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

Leonard Cohen: I’m Your Man. Before we saw it, I was in the “why are all these people doing his songs, why not have him just do them?” school. But I’m converted! Musically it was really good, the arrangements were really good, and (except for the song sung by the background singers) the live performances were really good, though I don’t think I’d heard any of those folks before. Well, except of course Nick Cave, his performance which starts it off was my favorite number of the bit… Though the mysterious Antony was rather impressive. In all honestly, it was also nice because though I am familiar with Leonard Cohen, I generally haven’t really listened all that closely to his songs (except for Tower of Song) so I never had that great a sense of his songwriting. But I must say, those folks really brought the songs out and, of course, hearing the songs in a movie theater instead of on the ol’ stereo, made them oh soo much more apparent. Yes, in case you don’t know, he is a very moving songwriter, I’ll need to pay more attention in the future…

Anyways, The interviews were great, Mr. Cohen is a very inspiring man and it was really great to see him talk. My dislike for U2 made the last bit a bit of a downer, but it was still nice to see him out there. The local “hip-weekly” had some complaint that they thought that last bit was lip-synced… Well, it was obviously lip-synced. I don’t think that were even trying to hide it. The rest of the movie was a musical performance, the end was a music video… of course it looked lip-synced. It reminded me of when people complained that Under the Cherry Moon was bad because it was corny, and I was like… Um, it was supposed to be corny, that was the idea…

Beyond the Valley of the Dolls. Well, yes, I actually hadn’t seen this before… but it very much left me with the notion that I should watch it again, you see, I wasn’t that keen on it. In fact, I would say that it would be my least favorite of the RM films that I’ve seen. It was sad to hear that he toned it down in the hopes of getting an R rating, which he failed to get… It’s shocking that any of his movies would receive an X or NC-17 rating! This one, if you cut out a couple of nude scenes would probably get a PG-13 today, though the DVD says NC-17. Anyway, the movie was alright, it just seemed to be missing something. I realize that am biased due to having watched Valley of the Dolls not long before and having seen a number of RM movies, I will have more positive things to say after the next viewing. At this point, I would say that Valley of the dolls was a better and funner movie.

Dr No. My appreciation of this has certainly gained thorough the ages. During my annual seeing of all of the films at the Bond Film festival back in the early 80’s I didn’t really like this one. I was more of a Moore fan (ah, the naiveté of youth) and there weren’t any gadgets in this one… And no Q! But no, it is actually as good as most of the rest and is an indispensable view for anyone who plans on watching the Bond movies. Heck, it has Ursula Andress and Jack Lord!

And then we watched Back to the Future. What to say about this? Everyone’s seen it multiple times I imagine and it’s just as we remember. Fairly interesting, fun and a cute story. Plus with Crispen Glover and Christopher Lloyd, who can argue.

Never Been Kissed. What to say? Well, silly, yet not funny. Probably one of the least good films I have seen. Yes, I do admit that “chick flicks” and comedies aren’t really my thing, but I’ve seen enough of both to tell good from bad and this was bad, shallow and poorly conceived. The story was dumb, and made dumber, and Drew’s acting and/or character, was just too corny to be believed. The movie did improve towards the end, once they stopped trying to prove soo hard how dorky she was, and David Arquette did a good job.

Back to the Future, part 2. Well, they certainly bring you back to the past with recycling probably a good half hour of footage from the first one, but it is done in an entertaining and meaningful plot-wise way (not just a horrid scam like in Silent Night Deadly Night 2) but… The story really seems unnecessary. But, like I said before, the movie is fairly fun and if you’re going to watch the first one, you might as well follow it up with this.

Great Yokai War. Well. I had been waiting for this for a long time. I was rather excited to see it appear at a local theater so, of course, I made my was down and saw it. Okay, so it now makes three Miike films in a row that I have seen and not liked. I found this to be really just not too interesting. In fact, I only stayed for the first hour or so.