p e n g u i n d e v i l

Mystic River… Don’t ask me what I was thinking, I always assumed that it was another Bridges of Madison County. Boy, was I wrong. But it was good. A great cast: Sean Penn can still play a bastard with the best of them, and Tim Robbins does a great (albeit fuddled) job. Another one of those serious serious dramas where nothing good happens at all. It reminded me of Copland, though I think just due to the quiet negativity, the story where someone does something wrong and everybody ends up paying the price and the ensemble cast, all doing good jobs with material much more down hearted than usual (well, except of course, Sean Penn). Anyway, I recommend it, if you are up for this sort of thing… In which case, watch Copland too.

And we finally got around to watching Hustle & Flow. Great! I liked it alot! Some really good characters, a fun plot, great music and just well made. A film version of the standard Eazy-E, 50 Cent story of a street hustler who decides he wants to be a rap star, Hustle has some really good performances, especially in the characters of D-jay and Shug. And Ike Hayes was also there, he’s always good to see.

Also, we couldn’t help but wonder where it took place. The city had such a look of concrete squalor and the heat and humidity of the south. The only thing I could think of when I saw it was: Tennessee… And yep, Memphis, it was. As Skinny Black says, the best place to keep Memphis is in my rear view. Anyway, Terrence Howard is great, though sometimes when he talked he sounded a bit too tone-locish for comfort, but it seems he did some of the rapping, which is good. Some of the best rap I’ve heard in many years… Sadly “Whoop that Trick” isn’t available as a single at iTunes, only as part of the package deal. And I can’t go that deep…

hustle & flow 41:36

hustle & flow 1:40:11

Finally, we watched Jesus’ Son. Sort of reminiscent of Buffalo 66 in an “indie-style movie about a couple of losers who do one lame thing after another” kind of way. The Crudup guy has a simple mindedness that, while irritating, makes him seem not as bad (in both ways) as that creep in Buffalo 66, but he’s still trouble. It’s kind of a crazy movie in a sad but fun way and but it’s a pretty entertaining movie, and it can be pretty funny at times.

Hercules in the Center of the Earth (or Hercules in the Haunted World, as the case and disc say). Campy ok, yes it is. but, man, its Hercules! Filled to the brim with heroic deeds, heck, the guy sails to hell and comes back, and that’s just the start of it, all in the name of love. Hercules and his guy pal Theses endure multiple heralcean feats: battling assasins, a shambling rock monster, crushing walls, flying undead who take a minute and a half just to open their coffins, a flaming lake and all sorts of illusions, the wrath of Pluto and the evil Christopher Lee as they pursue their women across the land (one of their ladies is even Pluto’s daughter)! And it all takes place in a Bava Technicolor wonderland of audacious brightly dark sets, in a story filled with Grecian frolicking and endless action, the dubbing isn’t bad, and Bava is the greatest of the old 60’s-70’s Italian b-movie directors… But you’ve got to wonder why Hercules drags that prissy wimp Theses around everywhere…

hercules in the center of the world 36:56

hercules in the center of the world 1:10:36