Do you want Search?
Random Post
Random Post
Search
  • Home
  • Category Archives: Good
Search
InGood, Movie Reviews

Driving Miss Daisy Towards the Meaning of Life

July 16, 2012By

Driving Miss Daisy Towards the Meaning of Life


1989
Written by Alfred Uhry
Directed by Bruce Beresford

Throughout history one question has torn through mankind like a knife through butter. “Why are we here?” It seems a simple question that should easily be answered. But the answers do not come easily. Theories abound, all sorts of proofs exist, millions of people have spent countless hours and resources in search of the answer to this ultimate question. For many, they never find the answer they are looking for. They’ll never find out what it all means.

But have some people have learned the key? It seems that way. Not because they are smart or geniuses, but because they lived their lives and came to the answer. Sometimes the answers are all around you, you just need to be able to appreciate them. Sometime answers are just on the other side of the mirror.

The main journey in Driving Miss Daisy is a 25 year lesson on learning to find and appreciate the answers. Sure, it’s primarily the story of an older Jewish widow and her black driver in the South from 1948-1973, but that’s only the window dressing. You have to come along for the ride to see the destination. And, no, only one person gets to look at the map!

InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Janram (Review)

July 15, 2012By

Janram

aka Blind Moon aka จันทร์แรม

2004
Written by Varapon H. Phadungratna
Directed by Kirati Nak-Intanond

There’s a storm coming…a BLOOD STORM!!!

Janram is a Thai film from Niepce House, which is related to Natnalin Magazine, an art magazine from Thailan named after its founder, Natnalin Noimai, a photographer. The magazine has a heavy art bent, and the related features and enterprises on the website also trend towards the art direction. It did well enough that they started up a moving picture divsion to try to cash in on the Asian Horror craze that was sweeping the world in the early 2000s. From what I can tell, they produced only two films: Janram and Secret Room No.7, both released in 2004. Janram is heavily weighted to show visuals, visuals that have the appearance of the way fine art photographs would look in an arty black and white photoshoot. This is all well and good, but moving film is a different medium than still photography, so the correlation seems odd at times. It gives Janram a more high class feel, which strikes a stark contrast with what is actually happening in the story, with lesbian vampire schoolgirls.

Janram is based on a serialized story called Janram by Poomkamol Phadungratna that was incomplete at the time of filming. As Niepce House is a company set up by artists, the few films it made were more “artistic” than anything else. But they were also horror films, mostly so they could sell them overseas. This film is packed to the gizzards with weird stylized stuff – it has a washed out appearance most of the time, allowing for when there is blood for it to be bright bright bright red and contrast sharply with the rest of the film. Beyond that, there are random odd zooms and the camera is constantly moving like the cameraman was wearing rollerblades or something. As usual, we don’t need no stinking subtitles!

The line for the midnight premiere of Twilight Breaking Dawn Part 2 started before Part 1 hit the theaters!

The best part of this film was the two trailers before the film. One was of a haunted bra film – yes, haunted bra film. You see, if you put on this haunted bra, a ghost would appear and your bra would glow all yellow and you would be possessed by a ghost. Apparently women trade bras often, so dozens of women wear the haunted bra, which hunts down the people who killed and raped it’s original owner. Oddly enough, the English name for this film is Haunted Bra.

There was also a Naked Weapon knockoff film complete with crappy version of the Sharon Stone Basic Instinct leg crossing scene. The budget was about $4, but it’s probably at least as good as the real Naked Weapon. As far as I can tell, this doesn’t have an English name, but goes by นางฟ้า ต้องประหาร. If it ever gets back in print I’ll snatch up a copy for thrill of it all. Thanks to ThaiWorldView for helping me figure out the title!

Vampires also double as photo-negative safe lights for darkrooms!

Janram (Jintana Aromyen) – Just your average lesbian vampire schoolgirl who slowly eats all her lovers to death, yet doesn’t seem to realize that she’s killing all of them and gets depressed when they keep dying. But that doesn’t stop her from hooking up again and again with a constant parade of young lasses. The upper class Janram lives with her creepy grandma who is always silently craddling a doll and her mother. Actress Jintana Aromyen is also in Gonggoi: The Beast and 2004’s Ghost Dormitory
Ming (Maethinee Suwanjinda) – Janram’s lover who dies near the beginning of the film. Like you expect from a vampire flick, she returns very hungry and very upset that Janram has moved on to a new girl. It’s going to be a chick fight tonight!
Sassy (???) – As I couldn’t figure out her name, I just called her Sassy because she’s very sassy to everyone. Sassy has always hated Ming for reasons unknown, and she has no qualms on moving in on Ming’s territory once she dies. But then Ming comes back, but Janram now likes Sassy more… I think this is actress Bussakum Apithanarak but I am not sure.
I must stay away from the audio adaptations of Warhammer novels…but Gotrek and Felix can’t be resisted!
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

Bad Girls Doing Bad Things (Review)

July 13, 2012By

Bad Girls Doing Bad Things


2003
Written by Anora Leachim
Directed by Francis Locke

Sarah’s Living Room Bookstore was soon crushed by the Barnes & Nobles opening in her bathroom…

It’s time for yet another Torchlight Pictures/Francis Locke softcore production with a ridiculous plot and overly-long sex scenes! Bad Girls Doing Bad Things is about girls that are “good” girls attempting to dirty up their image to impress some random guy. Thanks to this instructional video, we now know what “bad” girls are – girls who watch people have sex in the club. Now you know, and knowing is half the battle. So let’s get the other half going as we dive right in to Bad Girls Doing Bad Things!

If we were any badder, Michael Jackson would have sung a song about us!

Bad Girls Doing Bad Things is among the most fun of the Torchlight Pictures catalogue, largely due to the character of Keith ragging on the good girls for being so boring, and their lame attempts to be cool. It still has the Torchlight Pictures characteristics of overly-long sex scenes, minimal plot, and scenes shot in abandoned buildings or the director’s living room. Oddly enough, I didn’t spot a hotel room in the mix, unless the hallways that look like a parking garage were actually a hotel parking garage.

Besides being produced and directed by Francis Locke, Blade Simpson continues to provide music while the “written by” credits an “Anora Leachim” (obviously a real name and not someone’s name backwards!)

I’ll go ENTER in the EXIT door! It’s totally a bad girl thing to do!

Karen (August Arroya) – A good girl in a good world, but her world is shattered when Keith makes fun of her for being a dork! Can you believe it? So she decides to totally go bad, because that’s what happens in real life.
Keith Oswald (Remy)- He’s the bad guy who has come to teach these good girls how to be bad girls doing bad things. That way they can fit in with the title of the movie!
Janine (Serrano Rios) – A worker at Karen’s bookstore who is also a good girl despite evidence to the contrary. But because she’s so anal she drives men away, until she learns to be bad, which means having sex with Keith.
Rex (Scott Alexander) – The other guy in club whom you might know from Dirty Blondes. He’s just as good of an actor here as in Dirty Blondes, but at least they’re using him in a more useful way.
Scarlet (Teanna Kai) – Another Dirty Blondes alumnus, she is a bad girl. Like all bad girls, she loves the Power Glove because it is so bad. And also having sex in public.
Dawn (Jana Cova) – She’s just a random club member of Dungeon who has lesbian sex with Scarlet. Totally not a Dirty Blonde on vacation…
I object, this isn’t a bad thing at all!
InMovie Reviews, Ugly

The Sorcerer and the White Snake (Review)

July 9, 2012By

The Sorcerer and the White Snake

aka 白蛇傳說 aka It’s Love aka Bai she chuan shuo aka Madame White Snake

2011
Written by Charcoal Tan, Tsang Kan-Cheung, and Sze-To Cheuk-Hon
Directed by Tony Ching Siu-Tung
Action Directors – Tony Ching Siu-Tung and Wong Ming-Kin

Ice Age 5: Journey to Mt. Doom!

The Sorcerer and the White Snake is a big budget effects bonanza that also doubles as a sleeping aide. Thanks to China attempting to become a major player in the movie department, they’ve begun adopting the worst aspect of Hollywood blockbusters. Giant empty special effects, bland characters, story arcs that go nowhere, and a film made as generic and non-offensive as possible to ensure the widest possible audience. Sadly, that also makes The Sorcerer and the White Snake just like so many of those big budget films in that it is not very good. Now, I can’t fault them entirely for being inspired by generic Hollywood junk, that’s most likely the films that are imported over to China that clean up in the box office. But in the race to show how China can do it too, they failed to realize what China is doing is failing just as bad.

We’ve come to avenge Ting Ting from Thunder of Gigantic Serpent!

When making The Sorcerer and the White Snake, the producers decided the most interesting part about this classic love story was a supporting character who fought spirits. My thinking is they wanted to do a familiar story but also wanted to do a film with huge action sequences. The only feasible way was to graft it onto the classic White Snake story. But it just doesn’t work. The original tale is diluted and weakened, while the Monk’s expanded story receives little payoff. This decision even further boggles the mind because they kept the title It’s Love, which hints that the film should be focused on the couple and not the monk. The biggest sin of all is the action sequences ring hollow and bland. Large portions of what should have made the film great were sacrificed for spectacles that focues on looking good over actual impact. Thousands of people at thousands of computers worked for thousands of hours to make me bored. Many of the huge battles fail to even convey a sense of danger for the combatants, even when the entire ocean is turning into giant tidal waves with giant snakes swimming around, no one seems to be in real danger.

Someone wasn’t paying attention when they read the Book of Genesis!

But are there bright spots? Well, the film certainly looks very nice. Good cinematography. Moments of the action sequences are good, but not enough. This paragraph should be longer, but I really can’t think of anything.

By that time, my mouse lungs were aching for air.

It is legally impossible to talk about The Sorcerer and the White Snake without bringing up the last well known theatrical version of this story, Green Snake. I’m serious. Lawyers will call you and yell. While Tsui Hark’s film is a masterpiece, it is a completely different story (based, in fact, on a separate work, the book Green Snake by Lilian Lee!) Comparing Green Snake to The Sorcerer and the White Snake is like complaining because The Muppets Wizard of Oz isn’t enough like Wicked. They are two different stories with two different tales, with the same narrative starting point. And this post isn’t about Green Snake, it’s about The Sorcerer and the White Snake.

I hate it when I’m in the bamboo forest and a rap video breaks out…

Let’s meet the cast, then I’ll point out some places where the film did okay and where I got annoyed.

Master Fahai (Jet Li Lian-Jie) – The abbot of Jin Shan Temple and famed demon hunter. Very arrogant and strict, though he does try to capture most of the spirits in case they want to meditate for rehabiliation. See more Jet Li in The Forbidden Kingdom.
Susu aka White Snake (Eva Huang Sheng-Yi) – White Snake spirit that is thousands of years old and has the fortune/misfortune to fall in love with a human being. Eva Huang is best known for appearing voicelessly in Kung Fu Hustle, then getting fired from Stephen Chow’s production company, and drama ensuing, then still making it in the cutthroat world of acting/producing.
Qingqing aka Green Snake (Charlene Choi Cheuk-Yin) – The rowdy Green Snake, who is more emotional and joking than her friend White Snake. But she is loyal and will defend her friend to the end. Charlene Choi is also on TarsTarkas.NET in Treasure Inn, Hidden Heroes, Beauty on Duty, and Protege De La Rose Noire.
Monk Nengren (Wen Zhang) – Assistant monk to Master Fahai and he accompanies him on all his adventures. Until he’s bitten by a bat demon and begins turning into a spirit himself. It also looks like the monks don’t have much of a health care plan…
Xu Xian (Raymond Lam Fung) – A young herbalist with big dreams and posessing enough of a cool factor to catch the eye of Susu for some cross-species romance. Turns out he isn’t that upset that his wife is a snake.
So much CGI, the excitemenZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzz…..
InBad, Movie Reviews

Matching Escort/Fury of the Silver Fox (Review)

July 8, 2012By

Matching Escort

aka Fury of the Silver Fox aka 金粉遊龍 aka Wolf Devil Woman 2

1982
Written by Pearl Cheung Ling and Peng Wei-Wei
Directed by Si Ma-Peng
Planning Director Pearl Cheung Ling

Dances with Wolf Devil Women

If you are a fan of wolrd cult cinema, especial cult fantasy martial arts flicks, and are not familiar with the directorial works of Pearl Cheung Ling (aka Chang Ling), then you need to get educated! Luckily, TarsTarkas.NET is there for you! Not only are we working through Pearl’s films that she had her hand in creating, but there are also Infernal Brains podcasts featuring awesome background information about Pearl Cheung Ling and further discussion of her work (featuring fabulous Guest Brain duriandave of SoftFilm!) But if you don’t like hearing people talk, don’t worry, there are plenty of text reviews going around! Beyond the previously covered Dark Lady of Kung Fu, the other major Pearl films are each getting their well-deserved reviews on TarsTarkas.NET.

We’re putting half the budget into things that go in my hair!

Matching Escort is considered the second of Pearl Cheung Ling’s auteur films. Pearl Cheung Ling is best known in the west for Wolf Devil Woman, and to capitalize on that fact, one of the many release retitles of Matching Escort was Wolf Devil Woman 2, despite this film being made first! (Even worse, the film Miraculous Flower was made before both films yet also released as Wolf Devil Woman 3!) The hallmarks of Pearl’s style are all present, and she has more creative control for weird side plots that start to blur the traditional wuxia narrative, though it is still more cohesive of a film than Wolf Devil Woman, Dark Lady of Kung Fu, or General Invincible. This is probably due more towards the credited director, Sima Peng (if he’s an actual person!) Pearl is credited at the planning director, but based on her other films she probably was calling most of the shots for Matching Escort.

My Basement, the Motion Picture

Besides Matching Escort and Wolf Devil Woman 2, another common retitle is Fury of the Silver Fox. This title makes about as much sense as the others, which is not much. The dubbing, however, is ridiculous, as all of the dub jobs on Pearl’s films are. And I can verify that there are missing song queues in the dubbed version. Most notably, the film’s theme song sung by Pearl is gone. They lyrics were written by Sun Yi, legendary songwriter of classics like The Moon Represents My Heart. Venus the Ninja and Venus the Ninja Wolf are also listed as reissue titles, both seeming to be cashing in on a craze (ninjas or the Wolf Devil Woman film.) I don’t think this was reissued as Wolfen Ninja, though, as I know that is a retitle of Wolf Devil Woman (but I could be wrong, because there is a dearth of information on the reissues!)

People selling magazine subscriptions are getting pretty aggressive!

Pearl themes featured here include this being a revenge film featuring her father being murdered (to be fair, that is a fairly common plot devise in martial arts cinema), random bursts of goofy comedy, scenes featuring beggars, scenes featuring crazy old man martial arts masters, Pearl spending some of her scenes wearing fur, a handsome prince with a comic relief sidekick, Pearl “transforming” into a martial arts master, Pearl donning solid color outfits when it’s time to get down to business and slaughter the bad guys, lots of blood and gore, scenes that look suspiciously inspired by recent Western cinema blockbusters, and overly dramatic scenes of Pearl either flying into places or riding with purpose. One thing this thankfully doesn’t have is animal deaths, a sadly too common Pearl theme. In fact, there is a monkey and a parrot who both have minor roles and aren’t killed!

When Little Boy Blue became a man

Sadly most versions of Matching Escort are dubbed versions, and I am not aware of a widescreen version at all. Like most of Pearl’s films, it has falled into a state of neglect and forgotten history. Thanks to the awful dubbing, many of the character names are just decriptions as the dubbing decided that giving major characters names was too big of a hassle.

This spa sucks

Chu (Pearl Cheung Ling) – Just a girl born into a martial arts world. Her father is killed along with the rest of her family and she’s forced to flee for her life, to seek revenge at a later date. This is the story of that revenge.
Prince Cao Tien (Mang Fei) – A wandering Prince on a mission agains Wan Ching’s martial gang. His true reason for undertaking the mission is not revealed until the end of the film. Often called Young Master by Peanut.
Peanut (???) – Cao Tien’s sidekick and loyal servant. And famed comic relief player. He’s not a woozle, thank goodness, because Jeff Dunham is awful awful awful.
Wan Ching (Peng Kong) – The man who ordered the killing of Pearl’s father while looking for the Jade Amulet of the Emperor, which he wanted to gain control of the army. I guess the army listens to anyone wearing a jade amulet. Maybe they should look into better army chain of command practices. Wan Ching has a magic power glove that he throws that rips off heads like flying guillotine, and a parrot that condemns people to death!
Shiny Guy (Chan Gwan-Biu) – The man who killed Pearl’s father thanks to his shiny ring blinding him during the swrodfight. Because he wears a jeweled ring, he has red streaked hair and another jewel embedded in his forehead. It’s the law. The law of giant jeweled rings.
Old Man (Sek Ying) – Pearl’s crippled master who lived in a hole for 20 years while making a potion to get revenge doesn’t get a name, though his evil twin brother gets a mouthful of a name – Tse Ma Bai Yuen. Teaches Pearl more martial arts techniques in exchange for her killing his brother.
Yu Mei (???) – The female member of evil gang, she uses her feminine charms to invite people to dinner where she poisons them. This never works for the entirity of the film, though it’s interesting to see a female suductress character not using seduction for murder during sex but during a nice sit down dinner.
Anyone for handball?
Pearl Cheung Ling
InMovie Reviews, Podcasts

Down the Rabbit Hole with Pearl Cheung Ling – Infernal Brains Podcast Episode 12

July 4, 2012By

Pearl Cheung LingThe films of Pearl Cheung Ling/Pearl Chang are pure awesomeness. Pearl Cheung Ling is a rarity because she not only starred in films, she wrote, directed, and produced martial arts cinema at a time where there were almost no female directors period, much less female directors of action cinema. Pearl’s films have a distinctive style unlike any other films out there. Wolf Devil Woman is a title that almost every cult movie fan is familiar with, while her other pictures also share a large number of fans (and antifans!) But very little is known of Pearl Cheung Ling herself. To all it seemed, she appeared one day, made some awesome flicks, and then vanished off the face of the planet. But there is much more to the Pearl Cheung Ling story. The Infernal Brains are tackling this compelling issue, and Tars and Todd have brought in Special Guest Brain DurianDave from SoftFilm! Join us as we delve into the Secret History of Pearl Cheung Ling, her rise to fame and her acting career, what influenced her to create her wonderful films. Of course a story this big can’t be over in just a few minutes, so this is a two-parter episode! Part 1 deals with Pearl’s career and her early films. Part 2 (to be uploaded soon!) will go into a more in-depth discussion about her five creative features and what happened after she left the film industry. It’s a great topic and has information that’s hard to find anywhere in English.

As usual, we got so many listening choices that even someone raised by wolves can find a method: downloadable mp3, embedded flash with slideshow, embedded audio player, and iTunes feed link. So many choices, you’ll rip chickens in half in joy!

Download the mp3 (right click, save as)

Watch in slideshow form:

Subscribe to the Infernal Brains on YouTube!

duriandave has become Dave the White!

Websites:
SoftFilm
SoftTofu
Fuck yeah, Pearl Chang!

Films Discussed:
The Protectors / 保鑣 (TV Series)
The Return of the Hero of the Water Front / 小壁虎
Fist of Shao-Lin / 少林高徒
Armed Escort / 保鑣
The Invincible Swordswoman / 冷月孤星針無情
The Heroic Figure aka Men of the Hour / 風雲人物
Witty Hand, Witty Sword / 玲瓏玉手劍玲瓏
The War of the Boundary / 戰天山
My Blade, My Life / 決鬥者的生命
King of Fists and Dollars / 王拳王鍰

Our Sponsor:
Monster Island Resort Podcast

Click the graphic for Podcast Feed:

Click here for iTunes Feed

Prior Infernal Brains:
Taiwanese Giant Monster Films Part 1
Taiwanese Giant Monster Films Part 2
Polly Shang Kuan
Turkish Pop Cinema Part 1
Turkish Pop Cinema Part 2
Dara Singh
Infernal Brains Podcast – 07 – Insee Daeng
Infernal Brains Podcast – 08 – Worst Podcast Ever
The Mummies of Guanajuato – Infernal Brains Podcast Episode 09
Jane Bond – Infernal Brains Podcast Episode 10
Daigoro vs Goliath – Infernal Brains Podcast Episode 11

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Older 
7273747576
 Newer