Screenhead

I’m not usually one for classic film.  Even when they’re remastered and such, the sound still comes through poorly, the film itself often looks grainy and gritty, the special effects are a joke by even today’s standards, and the dialogue has this weird tendency to be pompous and overblown.

So when I sat down to watch Ulysses, now remastered from Lions Gate, I found a lot of the problems I expected.  But I also found some surprisingly great things here.

Ulysses is based on the Homer poem The Odyssey, itself about the legendary journey of Ulysses as he heads back to Ithaca following the sack of Troy.  On his long, LONG, way back, he’ll face off against witches, a cyclops, and plenty more, as he tries to get home before his wife remarries…against her will

And yes, all the problems I expected were here.  Lots of pops and hisses from the audio track, as though I were listening to an old record instead of digital playback.  Washed out colors, poorly synced dialogue tracks, the works.  Everything I expected to be wrong here was.

And yet, I also got a deep and masterful epic based on some of the greatest literature ever placed on the earth.  Sometimes, it’s true, that great gifts can come in horrible wrappings…this is one of those times.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives it a six out of ten–a nine out of ten for plot, and a three out of ten for presentation.  A great story with so many technical problems as to be badly obscured, Ulysses was a good watch, once you got past the sheer number of troubles in the playback.

Easily one of the biggest movies of the 1990s, indeed, of my childhood, had to have been Terminator 2: Judgment Day.  I personally saw this one several times, and to find it included as part of the four-DVD Schwartzenegger collection was a great and joyous surprise.

Part of the grand, grandiose and steadily growing Terminator saga, Terminator 2: Judgment Day brought us squarely to a sticking point.  With Sarah Connor locked up in Pescadero Mental Hospital, Kyle Reese very dead and John Connor, future leader of the Resistance, currently living with foster parents in Reseda, things don’t exactly look good.  And things only get worse when Skynet decides to pull a little more time travel chicanery and drop a fresh terminator, the T-1000, into the fray to try and take out John Connor.

But all is hardly lost, as a new ally is sent back in time to help out–a T-101 terminator, the classic Schwartzenegger terminator, is sent back to be placed under young John Connor’s command.  And so, John and the terminator must go forth and spring Sarah from Pescadero, but at the same time also repel the T-1000 and survive. Further, they have the highly difficult task of removing every trace of terminator technology from the present day, and that’s going to involve busting into the developers’ headquarters, Cyberdyne Systems, and blasting it to kingdom come.

Sure, it’s not exactly much of a plot, but where Terminator 2: Judgment Day really shines is in its explosion count.  Things are going to blow up so big and so often in this movie that you’ll scarcely notice they don’t actually, you know, DO a whole lot.  There’s not a whole lot of time to bemoan the fact that they didn’t put much into advancing a plot or developing any characters or anything like that because you’re entirely too busy watching Robert Patrick and Arnold Schwartzenegger pound each other.  You’re too busy watching Arnold take on a whole slew of cops with a GE Minigun.  Oh, sure, there’s some plot here, but it’s not like that’s what anyone came here for, a lesson that would serve filmmakers well into the FOURTH installment, and probably in the fifth and sixth installments, too.

This being a special edition of sorts, even going so far as to bear the name “extreme DVD”,  it will not surprisingly come jam-packed with all sorts of nifty extras, including things like a “Skynet Combat Chassis Designer” in which you get to build your own war machine and send it forth in battle,  some photo morphing software and much more normal featurettes and deleted scenes and such.

There’s not a whole lot in this movie that might make anyone regard it as a BAD movie, but then, there’s not a whole lot in here that’d make anyone regard it as a particularly deep and rich movie either.  In fact, this is essentially the beginning of the end for the Terminator franchise, and it’s all downhill from here.  So yes, if you’re into action movies, into science fiction, and just can’t get enough of stuff go boom, then you’re definitely going to love this one, with all it entails.

I love Kung Fu Hustle.  Geniunely, I love this movie.

Okay, yes–it was just yesterday that I brought up Kung Fu Panda, and I can assure you that I’m not on some crazy kung fu kick.  Not that kung fu movies aren’t often great fun–I tell you, this is the one subgenre of film where you can count on the Chinese to be amazing.  They have done some FANTASTIC stuff.

But Kung Fu Hustle was something special.

The plot is one significant part of it–a young man from the country and his tubby cohort are out to join the Axe Gang, the most feared criminal syndicate in all of China.  They want the standard things that young men looking to join criminal syndicates want, money and women.  While out trying to join, they stumble into Pig Sty Alley, a run-down housing development full of honest, hard-working folks just trying to make their way in the world. In a series of unusual events, Pig Sty Alley manages to catch the attention of the Axe Gang, and we discover the Alley’s secret–it’s positively lousy with kung fu masters.  The coolie (basically a guy who moves heavy stuff for a living) is a thunder-legged master by the name of Twelve Kicks.  The tailor is an effeminate punching master known as Iron Fist, who hangs his dry cleaning up by the iron rings that protect his wrists in battle.  And the guy at the noodle shop, Donut?  He’s a staff fighter called Hexagon Staff.

And for those of you who think I’ve given away half the plot, oh no. Oh no no nooooo…there’s plenty more where they came from.

Naturally, the Axe Gang takes offense to this apartment building standing up for itself and thus sends an array of hired killers to take care of business.

Perhaps the best part of Kung Fu Hustle is the way Stephen Chow has managed to blend an adrenaline-fuelled rush of a movie with a rollicking comic riot of a movie.  There will be entire stretches of the movie with precious little dialogue, but you’ll scarcely notice because you’re too busy watching incredibly choreographed fight scenes.  And then, when the dialogue DOES come back into play, it’s brisk, it’s punchy, and it packs in plenty of laughs. There’s a very good reason that this movie had the widest cinematic release in the United States of a foreign language film–because it was THAT GOOD.  I actually remember seeing this one in a theatre near my house, and I live out in the middle of nowhere, so we don’t always get the newest movies right off.  But on one cold Sunday afternoon in April, I managed to catch this one.  And it stuck with me for quite a while, seeing the amazing fight scenes on a big screen.

Yes, for those who want a SERIOUS kung fu epic, well, this is not for you.  In fact, I’m hard pressed to name very many SERIOUS kung fu epics–most of the ones I’ve seen have had at least a little humor in them. And yes, there’s a heavy dependence on the wire-fu going on in here.  But these things are so small that they can easily be overlooked.  The plain and the simple is, I loved Kung Fu Hustle, and if you’re into action flicks with some humor, or action flicks with a LOT of humor, then Kung Fu Hustle will definitely be up YOUR alley too.

The highly anticipated kung fu tale Fist of Legend debuts as a two-disc Ultimate Edition DVD September 9^th under the Dragon Dynasty label.  Cross your fingers, I am trying to get a giveaway copy.

Fist of Legend is non-stop action title starring Jet Li (Forbidden Kingdom, The Mummy 3) about a Chinese students’ mission to avenge the murder of his mentor and confidant.

Fist of Legend is named by quite a few as Li’s best work ever. The film is loosely based on the Bruce Lee martial arts classic The Chinese Connection (aka Fists of Fury) and its legendary final showdown is ranked as the #5 Best Fight Scene Ever by film website Rotten Tomatoes.

 Directed by acclaimed filmmaker Gordon Chan (The Medallion) with action direction from Yuen Woo-Ping (The Matrix and Kill Bill franchises), the Fist of Legend two-disc set includes extensive behind-the-scenes bonus features

Joan Allen stars in Death Racer and it appears she is the villain.  Interesting take to see Joan Allen in a car racing film that is this dark, silly and predictable.