Tag Archives: Film

The Asphyx

Posted on by Bill Chance

Sir, you have lived a fine and useful life. You have responsibilities, yes, but one of those responsibilities is to know when to relinquish power.
—- Giles Cunningham – The Asphyx

I walked to the Starbucks near my house, did some typing, then sat down with my new tablet to watch a movie. I had a handful already downloaded, but the Starbucks had a good internet connection so I streamed a film from Tubi. I had seen a YouTube video on forgotten horror movies and remembered one from Hammer Studios called The Asphyx.

It was available for free on Tubi (with some ads) and the Starbucks WIFI was good enough for streaming, so I was able to enjoy it for free.

It came out the same year as The Exorcist and therefore, failed miserably at the box office. It was one of the older, less graphic, psychological horror offerings and couldn’t compete with the sudden modern makeup effect-driven splatterdom. Over the years, it has maintained a bit of cult following… also, the gimmick of scientists creating device to catch a spirit, entrap it in some containment, and then seal it away would be the basis for the 1984 film Ghostbusters.

But I have an affection for the older, thinking horror, especially the Hammer Horror and thoroughly enjoyed The Asphyx.

One Man Up

Posted on by Bill Chance

You can find beauty in the most mundane things, if you look closely enough.
—-Paolo Sorrentino

The other day I watched “The Great Beauty” on the Criterion Channel and really enjoyed it.

So today, desperate for some entertainment I decided to return to the Criterion Channel and watch another of director Paolo Sorrentino’s creations, this time his first movie, “One Man Up“.

It’s the story of the rise and fall (mostly fall) of two men with the same name, Antonio Pisapia. One is a popular singer and the other an up and coming football (soccer) player. They live separate, yet nearby, lives and their stories overlap and echo each other in strange and interesting ways.

Their downfall is caused by the usual sins, sex, drugs and stubbornness. You can’t really say they don’t deserve what happens to them, but you are rooting for… at least their redemption if not their return to their early success (which doesn’t seem possible).

One does, in the end, find some sort of peace with himself while the other one… doesn’t.

I won’t tell you which is which.

The movie is gorgeous, sexy, and has some wonderful seafood. It’s Italian, in other words.

The Great Beauty

Posted on by Bill Chance

The most important thing I discovered a few days after turning 65 is that I can’t waste any more time doing things I don’t want to do.
—-Jep Gambardella, The Great Beauty

The Great Beauty

I went to sleep intending to get up at the crack of dawn and go somewhere on my bike – but it was 34 degrees in Fahrenheit, which in Centigrade is just too damn cold for me. So I checked what was on the Criterion Channel’s 24/7 feed and was presented with a scene of a wild, colorful, lusty party, obviously Italian. I checked and it was a movie called The Great Beauty, directed by Paolo Sorrentino.

So I watched the whole thing. And really enjoyed it. Under a very thin veneer of carefree hedonism, decadence, and debauchery is a world of empty people, desperate to find a reason to get out of bed in the morning.

But, oh, such fine debauchery, such exquisite decadence, such amazingly carefree hedonism. I don’t get to go to parties like this, I don’t get invited to parties like this, I don’t even know how to find parties like this… not to mention I can’t afford to go to parties like this (the tailored suits alone would bankrupt me).

Oh well.

Something in the Dirt

Posted on by Bill Chance

The other day I had a couple of hours to kill, so I looked through the television options to choose something to watch.

For no concrete reason I ended up watching a film called Something in the Dirt.

It was good, maybe really good – but more than that it was unique.

Does a work of art have to make sense? Is it fair for a work to be purposefully ambiguous? Can perplexing be a positive attribute?

Or is life too short for all this?

Something in the Dirt is definitely purposefully ambiguous. It implies that it is a documentary – there are interviews with multiple cameramen, special effects experts, and a string of directors – they talk about making the film that we are watching which may or may not duplicate events that may or may not have actually happened.

It’s fun if you can relax and let it wash over you, if you can embrace the chaos – and I imagine it would be maddening and frustrating if you can’t.

The key is, I think, in the dedication at the end. It is dedicated to friends making movies together. The writers/directors/producers/stars have a long string of odd movies in their history – most with much larger budgets and production budgets than Something in the Dirt. Now I’m going to work through the other films, there is some real creativity going on here.

This one looks like the two of them decided to get some friends together and make a little film while they were in Covid lockdown and see what resulted.

And I guess that’s as much fun as anything else.

Free Quality Streaming Movies

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You’re going to have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood.”

—-Fay Wray, quoting Merian C. Cooper on King Kong.

There was the promise of cable-cutting…

First there was cable TV. I remember in ~1983 stringing cable into a bedroom for a second TV (a rare luxury back then) thinking, “I wish that television could come right out of the air, instead of through a wire, then I wouldn’t have to… wait a minute! It does!”

But over the years, cable became more and more expensive… and then cable-cutting! For a few heady years, that was the cat’s pajamas – until the streaming world became more and more bifurcated and expensive, until you have to have so many paid subscriptions that you forget what you’ve got and the one thing that you want is always on a stream you don’t have and you scroll for hours and can’t find anything to watch anyway.

But I have found a streaming service that has a carefully curated selection of wonderful content, no ads, available on all smart TVs, phones, tablets, and computers, and (with some limitations) is completely free. And a lot of people haven’t heard of it.

It’s called Kanopy.

It has fantastic content. I subscribe to The Criterion Channel – which is great – but certain odd, classic, or foreign films kept showing up on this “Kanopy” thing – so I had to check it out.

One catch is that it is only available through your library, if your library offers it. My local library did not, so I was shit out of luck. Until I discovered the next city out in the string of suburbs did offer it – and they had a deal with my town so I could get a card. It was only a few miles drive and I was signed up. So now I had my Kanopy subscription (and a whole new set of libraries to visit).

The second catch is that you are limited to the number of films per month you can watch. But in this new year, I discovered that my city now offers it too – so I can sign up twice and get twice the monthly limit. And I’ll sign up with my wife’s card (and maybe send her to the neighboring city) and get even more.

This is truly the best of all possible worlds.

The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone

Posted on by Bill Chance

Just when I thought I was out… they pull me back in.

—-Michael Corleone, The Godfather Part III

A terrible Blackberry photo of my folding Xootr Swift parked next to a Yuba cargo bike (set up to carry a whole family) outside the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema. Two different philosophies on urban bicycling.

On the last two Saturdays Candy and I went to the Alamo Drafthouse Cinema to watch special showings of The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. So today, the third Saturday in a row, we went to see The Godfather Part III. I was very interested because they were screening the re-cut version The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone. I’m not sure if I was ever able to sit through the original Godfather III – it wasn’t up to the standards of the first two – and I found it ponderous and boring, especially on television. I have read that the new version, although it leaves most of the center of the film the same, changes the beginning and end – leading to a version that is much improved. So we’ll see.

I enjoyed it – I think the key is to realize that it is a very different movie, both in style and in message, than the previous two. If you can take it on its own, it’s a good, enjoyable film – though not as epic as the other chapters in the saga. Seeing it in a theater helped – the film mostly made sense, though I still don’t completely understand all the financial issues with the Vatican.

Oh, and I’m afraid its still true – Sophia Coppola may be a great director – but she is terrible in this movie.

And its fun to spot actors that you’ve seen somewhere else that you never thought would be in a Godfather epic (for example Harry Dean Stanton in Godfather Pert II). In this one it would have to be Don Novello (he has a big part) – better known as Father Guido Sarducci.

Quadrophenia

Posted on by Bill Chance

On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool, cool rain
I can’t sleep, and I lay, and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Woo, oh God, I need a drink of cool, cool rain

Love, reign o’er me
Reign o’er me, o’er me, o’er me, woah
Love, reign o’er me, o’er me

—-Pete Townshend, Love, Reign o’er Me, from Quadrophenia

Motorcycle Gang on scooters (where else but) New Orleans, Louisiana

This evening, after riding my spin bike for an hour or so – using my BitGym app to ride up the mountains and glaciers of Argentina – I rested a bit and watched the 1979 movie Quadrophenia. I wasn’t overly familiar with the movie – or most of the music behind it. I was just out of school in 1979, isolated out in the Kansas plains and not very hooked into pop culture of the time. I had seen bits of the movie – but not the whole thing until today.

I was interested because I had watched a YouTube video on modern musical films that considered Quadrophenia to be superior to the much more well-known Tommy. And having watched the movie I can see where the reviewer is coming from. Tommy is more entertaining, more fun – but Quadrophenia is deeper, both as a window into a certain time and place (and the Mods and Rockers subcultures) as well as a window into the life of a damaged mind.

So it was good – I actually may go back and watch most of it again. One really cool thing I didn’t know is that Sting is in the film – using his extreme charisma as the character Ace Face – the king of the Mods.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bl7RLKgTTPY

I Know It Was You, Fredo

Posted on by Bill Chance

“Hey, what’s with the food around here? A kid comes up to me in a white jacket, gives me a Ritz cracker, and uh, chopped liver, he says, ‘Canapes.’ I said, uh, ‘can of peas, my ass, that’s a Ritz cracker and chopped liver!’”

—- The Godfather Part 2

A week ago, Candy and I went to see the Godfather at The Alamo Drafthouse. This week is The Godfather Part II. Some people consider this to be a better movie than the first – it is one of those rare cases where the sequel is equal, if not superior to the original. Both won best picture Oscars – and every other accolade possible.

I was really looking forward to seeing it. Unlike Part 1 – which I saw in a theater in high school, I never saw the sequel on the big screen – I was in college by then and not able to get out to theaters because of time and money restraints. It would be years until I was able to see it on television – and it’s so long – it was impossible to carve out enough of a block to sit there uninterrupted. So I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen the whole thing in one sitting – though I’ve watched it in bits more than once, all told.

It is hard to compare to the first movie. Even though it has the same people, more or less, it is structured quite differently. It covers a huge amount of time and space – much told through flashbacks – two separate stories, really. The whole Cuba deal is complicated – and has the aspect of international politics, big news stories, and revolution. In that section, and in the congressional hearings, it feels like the outside world has finally started to intrude on the Corleone empire… which I guess is the point.

So I do think the second is the more subtle, complex, and possibly better film, but it doesn’t have the epic personalities of the first.

John Cazale (who plays Fredo) passed away in 1978 and I saw a short doc about his short acting career. He was only in five feature films – but what a collection – Godfathers 1 and 2, The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, and The Deer Hunter. Five classic films. I think his performance of the tragic, flawed Fredo is a high point of the film.

Oh, and I didn’t realize that Harry Dean Stanton is in the film (a fairly small part). He is truly in every movie.

So, next week is the third. I’m excited because the Alamo is screening the re-edit of Godfather Part III – The Godfather Coda: The Death of Micheal Corleone. It is supposed to be a big improvement. We have our tickets… and the Alamo is such a great place to see a film.

Just don’t talk or text.

An Offer He Can’t Refuse

Posted on by Bill Chance

“The lawyer with the briefcase can steal more money than the man with the gun.”
― Mario Puzo, The Godfather

My bike in front of the Alamo Drafthouse, Richardson. Cool bike racks.

Last Saturday Candy and I went to a special showing of The Godfather at the Alamo Drafthouse cinema in Lake Highlands (it was sold out in Richardson – the closest to our house). We very seldom see movies anywhere other than the Alamo – it is just too cool.

This is the fiftieth anniversary of the film – which makes the math easy – I was fifteen when I first saw it. I was living in Managua – the arrival of the film in country was a big deal. I remember seeing it in a theater in town – pre-earthquake – so I did see it in 1972 (sometimes it took films a while to get to Central America).

The theater where I saw it was packed. Sometimes it was tough to get into R rated films in Managua (I couldn’t get in to see Cabaret, for example) but this one was considered highbrow and I was let in with my friends.

There was this kid at school that had mastered a loud, booming, evil-sounding laugh and would let loose with it at any inappropriate moment if he could shock everyone. In the movie, after the wedding, when Michael and Apollonia were in the bedroom and she dropped her nightgown… the crowd was silent and tense… and the guy, from somewhere in the theater (I didn’t know he was there) let out his loudest laugh. It was awful and hilarious.

Decades later, when we all got together in North Carolina, I asked him if he remembered that and he said, “Of course I do!”

At any rate, it was good to see it again, and nobody laughed at that scene. I have seen it many times over the years and was able to concentrate on details – like looking for oranges. I have to admit, over the years, I wasn’t sure what was going on all the time (like who exactly were getting shot there at the end) and I think I’ve got most of it figured out now – the internet helps.

At any rate, we’ve already got our tickets for Godfather part two, showing one week later – and the Alamo is also going to screen The Godfather Coda: The Death of Michael Corleone – the re-edited version of The Godfather Part III – that is supposed to be much, much better. I haven’t seen it – have to buy my tickets.

Colossal

Posted on by Bill Chance

“You’re going to have the tallest, darkest leading man in Hollywood.”

—-Merian C. Cooper to Fay Wray on being cast in King Kong

Table of tiny monsters, Clarence Street Art Collective, The Cedars, Dallas, Texas

OK, to prove I am serious about my streaming Movie Recommendations – tonight when I came home from a bike ride (having narrowly missed today’s thunderstorm) I sat down, dialed up HBOMax, and watched the first item from my list – the Science Fiction film, Colossal.

I’ll keep this spoiler free – it stars Anne Hathaway as an alcoholic mess of a New York party girl hitting rock bottom and a giant monster stomping on Seoul, Korea. And yes, the two plot strands are very related.

That’s all I’m going to say (these plot points are revealed in the first minutes of the film) except… someone who is very famous recently for playing the best of all good guys turns out to be… something else.

A very good movie – different, but not weird, serious, but not maudlin, and not too long. Worth your while.

I’m not even going to link to the trailer… it gives away too much.