Phew! It was a tough go, but I made it through two months of consecutive weekly posting. This month – to mix things up – I’m going to be digging into my home video archive to bring you a whole batch of articles on movies I own on the antiquated and inferior home video format known in some circles as the Reflective Optical Videodisc System, or DISCOVISION! I’m sure you’re thrilled.
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Sean Penn belongs to the same club of hellions as Rex Harrison. He may have flip-flopped a few times from lovable drunk to violent wife beater but this was the same actor who bit off his toenails in At Close Range. How can you predict the unpredictable? Did anyone think that Nicholas Cage would get himself into debt from buying dinosaur bones? And while we’re on the subject of controversial celebrities, why does Kevin Spacey lose his career while Sean Penn is still allowed to work? Is it because one abused minors while the other abused women? Shouldn’t everything evil be equally bad? Maybe Penn’s recent philanthropy has cleaned the slate for a good deal of people; but his charity has felt largely like penance for his mean streak, even though he just can’t seem to keep his trademark temper under control! Come on man, you were banging Charlize Theron! And she was not putting up with ANY of his shit. Can we say the same for Robin Wright? What about his State of Grace co-star Gary Oldman’s ex-wife? Can we say the same for all victims of abuse and trauma? What about Gary Oldman? When will I stop digging this hole for myself?
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Rapid Fire is a celebration of the legacy of Bruce Lee, and an attempt at passing the cinematic torch to his son. Make no mistake, this movie’s primary excuse for existence is jerking off deprived Martial Arts movie fans stuck in a time before Bruceploitation. Both father and son died before their fame really took off but from the eerie slo-mo Kung Fu of the opening credits to the blown-out hair to his Liberal philosophies it doesn’t feel like a proverbial torch being passed so much as the smooth transition that can only be granted generationally. Nature-before-nurture. You won’t believe how many times it felt like I was watching an extension of Bruce himself as opposed to his son carving out his own niche: from the finesse to the wit, if only tweaked by their Lizard Oversee’r (cough… EXECUTIVE PRODUCER) to meet the demands of audiences in 1992. Think Enter the Dragon X Die Hard. But aside from the occasional motorcycle stunt or brandishing a gun, or fondling GRATUITOUS TIDDIES, Brandon sticks primarily to what made his father famous: kicking the shit out of dudes! And kick he can. Or could? What is a more appropriate tense?
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Clint Eastwood. The man with the ever-brusque facial expression. Western hero turned cop hero turned cineaste with an output that rivals Woody Allen: in quantity and quality. I mean terrible. Wait, I don’t mean terrible. I mean “not for me”. His directorial efforts are not for me. You see, Eastwood seems to make movies that fit his own demographic: seniors that need everything spelled out for them.
Clint isn’t one for subtlety or ambiguity: his characters are often expressing exactly how they are feeling; and if they don’t express it, then someone else will put the words in their mouth. He wants the viewer to feel unburdened by things like subtext and metaphors. He wants you to “be on the same page”. A few examples: Sully, the discouraged aircraft pilot simulator; Mystic River, the child sex trauma victim simulator; and Invictus, the Nelson Mandela fanclub simulator. I use the word “simulator” because Clint’s movies are deliberately-paced for maximum pragmatism. You start to “feel” for Sully’s social isolation; for Dave Boyle’s self-inflicted alienation; for how stoked you’d be to get the chance to meet Nelson Mandela.
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I have a small (ish, only around 300!) collection of laserdiscs. Laserdiscs were the DVD equivalent of the late-80s and early-90s: the premium alternative to VHS’ budget leader. They are heavy, unwieldy, and shiny: giant two-sided compact discs the size of LP records glued together in the middle. Circumstances have led me to slowly sell off the collection (among other things, a local record store wanted $5 for a Japanese copy of Robocop 2!), but I’ve been whittling away at it for so long all that’s left are movies I’m really not that interested in watching. Let’s purge them together!
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theory of a daskeman 