Review of "Gymkata (1985)"

Gymkata (1985)

The Most Dangerous Game and the Strategic Defense Initiative in Parmistan

This movie beckons the question : What does men's gymnastic and cloaked, ninja henchmen on horses have in common ? Both are an intricate part of director, Robert Clouse's, vision. After his collaboration with Bruce Lee in Enter the Dragon and Game of Death, Jim Kelly in Black Belt Jones and Jackie Chen in the Big Brawl, Robert Clouse cleverly blended campy masterpieces like the Ultimate Warrior (with Yul Brynner), Lee Van Cleef as the "stunt-ed" Master and this relatively unknown gem.

Gymkata's protagonist is "faster than fire" Johnny Cabot (adequately played by Kurt Thomas, a gold medalist at the 1978 World Championships in gymnastics). Cabot's father was on a secret mission for the US government to secure "favors" of a country call Parmistan (actually filmed in the former Yugoslavia). They have a certain custom there which involves "the Game" and the 1 wish imparted to its survivor (a.k.a. winner). Major countries across the world are competing to win. Apparently, Mr. Reagan's "Star Wars" project is on the line. Johnny is sent in as a backup to his father and to win the game. To do so he is given the help of the Princess of Parmistan (who doesn't utter one word until 16 minutes into the movie and seems to be the mentor and acting coach of Devon Aoki) and her "gymkata" grand masters. Their training turns him from an adequate fighting gymnast to a lean, and relatively polite hopping machine.

The most important and relevant question one needs to ask oneself is "what is gymkata"? Gymkata seems to be a fighting form that combines gymnastics with some generic un-named martial art. Its principles involve lots of running and jumping around. To be proficient in gymkata, one must also master the lost weapon skills of pommel horse, high bar and floor exercise. Martial arts veteran, Richard Norton (Zamir), bares his chest and hams it up as the villain. Norton's fighting skills are severely in check and underused, however, this movie's influence can still be seen in other movies (for example, the pommel horse scene seems to have been a huge influence on the Wachowskis and a certain scene involving Neo and many Smiths).

The "Game" of Parmistan is an "iron man"-like event. There is first a race that leads to cliff rope climb, followed by a rope bridge, more running, hill climbing, running through the forest and then surviving the Village of the Damned. Whomever survives gets just 1 request and is revered by the local population. Big Whoop !!

Unfortunately, the director's pedigree and the presence of Norton does not provide for anything more than laughable combat scenes. This movie is in no way to be taken seriously. From the 80's hair and 80's clothes, to the ridiculous plot and silly fighting is sure to put a smile on the face of the most disgruntled person. Johnny is whiny and annoying as the hero (think of Luke except much, much whinier). The plot, acting and action is laughable. It is enjoyable and easy to watch, but is geared towards showing off the talents of Kurt Thomas. I am sorry, Kurt, but you are no Bruce Lee. You aren't even good enough to lick the boots of Bruce's #1 fan and impersonator, Bruce Li. That's okay, though. You may not be the best of the best, but you sure look funny trying. Keep up the good work, Yorick.

Review of "The Work of Michel Gondry (2003)"

The Work of Michel Gondry (2003)

Do I offend ??

So far this is one of seven in the director series compilations (the others being Chris Cunningham, Anton Corbijn, Jonathan Glazer, Mark Romanek, Stephane Sednaoui, and Spike Jonez). These would definitely be considered the new wave, MTV generation type directors. These directors are fully integrated into a visual medium. I would love to see who the series go to next.

You might remember Michel Gondry from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Chappelle's Bloc Party. Prior to these movies he became famous for doing stunning music videos for artists like the White Stripes and Bjork.

This is mostly a collection of the various music videos that he has done from about 1986 to 2003. Out of the all the music video's I have to pick 5 as my favorite.

1) Daft Punk - around the world. Trippy and surreal dance number consisting of aliens, skeletons, mummies, and a few women.

2) Kylie Minogue - come into my world. Kylie's Mobius trip from her dry cleaner + 1.

3) White Stripes - fell in love with a girl. Lego land video is simply amazing.

4) White Stripes - the hardest button to button. Recurring Michel theme of duplication.

5) Cibo Matto - sugar water. Split screen asynchronous story that has a focal point in the middle.

This is basically a compilation of the work of the director. It includes his music videos, commercials, and other projects. This is their portfolio. The Director's Series is the great thing as you see the influences and evolution of the director. I also enjoyed the Levi's commercial, with the truck driver. I highly recommend this and the other DVDs in this series.

Review of "Take the Lead (2006)"

Take the Lead (2006)

Formulaic Rehash with Ballroom Dancing

Formula for the teacher meets misunderstood/troubled students, where the result is positive for everyone.

Take a teacher (male/female). Place said teacher in an inner city or remedial class room. Add conflict, usually due to social class difference or the fact that said kids have never gotten proper encouragement or positive attention from adult figures. Teacher then breaks down said barriers with some "forward" thinking alternative teaching methodology. The kids learn. There is usually a fall-back to previous behavior (usually caused by external school situations), followed by redemption. And this is usually based on true life events, for added drama.

Now is the easy part. As we learned in algebra, we just place in the actual data to replace the variables. The teacher is Zorro himself, Antonio Banderas. There are the kids (too numerous and somewhat annoying to mention). And there's the forward thinking teaching method which would be ballroom dancing. There are numerous other movies that follow a similar path - Sydney Poitier in To Sir, With Love; Michelle Pfeiffer in Dangerous Minds; Edward James Olmos in Stand and Deliver; The Rock in Gridiron Gang; Rhea Perlman in Sunset Park; and even Samuel L. Jackson in Coach Carter. The later entries on that list follow the same formula, except it substitutes sports for class and coach for teacher.

There is nothing overly original about this movie. Even though this movie is based on actual events and Pierre Dulaine (which is inspirational in itself and commendable), does not mean I necessarily want to see the same thing rehashed with different names, places and dates.

The music is decent and the dancing is average. I guess one really has to be into ballroom dancing to get a fuller appreciation. There is also nothing I like better than to be grilled by Zorro in a condescending fashion. On a side note Dante Basco really needs to invest time into getting his acting skills up to par and getting a new agent. He is almost pushing 32 and playing angst-ridden teenagers might be a bit of stretch right now. The problem I have with most of these types of movies is that the ending is gratuitous. The ending is usually somewhat if not completely happy in which something is achieved, but the full realization of turning one's life around and making something of oneself is never fully shown. For example, how does LaRhette resolve her mom's prostitution and how does Rock resolve his conflict with his alcoholic dad and not to mention with the local thug he just angered ?

The only true worth of the movie would have to be Zorro's tango with actress/dancer Katya Virshilas. That was kind of hot, but I think that was mostly due to her intrinsic abilities. I would have given this movie a higher rating if it actually induced sleep, because at the time I couldn't. Instead skip this one and just watch the trailer. It includes the best scene of the movie.

Review of "Deep Rising (1998)"

Deep Rising (1998)

Beyond the Poseidon Adventure and Leviation, like two ships meeting on the ocean

Stephen Sommers tests the waters, pre-Mummy, with this cheese-ladened romp on the South China seas. This is not a barren, lifeless ocean but one brimming with celebrities : Treat Williams, Famke Janssen, Djimon Hounsou, Wes Studi, Kevin J. O'Connor, Jason Flemyng and Cliff Curtis. Oh yeah, and there's a creature as well. It is some monstrous leviathan that grew out of the mysterious and deepest depths of the ocean.

A boat full or mercenaries, a cruise ship, a prolific thief, the ocean and a monster. Stephen manages to combine all these elements into an enjoyable romp. This movie has much of the same elements as some of Stephen's other movies - The Mummy, the Mummy Returns and the Scorpion King. There are elements of a heist, a survival horror and even some comedy. It also has action. It has graphic deaths. It has a somewhat skewed logic. And there is the campy humor. Much like Stephen's other movies, the cast seems to display a lot of chemistry. They work well together. The movie also doesn't drag. The pace of the movie is quick and enjoyable. I especially enjoy the comic timings of Kevin J. O'Connor (the multi-religious Beni from the Mummy).

This isn't a movie full of deeper meaning and metaphors. This is just a fun movie. If you enjoy movies like the Mummy, Evil Dead, Phantasm and Shaun of the Dead, then you will most likely enjoy this. Until then, just try to figure out how to get a fish in and out of that bottle.

Review of "Star Trek (1973)"

Star Trek (1973)

Emmy Award Winning, "Star Trek in Animation", with continuity!!!

Everything these days seems to relate to my childhood and early adulthood. Perhaps since I am advancing in years, I am also dwelling much more on the past. I remember seeing this show in a limited capacity back in the late 80's and early 90's. Technically, I saw 3 episodes on Nickelodeon and taped them. What I saw was quite impressive.

The animated series immediately follows the cancellation of the original series and can be considered the completion of the original 5 year mission.

Pros : All the voices of the original cast are present except for Walter Koenig : William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, DeForest Kelley, James Doohan, George Takei, Nichelle Nichols, Majel Barrett and even Roger C. Carmel (Harcourt Fenton Mudd) and Stanley Adams (Cyrano Jones) are there. Walter Koenig does make up for it by providing a script that allows us to experience a 60 foot tall Spock. We get episodes with more Harry Mudd, more tribbles, more fun on the shore leave planet, Uhura in command, Jihad and even a meeting with Lucifer himself. Also included is an Enterprise holodeck, pre-Pike, a laughing Enterprise, a reverse-timed alternate universe, Gukumatz (a.k.a, Kukulcan, Quetzalcoatl), Mr. Scott crawling on the ceiling, a cat on the bridge, "Blue" Kirk, more solo with Sulu and a nice smear of Shatnerian cleverness and ingenuity (don't forget about Shatnerian logic). There is also a furthering of the Star Trek universe. There are things (encountering lifeforms, aliens, other members of Starfleet along with the adoption of technical schematics, other ship designs and engineering and scientific principles) that seem to be pulled straight out of the technical manuals. All this did was add color, history and background to a somewhat plastic looking universe (up to this point). Books coming to life, imagine that. The animation freed the Star Trek universe from the shackles and limitations of live action. The exotic was limited only by the imagination and the animator's skills. It's as if all the fan energy and fervor to keep the show going at NBC was transmuted into this series. The show as a whole has a "chip on its shoulder" attitude. There are more than a handful of episodes, in the animated series, that could have easily replaced the not-so-good episodes of the original series (in terms of story, acting and pure science fiction fun).

Cons: Walter Koenig does not provide his voice. He ruins what could have been an even more unique event and show. How many times do you see actors reproducing themselves in animation and in this high of a percentage? Maybe this a positive thing to consider. Chekov is instead replaced by an Edosian (a 3 legged and 3 armed alien - one arm comes out straight from his chest) weapons officer named Arex. The animation is also quite typical of "kids-style" and other animated shows of its day. Anyone who has seen animated US shows from the 60's, 70's and 80's knows exactly what I mean. The animation can best be described as minimalistic. Often the illustrators saved money and time by repeating certain scenes. These are usually repeated in various capacities throughout the life of the show. In this case we get continuity errors like : Sulu talking from a planet while at the same time being on the bridge, Mr. Scott growing a wavy mustache instantaneously, Sulu looks much like McCoy in some scenes and much, much more. It will look similar in execution to the Planet of the Apes animated show (except that show had a strange "artistic" mural quality). The length of the episodes is quite a detriment. We were used to 45 minute episodes and now we are left with approximately half that. The voice work, which is the entire cast, lacks the passion of seeing the actors in person. The voices of the extras are also voiced by the Enterprise crew, but sound fake and contrived (often with laughable results). This is not the Simpsons, Futurama or Family Guy. Even Shatner and his Shatnerisms seem to be delivered with a heavy dose of Valium.

I do not want to be misleading. For fans of the show this is an absolutely must own. If you are a weekend Trek fan (a.k.a. - the long lasting debate of Trekkie vs Trekker), you can skip it entirely without missing a beat of the original show. You may want to check out 1 or 2 episodes to see if you would enjoy it. This could also be viewed as a nostalgic romp through the world of 70's animation.

For whatever reason, I still love this show and the original group of characters. There was a chemistry between them that was hard to miss. Though the lackluster voice work and average animation blemishes this version of the show, it still extends these interactions. Even from a science fiction perspective, the animated series does not hold much of a candle to the original. If anything, I would have called this Star Trek Lite - The Animated Series or Star Trek : For Kids. Well, its time to re-watch the Infinite Vulcan. Nothing gets to me more than when they steal Spock's brain from some mixed up alien plan.

Live Long and Thrive !!

In light of today, it wouldn't be appropriate to finish this review without proclaiming the most happiest of days for William Shatner. It's his birthday. Keep it coming Willie!!

Review of "42nd Street Forever, Vol 1 (2005)"

42nd Street Forever, Volume 1 (2005)

Cliff Notes for Grindhouse

I still remember 42nd street back in the day, before former Mayor Rudi Giuliani transformed the area into a Vegas-like tourist death trap. It used to be a different kind of tourist death trap. I remember the area's twilight years in the 80's and early 90's. During this time the area was still predominately full of pimps, prostitutes, drug dealers, XXX theaters and the grind houses. For an idea of what it was like during the transition, you can reference Schwarzenegger's Last Action Hero (when it goes "real") as a representation of the change. This is because by the late '80s this wasn't quite the one you remember from Midnight Cowboy. I have been living in the area for the last couple of years and there is very little remnant of what the area was. At the changeover from dawn to day, in the area west of 9th Avenue, you can still see the world's oldest professionals quiting for the night. They have become sparse enough in this area, that the professionals are almost there for the tourists and as historical re-creationists, rather than as a professionals performing a civic duty. The legitimate places of business have moved out to the outer boroughs, Hunts Point, Green Point, Queens Bridge, etc.

This first volume in the series was a stroll down memory lane for me. It reminds me of the area, the theaters and as a child, things I was not allowed to see. The area and its movies represented a taboo to me. For those that don't know, Grind House is the genre representative of the movies shown in some of the theaters on the small strip from 7th and Broadway to 10th Avenue on 42nd Street (and the surrounding side streets). They were not necessarily porn but contained graphic sex and gratuitous violence. The stories were usually geared around that graphic sex and violence. One cannot deny the silliness and camp of a majority of the movies in this genre. Some of them were homegrown, others were quite foreign. They were your non-typical kind of movies. They were not the type of movie you would bring home to show mom and dad, yet you still found a way to sneak it in.

The series collects the trailers, usually shown before and during a double feature, into a continuous reel. If you want to know and learn about grind-house movies, then this is a good place to start. Just like in modern trailers, these trailers tend to give away critical information about the movie. Having seen the full version of some of these movies in this collection, it is sometimes sufficient to have seen the trailer to get the best aspects of that movie. It was also a good vehicle for me to get into movies I had never seen or vaguely remember.

There are more movies than you can imaging, that fall within this category. For example, you can expect trailers such as : Sylvester Stallone's Italian Stallion, Matango, The Green Slime, Destroy All Monsters, The Crippled Master, They Call Her One Eye, Maid In Sweden, Shocking Asia, Chappaqua, Death Drive, The Raiders Of Atlantis, Star Crash, Superfuzz, Ironmaster and many, many more. I found volume 1 to contain a great cross-section of the genre and a good representation of the trailers for the most well known movies in the genre. I definitely enjoyed it much more than volume 2. That makes me even more excited about the prospects of volume 3. Till Rodriguez and Tarantino's homage to the genre, I will await volume 3 while secretly shooting up on volume 1 in the Papaya Dog bathroom.

Review of "300 (2006)"

300 (2006)

"Sin City"-like Miller adaptation. Relatively close to source material. It's nice.....

I saw 300 last night. I could have written something last night, but I wanted to let my limbic system soak all of what I had seen. This morning, while watching a rather swashbuckling maneuver performed by a certain young Jedi on a desert barge, I realized something. There is a condition present in most homo sapien males. I like to call it "Pretty Woman syndrome". I do not know the correct medical term, but it is present. Pretty woman syndrome can be defined by the subconscious desire to reconcile the "life partner" as both a friend, confidant, mother,etc. and the sexually aggressive and insatiability of the "whore". How does one reconcile these two ideas, without having one or the other, but both? Hollywood and the movies have perpetuated such ideas and fantasies. In Pretty Woman, a man "rescues" a prostitute with a heart of gold and turns her into a lady. Star Wars reconciles the princess to slave girl back to princess, in a strange turn of movie moral and symbolism. I know what you are thinking and yes I know it's his sister and thats the symbolism.

I also just realized that Pretty Woman was geared toward females, so there must be some cultural/feminine aspects to my theory as well. The idea of ultimate redemption and cleansing. Past sins can be erased. This isn't just a male fantasy. I also realized that the ultimate realization of said fantasy for males is having two partners, each with their respective sexual role.

You are probably wondering what that has to do with this movie. It is simply the first thing that resonated immediately after letting 300 soak into my subconscious and sleeping mind. It is the idea that movies provide, project and proliferate desires. 300 serves as the carnal blood lust that "modern living" tries to suppress and diminish (i.e. - Fight Club logic). It stimulates that desire.

The story is the aboriginal template of a few-against-many scenario in a no-win-situation (Gladiator, Conan and the Kobayashi Maru). It is based on the 5 part Dark Horse comic series in which Frank Miller adapts the historical Battle of Thermopylae. To be quite fair even back in 1998, I felt the story was not the greatest. I wasn't knocked down by the story and its execution. The dialog and interactions are a bit peppered and melodramatic. Unlike most movies that work from a terrible source and then bury it (or the occasional great material being stifled), this movie was working with an average source and elevated it to the highest it can achieve. It is stunted by the source. What it does well is that it does the interpretation by the book, literally almost. The only exception would have to be the lapse of the failed suicide attempt of Ephialtes. Also the director takes some artistic licensing with the "exoticism" of the Persians. There are units and situations completely fabricated by the movie itself. Their inclusion is simply for the visceral effect. It increases the campiness, while decreasing the realism. Maybe that will change on the DVD. It will probably include the all nude, unedited and extended version of the movie - a.k.a the "Spartan Version".

Director, Zack Snyder (who did a great job of re-imagining Romero's Dawn of the Dead), should get kudos for creating a visually stunning and faithful to the source movie. The problem lies with Frank Miller. I believe he might be better at writing noir and noir-like material then sword and sandal epics. I mean lets not forget what Miller did to his futuristic, female protagonist , Martha Washington. He stranded her in space. The movie overdid the use of the action speed "effects". They were quite good, just overused. The other major problem was with the dialog. Though accurate to the comic, when done by actors it seemed quite melodramatic. The sheer number of speeches and over narration, gave the movie a comical aspect at times. We've all heard the "freedom"/"revenge" speech right before a do-or-die battle. Here it didn't do much but give me the chuckles. Even though there is action in the movie, it is not a typical action movie. It does have a political agenda, but it is hard to discern exactly what that is at times. All I know is that after watching V for Vendetta, I felt like blowing stuff up (at least in a game environment). This movie makes we want to do the same with a sword or maybe a spear.

I recommend watching this movie without the dialog. Just watch it with the soundtrack or maybe even substitute your own music tracks. Watch it in silence. It seems quite spartan that way. The advantage of the book is that the dialog can be skipped. The comic retains the "cave man painting on the wall" type communication. You don't need the dialog. It is art. It has a message. By proxy, if the movie is a faithful adaptation, then it also retains that same message.

The trailers are starting to hurt the movies. At this point it seems like trailers have become bullet points for the content. This is far from the 21st Soul Music Awards. It is good. It has value and it should be repeatedly watched. I wish that I hadn't seen the trailer. Anyone know a bald Hatian mutant I can consult with ?