Review: SAVING MR. BANKS

November 14, 2013ByDonald Hallene

“Would you like to learn the secrets of cryogenics?”

It’s hard to imagine a world without Mary Poppins. The film has become such an ingrained part of popular culture that kids know who the flying nanny is even without having seen the film, and they know that just a spoonful of sugar will help the medicine go down. Many people, however, probably don’t know that Mary was dreamt up by Helen Goff, or as she was more famously known, P.L. Travers. The magical nanny appeared in 8 books, telling her tales looking after the Banks family and their subsequent adventures.

Saving Mr. Banks is a film that focuses on the strange relationship between Travers and Mr. Walt Disney who desperately wanted to make a film out of her books. From a script that was included on the 2011 Black List (a list of the best unproduced scripts) the film sets out to examine how the famous film came to be, and more importantly how it almost didn’t happen at all. When his daughters were young, Walt Disney discovered their favorite book was about a British nanny named Mary Poppins, and he declared that he would bring her to life. He then spent 20 years trying to convince Travers to give him the rights. She of course had no desire to sell, and only gave in to his requests to meet when her royalties from the books ran out. The film picks up here, following Travers from England to Los Angeles, as well as dipping into her past as it flashes back to her childhood in Australia.

I am not sure if he looks more like Walt or John Waters.

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Commando – A One Man Army

November 10, 2013ByTars Tarkas

Commando – A One Man Army

2013
Written by Ritesh Shah
Directed by Dilip Ghosh

Imagine if an action movie fr0m the 1990s fell into a time tunnel and popped out in 2013 India, and was given modern fight choreography. Thus, Commando – A One Man Army, which is both a mirror to the past and a painting of the now. Remember the name of star Vidyut Jamwal, whose silent but charismatic and handsome Karan character gives the film the intensity and martial arts skills it needs. Jaideep Ahlawat replies with the supernaturally evil AK 74, who isn’t happy if he’s not telling jokes and doing something totally totally evil.

Commando is very much a man’s movie, Vidyut Jamwal is basically Superman without the suit, and Jaideep Ahlawat is a maniacal gang leader who sends dozens of goons off to do violent things with a flick of the finger. Pooja Chopra’s Simrit Kaur, however, is basically useless. She does little more than be an object of desire of the villain, and the target of rescue of the hero. Simrit flips back and forth between being horribly shocked at the violent things Captain Dogra does, to being incredibly turned on that this handsome man is being all physical in front of her. Simrit’s tiny bit of rebellion – not wanting to get married and running away – simply results in major tragedy. That also lends towards the 1990s feel of Commando, as many of the women are little more than rescue prizes in the low budget action films Commando appears to copy.

I don’t want to turn this into a whole essay on how women are treated in modern Indian film (a discussion better suited for many other films), but I won’t shy away from pointing it out. Her character could be eliminated entirely from the plot with little consequence, as it would be easy to frame AK chasing after Dogra because of spilled coffee or something. In fact, I read about a test concept for this by Kelly Sue DeConnick called The Sexy Lamp Test: If the main female character could be replaced by a lamp with no adverse effects on the story, then the writer is a hack. This leads to some wonderful visuals, as heroic action heroes spend an entire movie defending the honor of the leglamp from A Christmas Story – itself nothing more than glowing sexuality that doesn’t further the plot and provides only visual stimuli.

Commando does excel with the action. This is Vidyut Jamwal’s first starring role as a hero, and he shows off his martial art skills. Jamwal is so far above everyone else in the starring rolls that even Commando knew that Jaideep Ahlawat wouldn’t be a realistic challenge to fight – Jamwal just pushes him around when they do confront each other. Instead, they bring in a rival, an Evil Commando, who has to do very evil things himself to be accepted as a villain (he has the most ridiculous introduction scene I’ve seen in a long time!) Yet Evil Commando only shows up so there can be a dramatic fight, his character doesn’t do anything for the plot, either. I blame this on another weakness of the writing, why not just make Evil Commando the villain’s cousin or something? Or he could be a different abandoned commando who decided to be evil instead of helping random women like our hero.

Commando features one other thing that we won’t be seeing much of in modern American cinema – Chinese villains! Every Chinese character is presented as evil torturers who just want to humiliate India because they can. US films have practically decided China can do no wrong, studios are very afraid of offending the Chinese censors losing out on their films being screened in the huge huge Chinese theater market. It leads to weird things happening in films, such as the Red Dawn remake being reedited so everyone is North Korean, or weird extra scenes added to the Chinese cuts of films. Commando – A One Man Army doesn’t give a crap about offending the Chinese. It’s sort of refreshing, even though the scenes are ridiculous.

After the Chinese are all killed off, the villains become the Indian politicians. It’s the system that fails Captain Dogra, abandoning him in China, and attempting to smear him when he escapes and resurfaces. The coverup becomes a twisted parody, and fuels Captain Dogra’s disdain of politicians and people not standing up to wrongdoing. Dogra even lectures the townspeople near the end of the film for being so passive and letting bad guys take over. Commando is suddenly spouting American conservative dogma, including killing your enemies. I’m not so familiar with India’s political structure to know if there is a party that is an analogue of the Republicans, but if there is, they’d be fans of Commando.

The retro feel of Commando comes from the blend of mindless action and old school attitudes about women and politics. Many of the positions Commando – A One Man Army takes are reprehensible, but not too surprising. Commando does one thing well, and that’s have awesome action sequences. The entirety of Commando‘s awesomeness is Vidyut Jamwal and his martial arts work. Jamwal practices a variety of martial arts, including jiu jitsu and kalaripayattu, an Indian martial art from Kerala. The stunts feel real, and even the few times they dive into Indian action cinema ridiculousness, they quickly snap back to more realistic. When Captain Dogra is fighting, he is in a class far beyond the average goon, so much so that the Evil Commando brought in is the only real threat (well, that and guns!) The battle with Evil Commando shows Dogra being injured and meeting his equal. Strangely enough, if the Evil Commando had been the main villain, the plot would have been more unbelievable. I can really only think of two films where the mastermind villain was just some wimpy guy who wasn’t even a slight physical threat to the hero, the other one being Eric Bogosian in Under Siege 2: Dark Territory. Jaideep Ahlawat’s villainy as AK 74 was fun to watch, and he threw in enough quirky things that AK was a legitimate threat without being a physical equal.

Commando – A One Man Army is a fun blast of the past that suffers whenever nonaction is happening on the screen. The few musical sequences feel out of place (except for when AK is randomly slapping people in one song) and Pooja Chopra is wasted. But all is forgiven when people start getting punched, kicked, and punch-kicked by Vidyut Jamwal. And I hope Vidyut Jamwal goes on to punch-kick in dozens of films. Maybe even ones that don’t make you dislike every other aspect of them!

	Captain Karanvir Dogra (Vidyut Jamwal) – Elite commando crashed and abandoned in China, escapes after 1 year of torture and promptly gets involved in a local dispute involved a thug and his gang of thugs. Commando soon is beating the crap out of them.
	Simrit (Pooja Chopra) – Daughter of a local influential household and the object of AK 74’s desire – not because he loves her, but because he loves what the power and notoriety of her family could do for his bigger ambitions. She flees and bets Captain Dogra for help, which he complies.
	AK 74 (Jaideep Ahlawat) – Local thug Amrit Kawal Singh calls himself AK 74 because all villains need cool nicknames. Has no pupils but can see. Legend has he was born on a no moon night, his father was a tyrant, and they call him devil son of a devil. Is a drug dealer and murderer, even cough syrup distribution! So that means he wants to be a politician, which is even worse! AK 74 is constantly on his phone, either playing Angry Birds or getting joke texts that he reads to his goons for laughs.

Spoilers below!

InGood, Movie Reviews

The Secret of Magic Island

November 4, 2013ByTars Tarkas

The Secret of Magic Island

aka Une Fée… Pas Comme les Autres aka Secret of Outer Space Island

1957
Written and directed by Jean Tourane

An all animal cast live their lives in their village, and deal with carnivals, an evil troll, giant spiders, and dark magic as a cat, duckling, and puppy fight to save the day. Une fée… pas comme les autres is a unique feature that’s concept and execution help set it above much of the children’s programming at the time, even if the plot is largely absent in favor of many scenes of animals just doing people things. It is still an amazing production, and I guarantee I would be a huge fan of this had I saw it when I was five, to a “worn out VHS tape” degree.

Creator Jean Tourane is an artist who specialized in painting and photography, most famously for animal portraits. Tourane then began filming some of the animal antics, creating narratives for them. His created the character Saturnin the duckling, who became a star with Une Fee Pas Comme Les Autres(Lit. A Fairy…Not Like the Others) in 1956. Saturnin was featured in picture books and children’s books (though I am not too sure about their chronology.) In 1964, he created 78 tv episodes for his duckling Saturnin with Saturnin, le petit canard. This series about a duckling secret agent years later made it’s way to America, where it was first cut up into “We’ll be right back!” commercial bookends for weekday and weekend mornings on Fox. Eventually (like two years later!), the shows were repackages as The Adventures of Dynamo Duck, which were a five minute or so long shorts that aired at random times during Saturday mornings on Fox. I remember being very confused because I could never find the show and it seemed to appear at random. I was a big fan, I loved the commercial bumpers and the show was just an overload of gravy train. Unfortunately, it’s also obscure as heck, with only random clips showing up online. Dan Castellaneta (best known for voicing Homer Simpson) voiced Dynamo Duck, giving him a Robert Stack/Don Adams combo voice.

The Secret of Magic Island spends most of the running time showing us amazing images of animals doing just about everything in their own little world. Maybe 10 minutes of the scant 60 minute run time is devoted to the Black Troll stealing a magic fairy wand and the quest to get it back, while the rest is just us all watching a typical day in the animal village as the circus comes to town and everyone has fun. (At least until the Black Troll causes problems!) The whimsy and enthusiasm in some of the scenes is very endearing, you can tell Tourane was very proud of his train (and he should be!) as well as many of the carnival games. The sense of world building is strong, and Magic Island seems like a place you’d want to hang out at. Think about all the cute animal friends. Everyone seems friendly.

Unlike certain films that are almost entirely composed of animals made by artistic eccentrics, the creatures in The Secret of Magic Island look well taken care of, sometimes even enjoying what is going on. Usually they are sitting passive while the offscreen hands manipulate them or their limbs, and often a paw or two is attached to steering wheels or other devices. But it can’t be anything dangerous, because the animals need to be mobile. From what was presented, I would wager these animals are well looked after. Except maybe the bunnies that were smoking, that’s obviously not going to fly in modern day!

Une fée… pas comme les autres was brought to America in 1964 as The Secret of Magic Island thanks to the production company of Joseph E. Levine, a producer who helped create the American version of Godzilla, King of the Monsters! and is also responsible for things like Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and The Last Days of Sodom and Gomorrah. Levine used the film as part of his kiddie double feature matinees (the English trailer even specifically mentions it is for a matinee!) Phil Tonken took over narrations duties from Robert Lamoureux for the American version. What plot difference there are will not be learned until we can find an intact copy of the English dub.

Trailers for an English-dubbed version of The Secret of Magic Island have appeared on various Something Weird Video DVDs and even pop up in film festivals, but an actual copy of the English version has yet to surface. However, thanks to the magic of the internet, another version has shown up (in Swedish, which was released there as Per Och Monstret – and this is why I’ll predominantly use the Swedish names for the characters), and also thanks to the magic of the internet, it has fansubs. So The Secret of Magic Island is no longer a secret! MuHAHAHAHAHA!

The Secret of Magic Island is predated as a full film all animal production by the 1948 Bill and Coo, which featured a bird village.

The feathered residents of Chirpendale are terrorized by an evil black crow by the name of “The Black Menace”. But to the citizen’s rescue comes a brave young taxi puller named Bill!

Bill and Coo was made to showcase George Burton’s trained birds (aka Burton’s Birds). There were also a lot of all animal shorts, most famously was the Barkies – the all dog shorts from the 1930s. And let’s not forget the all monkey western The Lonesome Stranger! The Lonesome Stranger was part off the Speaking of Animals series, which began as educational shorts where the animals “talked” and evolved into actual stories. The most famous modern one is probably Milo & Otis, which was probably not fun for the animals involved at all. While searching around I found a whole pack of recent films, a few of which I will hopefully get copies of sooner than later.

	Per – A poet cousin of Ericson who is coming to town just in time to see the carnival. Also just in time to deal with the fallout of the Black Troll’s wand theft! Luckily, Per is a true hero and accepts this responsibility with ease. Per is the Swedish dub named for Saturnin, which also means Per is Dynamo Duck, secret agent. This must have been during his college years, when he was just a simple poet.
	Maestro Ericson – A music teacher cat who is good friends with a magic fairy who leaves her wand under Ericson’s care. Maestro Ericson can’t resist hiding the wand in a special compartment of his piano that only opens when you play a specific song, and also showing off the code to his cousin Per and student Charlies. And unintentionally, the Black Troll. Goes on the quest to retrieve the wand, or at least most of it. The original French name for Ericson was Chassidou.
	Charlie – Puppy student of Maestro Ericson, who seems to have all day music lessons. Which would make him a prodigy, I guess. Charlie is also a big fan of sweets, and easily fooled by fast-talking monkeys who wave piles of sweets in front of him. Charlie also owns up to what he does wrong and helps Per and Ericson after they rescue him. The original French name for Charlie was Chocolat.
	Black Troll – Embittered monkey upset over his love failure and has vowed revenge against the world. Unfortunately, he exists in a time before he could write bad poetry on Facebook, and instead wants to destroy the town protected by the fairy that spurned him. Black Troll was known as Géninoir in the original French version.

InGood, Movie Reviews

Stoker

October 31, 2013ByTars Tarkas

Stoker

2013
Written by Wentworth Miller
Directed by Park Chan-wook

Park Chan-wook’s Stoker is an amazing film that is only a few steps shy of perfection. But it is those final steps that make up the bulk of my complaints, forever sealing Stoker away from classics territory. The story of a teenage girl’s journey to womanhood just as a mysterious uncle enters her life plays on much of the angst we all experience as youth. It also plays on a lot of Hitchcock tropes, right up to having the mysterious uncle that the niece finds the murderous truth about be named Charlie. Holy Shadow of a Doubt, Batman!

My biggest beef seems like a slight thing, but Stoker involves what is essentially the sexual awakening of the India Stoker character, but both the writer and director are men. This isn’t a huge thing by itself, but it reveals itself in a million tiny tiny things that just add up to put Stoker a bit off from masterpiece status in my eyes. Mia Wasikowska obviously had some input on her character and how she acted, but everything is based on the templates laid down by Park and Miller. Perhaps I’ll soften a bit on this after a few years, Stoker being very worthy of revisits.

Park Chan-wook’s films have gained him a cult following throughout the world: Joint Security Area, Thirst, I’m a Cyborg, But That’s OK, and The Vengeance Trilogy. Stoker is his English-language film debut, one of three cult Korean directors who had English language films debuts in 2013 – Kim Jee-won with The Last Stand and Bong Joon-ho with Snowpiercer are the others. Park Chan-wook took the great tradition of Korean film transitions with him. The scene where the hair turns into the field of grass is one of the best shots ever in film. Park succeeds in providing excellent tension building thanks to some masterful editing, and continues to ratchet up the drama as the story gets more disturbing. Screenwriter Wentworth Miller was largely known for acting until this point, starring in the Prison Break series on Fox. His script for Stoker wound up on the Black List, which lead to its eventual development. It all results in a terrific thriller.

The narration by India Stoker is done as a whisper, giving a more intimate feel, and the aura of us hearing a family secret. Secrets weave the web of the world of Stoker, the Stoker family having their own skeletons in the closet

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Confessions of a Go-Go Girl

October 26, 2013ByTars Tarkas

Confessions of a Go-Go Girl

2008
Written by Lenore Kletter
Based on the play by Jill Morley
Directed by Grant Harvey

Nietzsche said “One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.” Hence I have stripped off that schoolgirl costume!

Lifetime Channel is a gift to the movie world. It’s been constantly creating and showcasing an array of original dramas and has one of the most prolific content creation legacies of a channel in history. Of course, most of their film output is despised by critics if they even bother to think of them, because most critics wouldn’t know a good film if it married them while after the suspicious deaths of its three previous wives. TarsTarkas.NET is not afraid to do whatever it takes to find cinematic gold, even if we have to watch a channel for….women! I kid, I kid. But people who have an aversion to Lifetime films are just missing out on a whole barrel of fun! From Cyber Seduction to Social Nightmare, Lifetime is magical. Their films are so popular they got their own spinoff network! Even SyFy can’t boast of that feat. Thus, in celebration of Lifetime, we shall now watch this film about go-go dancing.

Post-Modern Times

Confessions of a Go-Go Girl has an amazing title and an amazing plot, following innocent rich girl Jane McCoy as she’s lured into the increasingly sleazy world of go-go dancing, parts of which correlate with your favorite stories about women becoming strippers. But this isn’t stripping, it’s go-go dancing. It’s totally different. Go-go dancing can be shown on tv!

This go-go movie has the decency to be partially self-aware, sections which I’m guessing are legacies from the stage play it’s based on. Because huge other chunks are not self-aware at all. As the play “True Confessions of a Go-Go Girl” by Jill Morley sounds biographical, things were probably enhanced for television dramatics, much as a character attempts to enhance her chest via a character named Dr. Double D. As we shall see, neither option turns out too well, but Confessions of a Go-Go Girl does manage to entertain in a schlocky way, and you can see it as how Jane McCoy gains her confidence. Part of the fun is wondering just when her family is going to find out what she’s doing, and how bonkers their reactions are going to be. Because her family is pretty terrible. Not terrible in a dysfunctional way, but terrible in an afunctional way. Dad is overly controlling and angry, Mom is upper crust oblivious, her brother is a puritanical tyrant, and her boyfriend would faint if he saw a woman in a short skirt. Jane needs these stereotypes as family members, which allows her to set out on her journey where she meets all the other stereotypes in the stri– I mean, go-go dancing world. Jane even becomes a stereotype, but that’s for a purpose. As Jane is in acting school, she creates a character persona that becomes her dancing persona. Soon the lines blur, which is Jane, and which is Dylan? Better keep dancing until you figure it out…

Time to feel guilty for being a perv!

	Jane McCoy (Chelsea Hobbs) – Jane is your boring rich girl whose life is all planned out for her. Even Jane’s name is Plain Jane! But Jane suddenly wants to be an actress, and that throws her nutty parents into a tailspin of crazy! She continues in her quest, turning towards the easy money of go-go dancing to pay the bills after she’s cut off, then sticking with the dancing as it gives her confidence. But it’s skirting the line of danger, and Jane may just cross over into doom! Jane dances under the name Dylan.
	Angela Lucas (Sarah Carter) – The seductress who lures Jane into the world of go-go, all part of a recruitment scheme to get some of Jane’s tips. Angela doesn’t want Jane cutting in on her action, but also wants Jane to succeed, which leads to weird dichotomies. Angela’s loser boyfriend also steals all her money, driving Angela back to drugs, bad work ethics, a downward spiral that takes half of the film to crash, and a shock ending no one except everyone saw coming. Angela dances under stage name Aurora
	Nick Harvey (Corbin Bernsen) – The owner of the go-go club Jane starts working at. Is actually fare and pays his girls a decent wage, which is why he’s a fictional club owner. Probably Corbin Bernsen’s greats role ever (excluding Star Trek)
	Donna Mercer (Rachel Hunter) – Veteren dancer who is approaching the expiration date. Gives advice to the new girls, but is also the target of everyone’s ire when they aren’t in a good mood. A single mom of a teenager named Elizabeth. Donna makes everyone’s costumes because she’s a rocking sewer. Has got it going on.

The worst bachelor party ever

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Room in Rome

October 14, 2013ByTars Tarkas

Room in Rome

aka Habitación en Roma

2010
Written by Julio Medem
Screenplay by Julio Rojas
Directed by Julio Medem

“Loving strangers” – repeated lyric of reoccurring song

The trailer for Room in Rome hit the net and people went nuts, because here is a movie about two lesbians who are nude for most of the film having sweet lesbian sex. That whole story about people going to watch art house foreign films just for nudity seemed to apply once again, in the age of the internet and ease to access of nakedness like never before. It was a weird phenomenon. Room in Rome turned out to be a film about two women and their relationship during one night, filled with far more talking than lovemaking (though there is plenty of that as well). Expectations shattered, the buzz from the nudity excitement crowd died down, and what is left is a nice love story that’s probably 20 minutes too long.

The length issue has lead to a reputation that Room in Rome is boring (which I’ve found to be a common complaint of lesbian cinema for some reason). That might be a reaction to the characters constantly bringing up philosophical quotes and European history discussions that will fly over the heads of most viewers. I guess I’m weird because I didn’t mind them, though I question how long you can realistically keep up such highbrow discussion.

Room in Rome flows beyond two strangers just having a one night’s stand before returning to their own lives. Their brief fling becomes an entire romance, and a lifetime of love flies by in that one night. Both characters know that what they have will not last past the break of day. The length does help spread out the approach of daylight. We all know that the morning is coming, and the passion and feelings we are witnessing will have to end, the two women returning to their lives. The spectre of morn haunts through the night, Alba and Natasha both reacting their own way to the upcoming emotional bomb.

	Alba (Elena Anaya) – Alba lives in Spain with her partner, and works as an engineer designing light vehicles. She is unhappy in her relationship and more likely to do rash things without thinking.
	Natasha (Natasha Yarovenko) – Natasha is a Russian woman in Italy for a vacation before she gets married and settles down. Most of her life has been a privileged journey that’s unusual because she’s marrying someone who is only middle class. She rarely takes risks, which is why the night is so out of character for her.

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