geekent’s stuff’n things

Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife’s): borrowed/purchased/the wife’s
Dates Acquired: 2006/2000/2007
Original Review(s): Intolerable Cruelty
( because it amuses me, here is GAK’s review of Sexy Beast, sent to me via emai, June 14, 2001)

SEXY BEAST is well worth a garner when you have an opp. ben kingsley in
showy cockney mode in the south of france and boulders and car doors and
shotguns that don’t fire and steam baths and NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO!
NO! NO FUCKING WAY! NO FUCKING WAY! NOFUCKING WAY! NO FUCKINGWAY! and
rabbit demons and cracked pool tiles.

Re-Review: Sexy Beast d. Jonathan Glazer, w.Lous Mellis & David Scinto

From the Summer of 2000 through the Summer of 2001, my buddy Ryan and I would gather with a big bag of Real Fruit gummies and some soda on Fridays to watch a variety of programming which included South Park and Sex and the City. Between the two, however, would be Muchmusic’s The Wedge, an hour long program at the time hosted by Sook-Yin Lee and featured the only dose of indie music videos around. There I discovered Badly Drawn Boy, The Beta Band and others, and in one particularly delightful episode, Jonathan Glazer. Glazer’s not a musician, but a video director, having done most notably some of my favourite Massive Attack and Radiohead videos. This particular interview spotlighted his good nature and his new film, Sexy Beast, showing the opening sequence, complete with nigh-impregnable cockney accents, a thudding Stranglers tune and revolving camera giving the POV of a giant rolling boulder. I knew I had to see this film (at the turn of the century, British mobster movies were the it thing). Like Spike Jonze and Michel Gondry before him, I knew that there would be something different about this movie, something stylish and avant garde that would separate it from the masses…. it had hipster cache, before hipsters were hip. These days, Sexy Beast is remembered (rightly) for Ben Kingsly’s stereotype-busting performance (which unfortunately he’s now been coasting off of for about 7 years) as mad-dog Don, a bat-shit crazy mobster who inspires trembling fear in everyone who knows him. While on screen we only get a little taste of what makes him so fearful, it’s the trembling of Ray Winstone’s Gary “Gal” Dove trying to turn down a job Don’s proposing - thus taking him away from his comfortable life in a Spanish villa with his wife - that truly spells intimidation. Though Gal isn’t necessarily a tough guy to have Don practically wet him down to a timid, shivering chihuahua is testament to Don’s effect on people. Kingsly carries himself in an awkward, unreal manner, stiff in posture, featureless in his face, acting almost entirely with his eyes and body… it’s like watching a rubberband stretch and stretch, just waiting to snap, then protecting your eyes when it does. Pulp Fiction ushered in the sountrack as film score and some directors, like Glazer know how to get the maximum effect out of the songs they choose (obscurity only help). It’s a methodical, intense drama with incredible moments of suspense. Glazer has only done one film since (the Kubrick-ian Birth), but his talents are without question in this his first endeavour. Although not necessarily a masterpiece, Sexy Beast remains a tight little (89 minutes) film, full of great performances, vivid camera work, and conceptually intriguing elements throughout.

(PS - The AV Club also revisited Sexy Beast recently)

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Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife’s): purchased
Date Acquired: February 21, 2007
Original Review: N/A
Thoughts/Memories/Remembrances: I don’t remember how many times my friend Mark and I watched Steel Dawn in the mid-’80’s, but it was a lot. Yet, for all the viewings, all I could remember of the film were the following: Patrick Swayze, a sword, a mullet, crimped blonde hair, a brief glimpse at boobies and lots of sand. A couple years ago Toast and I were having a discussion about his affinity for post-apocalyptic movies (including those with Kevin Costner) and this film came to mind. Of course, neither one of us could remember the title immediately, and not being near the internet at the time, over the course of the evening it became something notable. Once we discovered the title, it became a bit of an in-joke, but also an object of desire. I tried to track down a copy of the DVD for Toast’s birthday, but it’d long been out of print, but did find a copy on videocassette. A few months later, I happened upon the DVD in a used book/video store and it was a no-brainer purchase. The film, for those that recall it, has a stigma. I think it’s not the film but the stigma of Swayze that people only recall.

Re-Review: All you need to know is music by Brian May.
Okay, perhaps not.
The film opens with our hero, a mulleted, bearded, headbanded Swayze in the midst of the desert, standing on his head, as the sand around him stirs. Something from beneath emerges, is it a monster? Nope, it’s a… stick? And another, and another… oh, a hand, oh, some strange rags and/or tendrils. A half dozen sand creatures attack our dirty dancer who, we can only surmise, was on his head waiting in some post-apocalyptic battle-stance for these creatures to attack (it’s later revealed he was meditating). They wish to steal his stuff, but he and his unusual sword twirling slice them all to bits, and he’s on his way.

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Source (purchased/given/borrowed/the wife’s): own
Date Purchased: January 08, 2007
Original Review: N/A
Thoughts/Memories/ Remembrances: I first watched Dr. Strangelove on laserdisc, likely in early 1997, but to be honest, I don’t remember watching the movie. Chances are I fell asleep while watching it. The great thing about laserdisc was there was no encoding so it was easy to export the image to a videocassette. At the time, I taped pretty much every laserdisc I rented, including this one, so if I fell asleep while watching one, I knew I had a back up so no biggie. Overall, I had a sense of disappointment, thinking it would be so much funnier (at the time I thought satire=funny), as well, to be honest, I don’t think I got it. Aden has much fonder memories of the film and an open slot in a 2/$30 purchase and her input led to the acquisition of this DVD.

Re-Review: None of it, besides the legendary climactic bomb-dropping sequence, had stuck with me. I didn’t remember Major Kong, or General Turgidson , Col. Mandrake, President Muffley or, really, even Strangelove himself. Some movies I watch and they stay with me, but almost nothing from my previous viewing ten years ago remained in my brain. For such a legendary movie, a Stanley Kubrick film no less, that’s pretty absurd.

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