playlist curated for me off of songs I’ve told it I liked. These things usually aren’t that inventive and rarely play me new music that interests me. And I admit when they do play something I don’t already know, I often skip it.

So now when I put my music on shuffle, it doesn’t bring up any new memories. I haven’t connected to music in the way that I used to. I don’t mean I never listen to anything new or that I haven’t found music I loved recently. But I don’t connect to them in the same way.

Maybe I’m just not having the adventures I used to. Maybe my life is too boring to bring in new memories. It doesn’t help that I now own hundreds of albums that I’ve barely listened to or that my music player is filled up with thousands of live concerts. Shuffle looks a lot different now than it did back then.

But I want to write about music in a meaningful way again. My idea is to do something similar to Random Shuffle but more long-form. With Random Shuffle I usually talked about 4-5 songs; now I want to hit on just one album or one song.

This will still be autobiographical. I’ll still be talking about how the music connected to me on a personal and emotional level. I actually hit on this idea because a friend of mine is doing a list of the best 1,000 albums ever, but in a very personal way. He’s not trying to be objective about it (as if that even exists) but making it very subjective. They are his favorite albums.

I like that. I won’t necessarily only be talking about albums. Sometimes I’ll just talk about one song. And I won’t be counting anything down. They won’t necessarily even be songs/albums that I love. Just ones that I’ve connected to at some point in my life. I suspect they’ll start out more or less chronological, but then we’ll just see where it goes.

The third album by Swedish rock band Europe, The Final Countdown, was the first album I ever owned. I got it on cassette tape. I can’t remember now if I bought it with my own money or I got it for a Christmas or birthday present. I can’t remember much about the album now. I remember I liked it. I know I loved the single “The Final Countdown.” 

I had probably owned some cassette singles before owning this album. I’m quite sure I had some blank tapes that I recorded songs from the radio onto. to tell the truth, I really don’t remember if this was the first album I ever owned. It is the first album I remember owning, so we’ll leave it at that. 

What I do remember is losing it. I took it with me to church one day. This would have been either Sunday night worship or Wednesday night Bible Study. It definitely wasn’t for Sunday morning worship; that would have been uncivilized.  I would have been about ten years old.

I vaguely remember taking the tape out of the case. We probably played it on the way to church, but I would have taken it out before going into the building. I probably did not properly put it back into its case. I liked looking at the liner notes and staring at the pictures.

 When we got home that night, I realized I did not have the tape. I had the cover, but not the tape. I looked everywhere for it. I tore that car apart.  Our best guess at the time was that I had probably laid it on the exterior of the car somewhere. Maybe I put it on the trunk or the hood when I and the boys played around after services. I had a vague notion I may have laid it on the bumper absentmindedly.

I can’t remember now if my parents drove me back to church that night or if they said it was too late and we went the next day. I do remember for weeks after every time we drove to church I’d look out my window hoping I’d see it lying on the side of the road somewhere.

We never did find it.

I was heartbroken.

Years later I remember finding a copy of that album. I think a friend had it or something. I definitely didn’t ever buy it again. This was a CD, and I nostalgically pressed “play” only to discover I didn’t recognize any of the songs. In that memory I loved the entire album, but none of the snippets I played (and I only played snippets; I didn’t have time to play the entire album in that moment) were familiar to me.

It wasn’t until the TV series Arrested Development made “The Final Countdown” popular again that I remembered that song. For me now, that song is a cheesy bit of nostalgia. Something that makes me smile and raise my fists when I hear it, but only if I hear it every once in a while. I had it on one of my Spotify playlists for a while, but that made me hear it too often, and that’s definitely a song you do not need to hear too often.

So this is the type of thing I’ll be doing now. Songs and albums that mean something to me. That provokes memories.  I’d like to say this will become a weekly article. I’d like to say that, but I won’t.  I’ll likely forget to write it fairly regularly, but hopefully it will at least pop up once a month or so.

Encouraging comments will help me keep it up.