Guess I watched an old disc when the 4k remaster is right around the corner, oops. Big showy camera moves in an early sound film, impressive. A good start towards dialogue based cinema, also a cavalcade of atrocious accents. It’s the Ferrari Theory, or just typically Italian: the accents can be as random as you want if the picture is on point. Ben Hecht (and maybe an uncredited Hawks) had written one of the great silent gangster movies Underworld, then after Little Caesar and Public Enemy started a craze, they came back to claim their throne.

Rich party thrower Louis is shot dead, Paul “Scarface” Muni was supposed to be his bodyguard. Scarf’s new boss is Johnny Lobo (Osgood Perkins, grandfather/namesake of the Longlegs director). During Johnny’s rise to the top, Scarface kills all their competition except dapper Boris Karloff, then comes for him too, then kills his own boss and steals his girl Karen Morley. But Scarf is also overprotective of his sister Ann Dvorak, and after he catches her with his prize henchman George Raft, the siblings have got nobody left but each other, and go out in a hail of bullets.

Scarfie having a moment with his sister:

Mabel has parrots:

Muratova plays a local government official who hires Nina Ruslanova (of Khrustalyov, My Car! two decades later) as a maid. At other times they’ve both been in love with Vladimir Vysotsky. Psychologically true and beautiful drama. Nervous cutting between timelines, solid within each particular time and place. If this had been widely seen, the cold war would’ve not gone down the way it did.

“They all hate the gun they hire.” Second-person narrator, unusually well-written, puts us in hit man Frankie’s shoes as he gets a Christmastime job to kill a mustache guy with two bodyguards. First he has to deal with Ralph the beardo gun salesman (later of Shock Corridor). He goes to old flame Lori’s house on xmas (she’s Matt Dillon’s mom in The Flamingo Kid) but has no idea how to behave with a lady. Our killer is an out of towner, only knows 2 or 3 people in NYC but keeps bumping into them – this could have been easily avoidable by switching up his patterns. He gets his man, but messily, and doesn’t escape the city. Writer/director/star Baron went on to direct episodes of every 1970s TV show.

I misremembered this as being more similar to Ghost Dog, which I also need to rewatch soon, but hopefully not as a memorial screening. For all his alibi setup, when Delon gets to the club he acts extremely suspicious and everyone notices him. Rounded up with some other suspects, he gets off because pianist Cathy Rosier says he’s not the man. Then his contract guys try to kill him, he goes in for revenge, then foolishly goes to see the girl again, where cop Heurtebise has set a trap.

Even when wounded and on the run, always take time to feed the birds:

Pre-credits scene has Vincent Zhao making some very un-Jet-Li awesome moves, then his name is splashed across the screen – good, they’re not trying to hide the new guy. It’s also the first sequel to start directly after the previous one – they’re still celebrating the end of the Lion King festival when friendly Governor Zhiwen Wang (currently of the Infernal Affairs TV series) shows up and they lion-dance together.

Foon, Clubfoot, and Yan are back in the mix, but 13th Aunt is replaced by (Katy guessed it) 14th Aunt: Jean Wang of Swordsman III and Iron Monkey the same year. New director Yuen doesn’t exactly revitalize the series here. The dubbing is bad, and despite having a subplot about a group using wires to appear to fly, the movie itself is full of unintentionally visible wires, especially in the heinous horse-punching scenes (yes, there’s more than one).

14th Aunt starts a newspaper but nobody in town knows how to read – so, technologically we’ve moved from still photography to motion pictures to the printing press. Anti-foreigner sword cult Red Lantern is menacing everyone, and the foreigners have equipped their lion suits with deadly weapons. The nice governor dies, it’s very sad, then Wong takes a measured bit of revenge before withdrawing to prep for the final(?) movie.

Chin Ka-Lok is angry, I’ve forgotten why:

Ze Germans:

A filmed version of his own play, which was a stage adaptation of his own novel, which he wrote in French then translated to English – he filmed first, opened the play with the same cast, then released the movie. Sounds exhausting. Instead of the final film in the Van Peebles box set, Criterion could just as easily have released this as a double-feature with To Sleep With Anger, each of them about a happy Black household infiltrated by forces of evil.

A couple of passing imps decide to stop in Harlem to ruin a party thrown by Esther Rolle of Good Times. Instead of going in together, Trinity arrives first and completely fails to wreak havoc then falls for the birthday girl. When he’s belatedly joined by Devil David (Avon Long, who discovered Lena Horne in the 1930s), they only succeed in chasing off the Johnsons, a late-arriving condescending couple and their giant son, whom everyone else is glad to see go.

It’s a musical, and I wish any of the songs was great – too gospelly for me – but there’s a cool bit at the end when everyone’s singing what’s on their mind at once, the whole party semi-harmonizing and semi-chaotic.

Lisa Thompson:

Van Peebles frequently overlaps two different images to make a contrast that is then commented upon in a third shot, such as on the dangers of evil or the inability to stay true to oneself. Van Peebles occasionally uses the same overlapping technique with sound, playing with dissonance and harmony as multiple characters sing their own signature parts, or a single character sings while the others join in a communal chorus.


Three Pickup Men for Herrick (1957)

Herrick needs three pickup men, but five showed up. The white boss picks the one white guy, then the tough looking guy, then the young guy, and the rejects walk back home. No dialogue, Light humming and harmonica on the soundtrack.


Sunlight (1957)

I think the pretty girl married someone else because the guy she danced with at the restaurant said you can’t get married without money… but I don’t think restaurant guy was the hat guy who robs some lady and is chased by the cops and ends up at the wedding… maybe the older guy at the wedding is a different hat guy? Try paying attention next time?

Watched some shorts on CC. I only mention the source because we know how I love to lean on the screenshot button, but streaming restricts my personal freedom to steal images. And also because they deserve to be mocked for still using the Baby’s First Streaming Platform template, which says “season one” under the titles of short films.

She and Her Cat (1999, Makoto Shinkai)

Talky, narrated by a cat who is sexually attracted to his female human owner, passing the seasons together. Limited animation, mostly gently panning across stills. Not too exciting, but I suppose its success got Shinkai (who also narrated) the budget for Voices of a Distant Star. When Your Name blew up, this got a sequel/remake, and Shinkai returned to narrate.

Voice of a Distant Star (2002, Makoto Shinkai)

The UN Space Force naturally needs morose teens to pilot giant space robots, preferably while wearing their school uniforms. Star pilot Mikako likes a boy called Noboru (same voice actors as the cat movie), and though she’s stationed on Jupiter’s moons they still text using 2002-model flip phones. When she’s sent further away to fight evil aliens, it gets harder to communicate since each message takes years to arrive.

Chuu Chuu (2021, Mackie Mallison)

Medium takes, then quick edits… digital stability with low-gauge colors… focusing on an aging Japanese grandma. Then a section discussing touchy family relationships and identity from the perspective of a doorbell cam. Not as many birds as I was hoping for, but there is a birdwatching section towards the end, then a projector throwing fast-cut home movies over a kid’s face.

Fly, Fly Sadness (2015, Miryam Charles)

Story of an explosion that affected everyone in the country, so now they all have the same girlish speaking voice, coincidentally the voice of the director, who narrates over short clips and loops. CC didn’t care to correct the subtitles.

Hot Pepper (1973)

Rock doc about accordionist Clifton Chenier, made two decades into his recording career, and one decade before he’d win a grammy. No awards or recording studios in sight here, it’s more front porches and basement parties. Interviews with locals about their thoughts on racial integration (they’re for it). No fly on the wall, everybody waves at Les while he’s filming street scenes, and his camera is attentive to passers-by and animals and clouds, as usual. I imagine the interview with Chenier’s grandma would’ve killed with a crowd. Made the same year as another Louisiana music doc Dry Wood, and right before the Leon Russell movie.


Garlic Is As Good As Ten Mothers (1980)

Just a doc about garlic and its many uses and the people who are into it, but this is Les Blank so of course it’s a musical. Glad to see the featured Oakland barbecue joint is still family owned and sort-of in business. He digs up Werner Herzog for a sound bite about why his Nosferatu didn’t have a garlic subplot (this was pre-Fitzcarraldo/Burden of Dreams). Wim Wenders did some camerawork for this – why?

Garlic & Flamenco:

Opens unpromisingly with text onscreen accompanying a narrator, but then we get a castle in the mist, the camera roaming to show off its fancy sets. I don’t think “this is the tragedy of a man who could not make up his mind” is from the original text.

Hamlet’s first monologue is in partial voiceover, a really good portrayal of someone tormentedly talking to themself. Elsewhere Ophelia narrates Hamlet’s wordless visit to her room, and he performs every word she’s saying in flashback-pantomime, a bit overkill. The zoom inside Hamlet’s head before “to be or not to be” was also odd. I would understand if other versions cut the scene where Hamlet gives long-winded direction to the actors before the play (and so they do). There are only two women in the movie and he throws both of them onto the floor. Hamlet gets kidnapped by pirates before the finale, did I dream this?

HAM-let:

Queen, King, Ophelia, Laertes:

Won best picture over The Red Shoes, a travesty, and Olivier got actor, but at least John Huston beat him for director. The king-uncle was in Went the Day Well and Disney’s Treasure Island, the queen in John Huston’s Freud movie, Horatio in The Projected Man, Polonius in The Mummy, and Laertes in that movie’s sequel/reboot The Curse of the Mummy’s Tomb. Speaking of mummies, we get Peter Cushing as the silly-ass courier, also officiating the swordfight. Ophelia is Jean Simmons of Guys and Dolls, Estelle in Great Expectations, soon to be seen in The Big Country.

The actors:

The duel:

The Peter Cushing: