What can you say? Sometimes the genocidal killers win, stay in charge, and have no reason to feel shame for what they’ve done. Someone finally got the great idea to interview these people and allow them to glorify/incriminate themselves. Letting them tell their own stories through filmmaking and showing the behind-the-scenes process was a stroke of genius, and filming it must’ve felt terrible and dangerous, as evidenced by all the anonymously-credited crew members.
Never go to Indonesia.
I thought everyone in Outrage had been killed except for one cop and new boss Kato, but here’s Takeshi still alive and I had to try to keep track of the various crime families again. This did turn out better than the original, but I’m still hoping Election and Drug War destroy ’em both.
People: Tomokazu Miura of M/Other is in charge of some clan, and young hotshot Ryo Kase of I Just Didn’t Do It and Like Someone In Love is his #2 man.
Takeshi and Kimura:
Takeshi teams up with scarfaced ex-rival Kimura with his two dumb-as-hell employees to wage war on these guys. Baddies are brought low by other baddies. Another clan is somehow involved. The Japanese Dr. Guggenheim (Akira Nakao, a regular in 1990’s Godzilla movies) is the first to die. Then lots more die. There is a brief appearance by a woman.
The Japanese Dr. Guggenheim:
We get two partner cops to identify with. Sourface Shigeta (Yutaka Matsushige of Last Life in the Universe) is the outsider who needs everything explained to him, and his sneaky balding corrupt partner (Fumiyo Kohinata of Dark Water) wants to start some shit and get the action going. Beat Takeshi shoots the balding guy at the end, after everyone else is already dead.
L-R: balding cop, sourface cop
A good variety of music, and the score has hints of Dead Man. Scenes end with fade-outs as if to provide space for TV ads. My main concern was listening to the language and noting that half of all sentences end with a sound like arrOH, or errOR. Fumi thinks it’s some kinda gangster embellishment.
This was fun. I suppose I can forgive The Squid and the Whale now. Greta Gerwig (best known as the first victim in House of the Devil) wants to be a famous dancer, will never be a famous dancer, is kind of unsufferable but cute enough that you forgive her. A better movie than Monsters University about childhood dreams and hard work not entirely working out. Katy cringed a lot during the most Baumbachesque scene, an ultra-awkward dinner conversation, while I was busy trying to figure why Dean & Britta were in the scene.
Aliens vs. Robots.
Robots win.
Stars Stringer as Stacker in Striker. Bland main guy is Charlie Hunnam, Ron Perlman’s Sons of Anarchy costar. Rinko Kikuchi was the newcomer who got all the buzz in Babel, later in The Brothers Bloom and Norwegian Wood. Stacker is father-figure to Rinko, who is soulmate bro-bot to Hunnam. Two scientists are racing for the bomb that is the prize: stuffy Brit is Burn Gorman of BBC’s Bleak House, excitable kaiju fan is Charlie Day of It’s Always Sunny. Lot of TV actors here. There are other foreign robot pilot teams, all dead, all dead. And Ron Perlman plays a huge badass. Obviously.
A murderous road comedy. So far Wheatley is living up to the hype, even if I wasn’t thrilled by the ending of Kill List – this was fully excellent, with much more interesting filmmaking than most comedies. Beardy Chris and girlfriend Tina go on a sightseeing tour and accidentally kill a guy… then they just keep killing people.
Made myself a note while watching that this should be some sort of baseline for filmmakers. Got a screenplay and want to shoot it. Watch Sightseers. Think you can do better? No? Then just quit now.
“Murderer.”
“It was an accident, mum.”
“So were you.”
“I don’t think I could cope without potpourri”
“Did you kill Ian?”
“Yeah. Well, I mean…”
“Season of the Witch” plays over two killing scenes. Chris and Tina were also the screenwriters. Tina is Alice Lowe: Liz from Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace, also in My Life in Film and Hot Fuzz (worked for Timothy Dalton at the supermarket). Wheatley already has a new movie out, which I must see.
Mouse-over image to see Tina’s owl face:
“I just want to be feared and respected.”
Whedon’s crew hangs at his house with minimal set dressing and does b/w Shakespeare.
Katy and I liked it.
Dr. “Whiskey” Saunders of Dollhouse plays Emma Thompson, and Alyson Hannigan’s husband plays her arch-rival/love-interest Kenneth Branagh. The great Fran Kranz is young, lovestruck Claudio, best buds with Reed Diamond (Dollhouse head of security). Dr. Simon of Firefly/Serenity is fine as villain Keanu Reeves, but not even secret weapon Nathan Fillion can live up to the mighty Michael Keaton in the 1990’s version.
Dollhouse season 1 (2009)
Whedon’s project before Cabin in the Woods.
I love this show.
Ends with a motherfucker of a leap into the future.
Echo (Eliza Dushku, Arnold and Jamie Lee’s teenage daughter in True Lies) is lead doll, alongside exotic-looking Sierra (Dichen Lachman from Nepal of a recent nuclear submarine drama series) and Victor (Enver Gjokaj, billed below Harry Dean Stanton in The Avengers – side note: Harry Dean Stanton was in The Avengers?!).
DeWitt (Olivia Williams, Rosemary Cross in Rushmore) runs the place with techie Topher (Fran Kranz, great in Cabin in the Woods), security guy Dominic (sinister-looking, eyes-too-close-together Reed Diamond of Homicide: Life on the Street) and Dr. Saunders (Amy Acker, in the Cabin in the Woods control room), later revealed to be a doll. Harry Lennix (of Titus) is a major part of the early episodes, later takes over Dominic’s job.
Meanwhile, clueless pawn but sweetly determined FBI man Ballard (square-jawed canadian Tahmoh Penikett, Stanley Kubrick in Trapped Ashes) tries to expose the place and protect his too-perfect neighbor Miracle Laurie who is, of course, a doll. Bonus baddie: Alpha (Alan Tudyk, pilot of the Serenity and voice of King Candy in Wreck-It Ralph)
The staff writers moved on to Spartacus: War of the Damned, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, Agents of Shield and Undercovers. Directors include Tim Minear (Firefly), Dwight Little (Halloween 4), Elodie Keene (The Wire season 2), Felix Alcala (Criminal Minds), James Contner (Buffy/Angel, TV movies She Woke Up Pregnant and Hitler’s Daughter), David Straiton (Hemlock Grove), Allan Kroeker (three different Star Trek series), Rod Hardy (the David Hasselhoff Nick Fury movie), David Solomon (Buffy) and Joss Whedon (Buffy/Angel/Firefly)
Veep season 1 (2012)
The Thick of It in the USA, wonderful. Veep Julia Louis-Dreyfus is ably assisted by blonde Amy (Anna Chlumsky, star of My Girl), red haired Mike (Matt Walsh of Upright Citizens Brigade), Tony “Buster” Hale and dark handsome careerist Dan Egan (My Boys).
Also great: receptionist Sue (Sufe Bradshaw) and white house go-between Jonah (Timothy Simons of an upcoming Kevin Costner baseball movie).
Created by the great Armando Iannucci (The Thick of It) with cowriting by In The Loop collaborators Simon Blackwell and Tony Roche, Time Trumpet writers Sean Gray and Will Smith, and Peep Show creator Jesse Armstrong. Directed by Iannucci, Christopher Morris (The Day Today) and Tristram Shapeero (Community).
United States of Tara season 1 (2009)
Diablo Cody’s gift for snappy, hilarious dialogue and Toni Collette’s adeptness at her multiple-personality role made this a joy. Let’s see, she plays herself (harried mom mostly cleaning up after her own messes), “T” (sex-crazed teenager), Buck (alpha-male biker), Alice (perfect housewife), and mysterious unnamed poncho-wearing monster.
Tara’s married to patient John Corbett (Northern Exposure), has sister Charmaine (Rosemarie DeWitt, title character in Rachel Getting Married) and kids Marshall (Keir Gilchrist, star of It’s Kind of a Funny Story) and Kate (Brie Larson, Scott Pilgrim‘s rocker ex-girlfriend). Also great: Nate “Rob’s brother” Corddry of Studio 60 as Kate’s boss and Patton Oswalt as Corbett’s coworker.
Directors include Craig Gillespie (Lars and the Real Girl), Mark Mylod (Ali G Indahouse, The Fast Show), Brian Dannelly (Saved!), Tricia Brock (Killer Diller), Tommy O’Haver (Ella Enchanted) and John Dahl (Rounders)
Look Around You season 1 (2002)
Suppose I first looked this up because Edgar Wright plays one of the scientists. Faux-vintage science program. I kept watching since the episodes are only ten minutes each, and got more into it as the concepts and experiments grew more absurd (“Ghosts” was a highlight). Cowriter/star Peter Serafinowicz played Shaun of the Dead‘s uptight roommate, and director Tim Kirkby is working on Veep. It’s probably worth looking up The Peter Serafinowicz Show.
Jon Benjamin Has a Van season 1 (2011)
I guess this isn’t coming back… Benjamin getting his own absurd live-action comedy show was too good to last. A well-assembled self-aware sketch show that worked at least half the time.
Jon’s cowriters: Leo Allen (of Slovin & Allen), Nathan Fielder (who got his own show Nathan for You this year) and Dan Mintz (voice of Tina on Bob’s Burgers), all of whom wrote for Important Things.
Kristen Schaal: Live at the Fillmore (2013)
Weirder and more conceptual than I’d expected. Lots of sex jokes, an extended parody of The Vagina Monologues, a couple of skits. Mostly a miss, but I loved her Sally Jesse Rafael impression and her fake meltdown, repeatedly stumbling over the word “airplane” and requesting a glass of water.
Holy Flying Circus (2011, Owen Harris)
Opens with a fart joke then a sweary joke, and never gets funny, throwing out faux outrages and pained Python references in place of jokes – but it features Mark Heap wearing a beret, so that’s something. Lots of speech-impediment humor: stuttering and tourettes are hilarious. I suppose Life of Brian, which this movie is defending, scores laughs from Pontius Pilate’s lisp, though. Builds to a reenactment of an infamous talk show appearance pitting pythons against clueless religious types – since the dialogue quotes from the actual talk show, it would’ve been nice to just watch that instead.
From a writer on The Thick of It/In the Loop/Veep and a Black Mirror director. Fake Cleese was in Smack the Pony and Hippies, Fake Chapman played something called “Top Hat” in Van Helsing, and Fake Palin is Edie’s newspaper editor in Downton Abbey. I did enjoy the sword/lightsaber puppet duel.
Garrone’s follow-up to Gomorrah prompts a lot more smiles and less dread, though the dread builds towards the end. The second fiction I’ve seen after Dead Set revolving around the show Big Brother, which must be bigger in Europe (or maybe it was huge here and I just haven’t noticed).
Opens with a great helicopter shot with Elfmanesque music. Luciano, who runs a fish market and plays a noisy blue-wigged woman at parties, is coerced by his family into interviewing for Big Brother at a local mall, then he gets a callback interview at Cinecitta. He becomes obsessed with the show, sells his business to prepare for stardom and gives all his possessions to the homeless to impress producers he thinks are spying on him, but the season’s cast is announced and his phone never rings, so he takes to stalking the show’s spokesman, a former winner named Enzo. Luciano’s obsession grows, but he also learns to hide it from his family, so at the end he wanders off during a trip to Rome, sneaks into the Big Brother house, and the camera pulls slowly out as he laughs crazily to himself.
There’s also a scam plot involving Luciano and his brother getting local seniors to apply for free government-issued robots (?!). I caught one of the gun-happy kids from Gomorrah as a bartender. Alexandre Desplat contributes the wonderful fantasy score.
Reverse Shot:
Back home in Italy, the film has registered more keenly, perhaps because they are still crawling out from under a prime minister whose legacy is marked by tax evasion and media monopoly, game shows and bouncing bimbos. A show predicated on voyeurism and humiliation like Big Brother, the program that sits like a bioluminescent tumor at the center of Garrone’s film, would seem to be the quintessential cultural marker for a period led by a man who was once a cruise-ship and nightclub crooner. Reality is then the unspoken anti-Berlusconi film of the moment, interrogating at once a culture of crassness, wild social inequality, and blatant fraudulence, both financial and otherwise.
Katy thought this was a boring movie where nothing happens until I told her to treat it not as a movie but as a series of motion photographs. Camera is mostly still, and half the frame is usually a wall – a favorite trick is to shoot only wall and let animals slowly wander into view. Shot at a Quebec zoo, with the occasional custodian and a parade of customers at the very end (plus a taxidermist, some sketch artists, but mostly animals and walls). Côté’s statement in the press notes declares that it can’t be a documentary since it has no subject, but he doesn’t offer what it might be instead. “Something indefinable.”
Côté:
But where is the salvation between the puppies on YouTube and a boa constrictor’s reproductive cycle narrated in eight chapters? How should one look at an animal (and find a cinematic language specific to this act)? Is it possible to shoot animals other than through the lens of entertainment or for a non-educational purpose? Neither actor nor story catalyzer, cannot an animal be contemplated and filmed simply for what it is? … The immense field of contemplative cinema offers elements of an answer.
