More Unearthed Silent Treasures (Accidentally Preserved, Vol. 5)

I had no fewer than FIVE show biz people I might have written about today, and got perhaps a third of the way though a post on one of them, but it has been like pulling teeth. When that happens, I listen to the universe: what am I MEANT to do today? I think I know. For it is also the birthday of Fred Karno, as well as the release date of the films Cruel, Cruel Love (1914), and Harry Langdon’s…

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Alice Howell in A Wooden Legacy (1920)

Project “Let’s watch every single Fast & Furious movie”

The series is still finding its feet and not entirely sure what it wants to be. It has however decided that this one should contain a truly incredible amount of homoerotic subtext.

2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)

We check back in with Brian, who is street racing for a living in Miami now that he is no longer a cop. Ludacris, is here, for some reason. The FBI show up and put our boy over a barrel until he helps them investigate another crime ring, with his car.

The cinematography and general visual language is much more mature, they've figured out how to shoot cars driving and in particular races in a way that better conveys relative position, advantage, and speed. No more undercranked footage, much more medium to wide shots of cars weaving past each other, as well as some complicated composited motion shots.

If you look for this movie on Tumblr you mostly find gifs of Devon Aoki in her girlboss pink Honda S2000. And yeah, I get it, this look kicks ass. The leather skirt and thigh highs with garters or whatever that is really screams 2003.

Right, the plot. Even more so than last time, the core plot is extremely mid. Brian is over a barrel, and needs to help the FBI investigate a drug lord, in exchange for them forgetting about him. He doesn't trust a cop to partner with him so he gets them to offer a deal to his old boyfriend Roman, with whom he had a falling out many years ago. The two of them go undercover smuggling money for the drug lord and eventually work through their differences and get the guy. Big whoop.

Far more interesting is how the interpersonal relationship of Brian and Roman is handled. These two feel like a couple who dated all through high school and broke up over a nasty disagreement when they were 19 and never really got over each other. The first time they meet they physically throw down and it looks like this.

Just straight guy things. I made a crack about 2 bi 2 curious in the last post and I was like "someone has to have made this joke before" and a) not really it looks like only a couple tweets but b) it led me to this short video essay on a bisexual reading of 2 Fast 2 Furious. I don't agree with all its finer points and I think the author completely misread some sections of the movie but you'll find far more agreement than disagreement from me with this one.

Carrying on, there's a lot of the awkward "I want to trust you, and I know I should be able to trust you, but I don't trust you" between these two. It's great, if you want to watch two very pretty guys go insane over each other for an hour and a half, this is a movie for you. I'm going to reiterate a lot of what's said in this video because it's all very obvious.

Before we continue, I need to note that what you don't see, oddly, is really any kind of coherent heterosexual romantic subplot. Like, there's one there, they do parts of it, but it's almost homeopathic. It's purely there to check the box. Monica is an undercover cop who's been with the drug lord for like a year and, in theory, Brian is attracted to her. There's discussion of this, he checks her out, they make bedroom eyes at each other, the drug lord gets jealous, it's a whole thing, but mostly you see that Roman is worried that Brian is going to do something stupid because he's attracted to her.

In the above video the author misinterprets one scene as Brian sleeping with Monica but they do not actually fuck! She shows up in the early morning to tell Brian that he's going to be betrayed but they do not, in fact, fuck! This is important to me because man, there's so little of that subplot going on. This subplot barely develops at all, they don't talk to each other much, and when they do it's only the barest flirting.

At one point Brian does a driving stunt to impress Monica and when he's done, Roman pulls up and goes "oh, he did that stunt? He learned that one from me." which. Come on there's no way to read that that doesn't at least suggest that maybe Roman did it to hit on Brian when they were younger.

Speaking of car stunts, those are used to convey character a lot better in this movie. Dishonorable side characters drive in annoying ways in races to make themselves hard to pass, Brian and Roman do a whole elaborate game of one-upsmanship during their driving audition for the drug lord, and a doubles drag race with high stakes serves as a major bonding moment where they learn to trust each other. There's much, much less plot and character going on explicitly but I think the photography and the storytelling are working together more closely in this movie.

The movie seems to care less about the cars themselves though. The Lancer and Eclipse they drive for much of the movie are not particularly attractive nor particularly powerful cars, and the Challenger and Camaro they pick up later are more plot device than eye candy, unless you're really into American Muscle I guess. The initial race includes Suki's S2000 and Brian's Skyline that both very quickly end up sidelined, you don't see much of them again. There is much less time spent in garages and at races here, which is part of why the core plot feels like a lot of other action movies where the protagonist is a criminal helping the cops. I wonder if some of this is down to appealing to a wider audience who may just not give a shit about the finer distinctions between the Honda Civic EF and EX hatch.

There's a beautiful sunset scene where Brian and Roman just talk it out for a few minutes and settle their differences, come to terms, and finally trust each other again. I know I'm pretty much only talking about this one relationship but it's pretty much the only part of the movie with any depth, and the other parts only gain value in their proximity to it.

The final sequence is a huge endurance run across Florida that is a lot of fun to watch and includes a very funny scene where they scramble like, a hundred cars as a distraction to throw the police off. If you watch you can see that they really just grabbed whatever cars they could find to pad out the shot, there's like three or four PT Cruisers hidden in here.

The final run is mostly a show of the reformed trust between these two, it's great, it's a decent culmination of what's been building up through the whole show, they get their freedom, together, and resolve to move on together.

The whole movie really hangs on this relationship, it elevates it from a solid 5/10 "absolutely mid action movie" to a 7/10 "compelling characters you will think about later" type deal.

"Let me tell you this, and the dates will prove it: Buster Keaton was the first to film comedy at standard camera speed. Remember the old rushing, jerky Keystone comedies? They were filmed at slow speed-which does the opposite when projected on the screen, that is, speeds the action up. They thought it was funnier-and it saved film. But no undercranking for Buster. The unnatural tempo,' he said, 'makes the action unbelievable. Besides, it wrecks the gag timing.' So Keaton used standard speed right from the start with his own outfit. After his first release Chaplin and Lloyd followed suit. No matter what anyone may claim, Bus was first. I was there."

-Clyde Bruckman

Buster Keaton and Edward Sedgwick

Reptilicus

Image © William Stout

[It’s been a while since “movie monsters” and “Halloween” lined up on my schedule. This is going to be the next theme block for a while--I’m planning through the end of October and into November.

Would you believe there’s a Danish kaiju movie? Reptilicus was made in Denmark in English (sort of--the actors spoke their line phonetically) for an American market, and the finished product is... something. Reptilicus himself is a marionette, filmed on a camera so undercranked it resembles a slide show. The special effects for him eating someone involve his victim being replaced by a still image, superimposed into his mouth with animation. And the shots of him flying were so unconvincing even by these standards that they were cut from the American release. It’s a hoot and a half, well worth checking out for the dedicated lover of trash. It was the featured movie in the first episode of the MST3K reboot, an honor it deserves, although I still would recommend the uncut version over the one with Jonah and the Bots. For one thing, MST3K cuts out the lengthy interlude that seemingly exists only to advertise Copenhagen as a tourist attraction, complete with an original song!]

Reptilicus CR 21 CN Dragon This creature is a serpentine dragon, with large scales and a slimy cast to its hide. It has four short, clawed legs, and a pair of fan-like wings protruding above its forelimbs. Its face is twisted into a perpetual snarling visage.

A reptilicus is an animalistic aquatic dragon, most dangerous because of its incredible regenerative ability. A reptilicus can recover from wounds at remarkable speed, and fire and cold slow this regeneration down but do not necessarily stop it. A reptilicus switches between frenzied activity and deep torpor, feeding on huge quantities of meat until it is sated, and then returning to the depths of the ocean to sleep. A reptilicus is as comfortable on land as it is in the water, and so may come to the surface to feed on people and livestock if it tires of whales and fish.

Reptilicuses are barely sapient, but seem to enjoy destroying buildings, ships and other large manufactured items out of the sheet joy of breaking things. They use this in combat primarily in order to target flaming swords, magic wands and staves, and other items capable of dealing fire or cold damage. Enemies that keep their distance are sprayed with its sticky acidic breath, and any that come close are eaten. A reptilicus does have strong claws, but they have short reach compared to its jaws and tail. 

The reptilicus is an asexual creature; it reproduces not through traditional means, but from damage. If a significant chunk of its body is torn away, it will regrow into an entire new organism. As such, reptilicuses that are older and well fed may intentionally antagonize creatures that are capable of actually hurting them, such as true dragons, sea monsters, and powerful adventurers, in the hopes of calving off an offspring. For whatever reason, few reptilicuses mutilate themselves to achieve such effects.

Reptilicus            CR 21 XP 409,600 CN Colossal dragon (aquatic) Init +4; Senses blindsense 60 ft., darkvision 120 ft., Perception +22, scent Aura frightful presence (180 ft., DC 25) Defense AC 36, touch 2, flat-footed 36 (-8 Dex, +34 natural) hp 410 (20d12+280); regeneration 20 (cold, fire) Fort +26, Ref +14, Will +18 DR 20/magic; Immune acid, charm, compulsion, fear; SR 32 Defensive Abilities ferocity, improved regeneration Offense Speed 50 ft., swim 100 ft., fly 100 ft. (poor) Melee bite +29 (4d8+17 plus 2d8 acid plus grab), 2 claws +29 (2d6+17), tail slap +24 (4d6+8) Space 30 ft.; Reach 30 ft. (15 ft. with claws) Special Attacks breath weapon (140 foot line, Ref DC 34, 21d8 acid, 1d4 rounds), swallow whole (AC 27, 41 hp, 2d6+25 bludgeoning and 6d8 acid) Statistics Str 45, Dex 10, Con 38, Int 3, Wis 19, Cha 20 Base Atk +20; CMB +45 (+49 grapple, sunder); CMD 55 (57 vs. sunder, 59 vs. trip) Feats Combat Reflexes, Greater Sunder, Greater Vital Strike, Improved Initiative, Improved Sunder, Improved Vital Strike, Iron Will, Lightning Reflexes, Power Attack, Vital Strike Skills Fly +6, Perception +22, Survival +22, Swim +43 Languages Draconic (cannot speak) SQ amphibious Ecology Environment temperate land and aquatic Organization solitary Treasure none Special Abilities Breath Weapon (Su) A creature that fails its save against a reptilicus’ breath weapon is entangled in slime for 1d4 rounds. Each round it is entangled, it takes 10d8 acid damage. Water does not wash away this slime, but a gallon of strong alcohol or universal solvent will remove it. The save DC is Constitution based. Flight (Su) A reptilicus’ fly speed is a supernatural ability. In areas of antimagic, it cannot fly, but takes no damage from a fall and lands on its feet. Improved Regeneration (Su) A reptilicus’ regeneration is reduced only by 5 any round in which it takes cold or fire damage. In order to disable its regeneration, it must take cold or fire damage from enough sources each round to drop the number of hit points regenerated to 0. Swallow Whole (Ex) If a creature cuts its way out of a reptilicus, the reptilicus can use swallow whole again the next round that its regeneration functions.

The Dragon from Russia (Clarence Fok, 1990)

I'm not sure that this does much for the Crying Freeman name, or the name of making sense. But it's a wonder for wire work, undercranking, angles, twirling, whirling, feet never touching the ground, physics never touching material reality. It must be something in me because i always get this way, but there's an extremely exciting Hong Kong on-location sequence in here, fighting atop skywalks while the city functions underneath

carrie (1976) is an EXCELLENT horror film because the horror of the film hardly derives from its supernatural elements at all. at every point in the film, the horror, the part of the film that really wrenches at and unsettles the audience, is the thoroughly human bullying, abuse, neglect, and trauma that carrie experiences. her mother’s intense, violent religiosity is visually out of place and narratively sinister in a way that carrie’s telekinetic abilities never are; indeed, the narrative takes steps to present her telekinesis as normal, scientifically based, and absolutely morally neutral. it is female adolescence, symbolized in the bookending scenes of carrie washing away blood on her body (menstrual blood in the first instance, and pig’s blood in the last) that is presented as strange and unknowable and intrinsically sinister. carrie is already living in a horror movie without her telekinesis. her telekinesis only gives her some measure of freedom to act in response to that horror. the editing of this film is fairly obviously 70s, with a number of clunky elements like the extreme undercranking in the tuxedo rental scene and of course all the split screens and kaleidoscope effects in the prom scene itself, but i feel that these jarring and absurd editing devices do a good job of visually representing the internal experiences of these adolescents, for whom reality is already bending and warping with their changing bodies and social orders. carrie (1976) is a unique and striking piece of horror, flush with memorable moments and highly effective acting performances, and i believe it certainly deserves its praise as one of the great horror films of its era

Movie Review | Righting Wrongs (Yuen, 1986)

This review contains spoilers.

I’m used to how Hong Kong’s distinct historical and political subtext worms its way into its movies, even seemingly lightweight ones. Something like Police Story provides an obvious example, moving from a cheerful action comedy (full of breathtaking, death-defying action sequences) to something angrier, where the hero has been left to fend for himself by the institutions he once served but has lost faith in (but still with breathtaking, death-defying action sequences). But even then, that movie has its share of levity throughout, and ends on a note that I certainly wouldn’t call bleak. Perhaps it’s on me for not looking too much into this movie beforehand, but I was struck by how bleak this is. Within the first few minutes, an entire family is killed in order to sink the case against a pair of mobsters. Dismayed, the prosecutor decides to take the law into his own hands. But while in Police Story, the hero taking the law into his own hands got results and saved the day, the same thing here maybe does take down the criminal mastermind, but gets a lot of other people killed along the way.

I watched the Hong Kong cut and one of the alternate endings (my copy, freshly arrived in the mail from 88 Films, includes a few other cuts that I understand have different endings). Both of them end with the hero dead. The Hong Kong cut maybe leaves a bit of room for ambiguity, with the hero’s body floating in the water after he dives out of a plane right as it crashes, but the alternate ending ends with a grim punchline, with a group of partiers on a nearby boat choosing to ignore the corpse so that it doesn’t ruin their fun. I think I prefer the former, in part because I wanted to believe that the hero survived, but also because it ends things right at the peak of a crescendo. The latter drives the themes home, but allows things to come back down. Or to use punctuation, it’s an exclamation mark versus a period or ellipses. I guess I’m like Elaine Benes in that I’d opt for the former.

The hero is played by Yuen Biao, who I’d previously known mostly as a supporting player in the movies of his better known friends and co-stars Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung. (The three of them make up my most watched actors this year, according to my Letterboxd stats.) In those other movies, he usually had an offbeat, likable presence, bouncing off Jackie and Sammo to hit a different set of comedic notes. (My favourite is probably his role in Dragons Forever, where he navigates his political and philosophical confusion and tension between capitalism and communism through his treatment of his pets.) Disappointment might be the wrong word, but I was definitely caught a little off guard by how seriously he plays things here. He’s effective in the role, and it’s the right tone for the surrounding film, but I did miss the quirkiness of his other roles. To the extent that there is levity here, it’s provided by the dynamic between a slobbish cop played by director Corey Yuen and his doting father played by Wu Ma, but like I alluded to earlier, nobody here gets a happy ending.

But while this is certainly a grim movie, it’s far from a joyless one, in that it’s directed with a constant forward momentum and packed full of top notch action sequences. I don’t know what I can say about the action here that would meaningfully differ from anything I’ve said about other classic Hong Kong action movies. I need to get better at discussing technical matters; the two touches that stood out to me were the uses of undercranking and body doubles, which are less offensive here than usual because of how relentlessly the action hurtles ahead. But one is simultaneously in awe and likely wincing as they see one  crackling, fast paced, painful-looking action scene after another, whether it’s Biao taking down a group of assassins (which include a Mick Jagger lookalike and a gunman with an accordion), trying to avoid getting flattened in a cramped garage while the villains try to play bumper cars, Cynthia Rothrock and Karen Shepard going (wo)mano a (wo)mano (this apparently was notable for casting non-Chinese actresses in a Hong Kong movie in a non-gimmicky way), or Biao chasing after a plane on foot in the breathtaking (and death-defying) finale.

A Tom Mix Double Header

A head’s up about Undercrank Productions’ latest restored silent film release, featuring two Tom Mix pictures Sky High (1922) and The Big Diamond Robbery (1929). As we wrote in our post about Mix, he was not only one of the biggest screen stars of the silent era, he was the avatar of the pendulum swing away from the western realism of William S. Hart. Search every inch of the American desert,…

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visual stimming the hell out of the '80s-'90s tmbg video choreography, I won't lie

People will be like “it’s really interesting to watch how Wong Kar Wai’s style as a filmmaker has developed and his use of undercranking to create a sense of alienation” or something and I’m just nodding along sagely while thinking about how hot Andy Lau looked in that movie

Want to be part of an action-packed, silent film Kickstarter starring champion weightlifter and actor Tom Tyler?

This silent film restoration project will be for Tom's silent films: “The Law of the Plains” and “The Man from Nevada”, both from 1929 and directed by J. P. McGowan.

Pledge $25.00 in U.S. dollars or more to this Kickstarter and you will receive a Blu-ray of these two silent films, shipped to anywhere in the world.

The official commercial release of “The Man from Nevada” and “The Law of the Plains” will be available on both Blu-ray and DVD from Undercrank Productions.

Please contribute to this Kickstarter and Share it across your social media pages, any film forums you are a member of, and tell your friends and family about it. Make this go viral!

Click the following link to view the Kickstarter and make your contribution!

www.kickstarter.com/projects/aventurasdetomtyler/the-tom-tyler-silent-film-collection

Project "Let's watch every single Fast & Furious movie"

Alright I looked at the Wikipedia page and apparently in addition to all this they have six seasons of an animated series about *checks notes* a group of evil racers bent on world domination. Cool. I will decide whether I'm watching that or not later let's just do the movies for now.

The Fast And The Furious (2001)

Oh there's so much on display here. FF was not the first bit of street racing media but it was what brought it into the mainstream for sure, and the echoes of this movie are still being felt. This influence is made all the better by the fact that the movie has no goddamn clue any of this is about to happen.

You may look at the big beefy muscleboys and sexy fawning girls and go "this is going to have a lot of gender in it isn't it" and while you wouldn't be wrong you'd be missing that gender mostly takes a backseat to race. There's a lot of race in this thing. You've got the three racially distinct gangs with their racially distinct hangers on driving their somehow racially distinct cars. Or in the case of the nebulously Asian group, racially distinct motorcycles, because. Japan.

The setting is so 2000's, unbearably normal suburbs of Hollywood. Dominic Torretto lives in the most ordinary suburban house I've seen in a movie in years, because of course it's 2001 and everyone does not yet live in ethereal perfectly decorated minimalist houses. This really helps sell the multiple times the Gang are all hanging out in this space watching a shitty move on a tiny TV or having a fun little barbecue in the backyard.

I'm not sure they had realized they had made this little found family so endearing yet because about 20 minutes after this scene, Torretto takes the protagonist for a walk and tells him all about how the only thing he cares about is drag racing and screw his gang, which I expected to be a setup for a more explicit realization/rejection later but no he reiterates this in full at the end of the movie with no apparent realization. This despite

The fun barbecue and movie times

Toretto immediately going after his missing friend when he is at extreme risk of going to prison

I think they probably only figured the whole family angle out fully later but you can see the framework is already here.

Actually an aside for the funniest bit of Torretto characterization in the movie: shortly after winning a race, almost getting busted, getting saved from the police by the new kid, accidentally violating a gang agreement, getting threatened by the Asian gang (in front of a chinese restaurant), almost getting killed in an explosion, and catching a taxi home, he gets in to his house where a moderately rowdy house party is going on. His girlfriend comes up and is like "hey do you want to go upstairs and have some epic sex with your win wife" to which his response is:

"But what about all our guests?"

Perfect moment no notes. A man who is wondering whether they're going to run out of nachos.

I had to remind myself very often that this show was from 2001, so when they pull out a 1995 Supra my first thought was "oh, of course, the 2JZ is a legend" not, "oh, the current Supra." This happens with a few cars, the Honda S2000 is a 1999 car, it's basically brand new in this movie, not the classic that we now know is a huge pain in the ass because it only makes any power at redline.

You know people made fun of FF for being obsessed with shifting and I don't see it. They do make a note of it but I mean come on, it's a drag racing movie, shifting is 9/10ths of the game. It's not overdone.

The cinematography is so much. Most of the time it's reasonably normal, some fun crane work when they're out in the desert, but the amount of compositing and post-processed camera shake and bizarre undercranked cuts during races is unbelievable. The undercranking especially is so weird, it's an unusual approach to conveying speed, standard cinematography would say you want to have motion blur but these were shot either extremely slowly or with extremely small shutter angle so it looks almost stop motion. It's almost the opposite.

You may notice I am not really talking about the plot, and I'm not really talking about the romantic subplot either. These both exist. The romantic subplot of Mia and Brian is fine, it's cute, but it's so foregone as to be ignorable. It is eye candy if nothing else, Paul Walker went full force prettyboy for this movie, it's unreal. The plot is there to move you from scene to scene but this is absolutely more of a movie about each individual scene rather than what happens when you put those scenes in sequence.

The emotional through line of all these independent scenes is reasonably strong. As mentioned, you get to see Toretto and his buds hanging out and bonding, they're all so endearing, the scrappy ECU tuner tells our protagonist about how he dropped out of school despite being good at maths because he has ADD. The choice to not show Brian ever being a cop, and instead dropping you right in the middle means you have no attachment to whatever past life he may have had, I don't think you learn a single thing about his actual background beyond "cop who wants to make detective" and "quit smoking."

I am very interested to see how the rest of the series handles the character of Toretto because he has a lot of room to be a very strange kind of center of gravity around which other people collect, but he could also just become a modern Big Beefy Action Hero and that would suck. I do think he just fucks off for the next two or three movies though, so.

Brief return to "this setting is normal as fuck," the climactic final drag race occurs on the back street outside a high school. Zero flair.

The Fast and Furious movies have long reaching consequences in other media. It's no surprise that Need for Speed Underground came out two years after this. I'm interested to see some parallels in wider media as I go here, obviously Tokyo Drift was what brought Initial-D style drift obsession to people who didn't watch Anime, and street racing went from being a niche thing that only people invested in the scene cared about to being a thing twelve year olds cared about.

love it when a movie uses the undercrank