Mish Mash 2 (The Mask of Zorro, Frankenhooker, Until the Light Takes Us, Eastern Condors, Sphere, Maximum Overdrive theory about Cars)

1. I don’t think The Mask of Zorro gets much respect but I’ve always found it to be a really fun movie.  The production design is great that has just the right amount of grittiness and the action is pretty fucking bad ass.  I also really dig Anthony Hopkins as the master sage passing down his skills and knowledge to the impatient, spirited and even somewhat reluctant student.  This brings me to the point I want to make about this film.  The filmmakers found out how to do a beginning story but in a totally new and interesting way.  Now of course this was before the superhero movie explosion that happened around 2000 with X-Men and Spider-Man.  But having the older Zorro pass down his legacy to a younger man is a cool way to start things over.  I feel like it shouldn’t work as well as it does but Anthony Hopkins and Antonio Banderas play well off of each other.  The way they act on film probably reflected their relationship off screen.  I could easily see Hopkins giving some tips and Banderas perhaps brushing it off all the while knowing that Tony's right.

Also, does anyone know if Zorro was part spy in the original books?  The reason why I ask is because the director, Martin Campbell, did GoldenEye before this and it crossed my mind that he may have added some James Bond elements to the character.  Either way it works. 

2. Finally got around to seeing Frankenhooker after a friend recommended it over a year ago.  And it’s fucking great.  If you’ve seen Basket Case (Frank Henenlotter’s other claim to fame) then you know what you’re in for.  But I like Frankenhooker even better.  It’s a bit more outrageous and funnier.  I’m always suspect of title movies like Hobo with a Shotgun, Snakes on a Plane or Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter because more often than not they’re letdowns.  The name of the picture and what it conjures up in your mind is almost always better than the actual film.  Frankenhooker delivers though.  Henenlotter knows what the audience wants to see, Frankenstein type theatrics with a lot of exploding hookers.  Sounds pitch perfect to me. 

3. Until the Light Takes Us is a doc about Norwegian black metal.  While Metallica was making some of the pop-iest metal music in the early 90’s this movement was going in the total opposite direction.  The band members each had their own stage names like Count Grishnackh, Death and Faust.  They would paint their faces and wear upside down crosses and shit like that.  But according to the film it wasn’t about Satanism, it was about wanting to start a revolution and a desire to change the world.  One guy says that he hoped for World War III so that everything could be destroyed and eventually rebuilt.  And because of this hostile mindset this movement managed to kill some people (some innocent and some part of the black metal scene) and burned dozens of churches to the ground including at least one that was a relic dating back to like 1150 AD.  But here’s the thing, the way these guys talk about it today they act so calm and seem like nice mild mannered folks.  The juxtaposition is quite staggering and also incredibly interesting.

Even if you’re not into metal (I’m not huge into it myself) I think you guys might find the material worthwhile.  To try and create a work of art with the mindset of “what’s the ugliest, darkest, most depressing, suicidal inducing thing I could come up with” is fascinating because even with really heavy metal those guys think that sounds beautiful.  And in a sense these guys must’ve also found beauty in what they were doing.  But this Norwegian black metal movement didn’t want anything remotely considered beautiful, they wanted trash.  The trashiest trash you could come up with.  Whether or not you agree is a different story.  But for this to be the intention and for them to be dead fuckin’ serious is astonishing and captivating.

One last thing about this picture.  There’s a part where one guy describes that part of this movement was about rebelling against good production (recording wise) and wanted to use the worst mic, the worst equipment he could find and not really adjust anything.  Just set up and record, whatever it is, it is.  This guy was speaking my language.  I like me some good production but from time to time I try to do just what this sonuvabitch was doing and attempt to craft the ugliest sound possible with the worst equipment available.  The point is “good production” is in the eye of the beholder and not necessarily indicative of having the most expensive recording equipment.

4. Eastern Condors is now my favorite Vietnam movie ever.  Well actually it takes place after the war is over in 1976 but it’s still a ‘Nam picture.  It’s got great action, engaging characters, a straight forward plot (a rag tag group of U.S. Asian prisoners is assembled to find an armament stash before the Vietnamese do), incredible martial arts and stunts and no bullshit to sidetrack this thing.  It’s all about the mission and the personalities of our group of reluctant heroes.  This one is a brilliant masterpiece.  I fucking loved it and you’ll fucking love it too, guaranteed.

5. Sphere and Event Horizon have pretty similar plots.  There’s a mission to go check out/retrieve something from space or its Earth equivalent: deep sea.  When the crew finds the spaceship they locate a spherical object in a large room, freaky shit happens (particularly visions/hallucinations) and the crew fights for their lives while trying to escape. 

I would even say that the first half of Prometheus is kinda like the first third of Sphere.  Scientists think they’ve discovered something, they find out it’s a spaceship (except you don’t find out it’s a ship until later in Prometheus but in my opinion you would’ve had to not see Alien or be kinda dumb to not figure that out way before it’s revealed) and the crew sets up camp monitoring the craft.  They go in with spacesuits, look around, find a large mesmerizing object (Sphere: the sphere, Prometheus: the giant head statue), the crew digests their findings, weird things start to occur, fight for their lives, etc.

Sure a lot of movies have either a scene or a whole section like this but for some reason Prometheus reminded me a lot of Sphere.  I had to go back and watch Sphere just to see if I was remembering the film correctly and I was.  You know, that movie gets a bad rap and I can kind of see why but the first half or so is pretty cool.  I like the way the mystery is handled and that it’s all business.  Then when we start to dig into the characters and find out how the sphere works it just feels lame.  And it’s hard to put my finger on just what makes the whole thing turn south.  I do know that part of it is that Dustin Hoffman’s goofy attitude gets to me after a while and he does some ridiculous shit that I just can’t swallow like swimming through below freezing water with no problem.  Also, I don’t want to spoil the film so I’ll just say that another problem is the sphere’s power seems to be rather random.  There was potential for a really great piece of cinema but it just didn’t some together really.

As for Event Horizon, well, see it.  I haven’t seen Shopping yet so as far as I know this is Paul W.S. Anderson’s best picture (as much as I like Mortal Kombat).  Great visuals, cast and storytelling.  It’s eerie as fuck and a near sci-fi classic.       

6. By now you’ve all probably heard from a friend or read somewhere about the concept of Cars being strangely and hugely flawed.  You know, like there’s no reason why there would be human things in this car world.  Why aren’t all of the buildings just warehouses?  There’s a court house with fancy trim, windows and woodwork and also buildings with nicely decorated interiors including things that look like couches and display cases with glasses in them.  Why are there human gas pumps?  Why is there a wheat harvester?  Who’s eating the wheat? Why aren’t all doors garage doors?  Why are there sidewalks, cameras, machine guns?  Who’s making these cars?  And this is just some stuff that I picked up from the Cars 1 and 2 trailers.  It would go on endlessly if I had actually seen the movies.  The point is that in order for Pixar to make Cars relatable and familiar they had to have these living cars exist in the human world.

Are those fucking telephone poles in the background?

In light of this I’ve developed a theory on why there’s this meshing of two different worlds, the Maximum Overdrive theory.  Maximum Overdrive is an 80’s horror flick about machines coming to life via a “rogue comet” traveling through space.  They run amok trying to kill every human that they come across and it’s a lot of fun.  I definitely recommend it.  It’s also the only picture that Stephen King directed so if you’re interested in seeing what a coked up King thinks makes for good cinema then this is your opportunity.  Anyway, I think this is the world that exists in Cars.  The folks over at Pixar probably thought to themselves, “what if that comet from Maximum Overdrive strayed from the Earth’s atmosphere a little but not all the way.  There’s just enough distance so that only cars would remain alive.  But we’ll set the movie a bunch of years after the apocalypse when all of the humans have been wiped out.  The cars have developed a society of their own, uhh, but it’s the same as a human society.  And they have all of this human stuff around them to remind them of that.  That’s the irony, see?”  I’m pretty positive that’s the back story to Cars.  What else could it be?

7. Sadly Rampart was not very good.  Woody Harrelson as the racist, bigoted, hard boiled cop David Brown is good but very little happens.  It’s more about reflecting on the type of person that Brown is and the life that he has led.  The film meanders and then suddenly ends without resolution.  We’re supposed to be seeing a slice of this cop’s troubled life but it’s the wrong slice in my opinion.  I would like to see the part of Brown’s life where he’s fucking dudes up and covering up his illegal activities.  Doing a whole movie where this crazy sonuvabitch is suspended and has to keep a low profile because there’s an investigation into him doesn’t pan out.  That doesn’t sound like a bad idea for a movie but it feels like this character is wasted on that premise.  It ain’t no Bad Lieutenant, either of them.  But then again those are some tough pictures to be on equal footing with or even top.