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

No wonder the last entry was soo short! Well, I guess there are a number of reasons but worst of all, I left a movie out! Back then I got to treat Jim K to an Ichi the Killer party! It worked out quite well. As I’ve mentioned before, my Malata is having issues but it performed almost without issue that evening. It’s probably been a year or so since I last enjoyed an Ichi appearance but he’s never let me down… Some bad stuff happens in it (which I won’t mention in a family friendly blog like this), some of which I actually had forgotten about. But anyway, about it? Yes, another of my top ten. It looks really good, it’s really fun and it has some great stuff. Jijii’s surprise towards the end and also at that point Kakihara’s shiny suit and Shun Sugata’s voice are among my favorite parts. Anyway, it might be called violent or obscene or silly or all of those, but it is all of those, in a very glorious fashion! Highly recommended to anyone with a penchant for Yakuza films or “glorious violence”. It’s Miike’s high-water mark and a must see.

And ok, I finally finished the three little aliens. Alien 3 is done! At the point in which this originally came out, I certainly liked it alot. Now for my first time with the added footage, I still do. I suppose one could call it the weakest of the first three but at times I like it better than Aliens… I would say that they are three great films. A very well-done trilogy (I prefer to forget about the two following) with not a weak number among them. I think that Alien is one of the best horror films of all time (talk about a slasher), and Aliens is one fine war movie… Alien3? Well, it’s all about atmosphere and it’s laid on thick and good. I have heard many folks say it is too dark (I think they mean visually) and that it is too dark (I think they mean psychologically), but those certainly don’t stand in the way of a fine Sci-Fi/Horror/Action/Monster movie… Not in my book. Yes, it’s not a very uplifting film (no, not even the end), it doesn’t have any sympathetic characters, it’s very dark and sometimes when the Alien runs it looks a bit fake. In this version most of the rather disposable characters gain some depth.

alien3 55:40

I also finally watched Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Price. It was alright. We’ve seen a number of Greenwald’s movies and they mainly seem to be a collection of newscasts and bits of information with interviews. Not really with the same narrative aspects of, say, a Michael Moore movie. But still, it nice to watch a movie filled with depressing aggravating information sometimes. I realize that he’s addressed this issue already many times but I would be interested in having the movie cover more of the “why, on earth, do people shop there?” question, since that is really the reason why Wal-Mart has become what it’s become. All these cities and small businesses don’t lose their money and shut down due to Wal-mart, they shut down because their customers decide to support Wal-mart’s “non-values” instead of those of their communities. Sad and pitiful but, like many things American, we love making things worse for ourselves due to the lazy and/or greedy little voices within us.

We also just finished the first season of Dead Like Me. While it wasn’t all that bad, I wouldn’t recommended it to anyone unless they had a real strong desire to see it. It doesn’t have much of a plot so the stories are a bit thin, most of the characters are trite and I find the star to be quite uninteresting (maybe even just plain unappealing in appearance, style, voice, everything) but it can be entertaining and easy to mindlessly watch and I like Mandy Patinkin well enough. In other news, strangely, it has about the foulest mouth I’ve yet heard on a TV show. I think they curse less in The Sopranos! Also, midway through the season they replaced one of the alright characters with one who was consistently dumbly irritating… But it’s always nice to see Vancouver. Such a nice city.