Content Review

This 2003 film could have been a perfectly decent romantic comedy with a strong female cast, a fine supporting performance from Shirley Maclaine, and Julia Stiles’s enormous, round head. Instead, the film’s ambition to document the story of an entire family, and its own obvious infatuation with its characters lead to too many scenes too many, unbalancing the narrative. Stiles’s quirky family and warm relations with her sisters are charming, but ultimately slow down what could have been an even more charming courtship with Alessandro Nivola. Ultimately, the film’s grand designs are responsible for its failure to move beyond the genre that it attempts to transcend. Still, points for making Nivola’s handsome and three-dimensional character Jewish.

The “modern sensibility” of this Robin Hood is actually one of the least interesting things about it. Admittedly, thin-hipped Jonas Armstrong looks pretty good in his narrow-legged emo-boy leather trousers, and I’d even go so far as saying that he works the forest green hoodie successfully. But that is about it — the piping on the shoulders of Guy of Gisbourne’s bizarre pleather get-up is closer to the Thriller video than our ‘modern sensibilities’, much less the thirteenth century. Maid Marion’s impromptu tai-chi sessions and poorly-done girl-fu (all cartwheels and high kicks) is almost as bizarre as the small number of incredibly anachronistic black people who crop up inexplicably and without comment throughout the film. I would rather have had race-blind casting and said to hell with historical realism than the bizarre tokenism the show exhibits. Which is not to say that Robin Hood is lilly-white — the now-mandatory Saracen member of Robin’s band is quite good, although I think it is a little unfair for the BBC to use her presence to send the multicultural message that “we are all English now” as opposed to the more accurate “we have been invading their homes and slaughtering them without cause for a thousand years, literally”.

There are lots of good things about the show. The supporting cast is strong: Guy of Gisbourne scowls darkly, and he is just the start of it. Keith Allen’s vaugely-swish Sherrif (“would you chose a woman over all this… this… POWER?!?”) is a great baddie. It is Lucy Shelton Griffiths, however, who steals the show. Refreshingly Rubenesque, agentive, and non-blond, Shelton’s Griffith’s Marion is a marvelously strong — and, frankly, extremely beautiful — woman. In fact the best pasts of the show are the scene work between her and Jonas Armstrong, which shows off how complex and torn their relationship is: he trying to win her heart by protecting her, even as she searches for a lover who realizes that she does not need protecting, but seeks to protect others. In fact, the show has a lot of scenes like this which are far better than they have any right to be. The plot centers around the destruction of happy families by oppressive forces, and a surprising amount of their plight is genuinely touching, walking a fine line between melodrama on the one hand and emotionally empty move-the-plot-alongism on the other. This, along with the fact that the first season has an actual arc, raises Robin Hood above your average Hollywood fare.

Which is good, because these days LA sets high standards for action which Robin Hood does not meet. This is one of the weaknesses of the show: despite their attempts, the British simply lack the sensibility — so exemplified in Xena, for instance — requires to take a warehouse full of costumes and a bunch of stuntmen-turned-actors and produce genuine Cheap Action. The fight scenes are only so-so, and not enough is done with the conceit of Robin as the master archer. Even the opening theme-song was preformed with full brass fanfare played by trained musicians and not turned out by a guy with a synthesizer living in Santa Monica who uses his bedroom for his office, which is the way cheap actions shows should have their fanfares made.

Ultimately, however, the greatest weakness of the show is Robin Hood himself. Is he a rollicking adventurer whose effortless competence means he has never lost and never learned to grieve? Is his pure good-heartedness untouched by a sense of moral complexity? Or is he, as the show suggests, a deeply religious patriot, a nobleman accustomed to leading and being obeyed whose benevolent paternalism is challenged by Marion’s feminist demands for parity? Is he driven by vanity, or by a desperate need for affirmation fulfilled only by the adulation of the crowd? Is he the scarred war vet whose experiences of combat have given him hidden emotional depth or a man of integrity who emerged from the Crusades unscarred only by clinging to his values? Armstrong’s Robin Hood promises to be a complex mix of all of these things, but ultimately comes across as incoherent rather than nuanced: haunted one minute, happy the next, but never realizing that tantalizing goal of becoming a truly compelling and multifaceted character. Its hard to tell whether it is the writers’ fault or Armstrong’s or both, but it is a failure that turns a potentially great show into a merely good one.

Gratuitous and derivative. In an age of endless, lucrative, and repetitive franchise-based blockbusters, it takes a lot of work to be called ‘derivative’. And in a post-300 world, the bar for gratuitous sex and violence has been set so low that it would take a scanning electron microscope to find the area beneath it that is now labeled ‘too much violence and sex in film’. Its not that I didn’t like Spartacus — I mean it was passable, and things could improve as Lucy Lawless and John Hannah get more airtime — but ultimately it was so obviously gratuitous and derivative that the constant realization of how gratuitous and derivative it was got in the way of actually watching the thing.

Before Spartacus began a little message popped up on the screen reassuring us that what we are about to see seems so shocking only because “that’s how things really were back then”. This was an excuse that I bought in HBO’s “Rome”, which did a wonderful job portraying the period it took place in, even if at times you did wonder whether some scenes absolutely had to be set in the middle of an orgy, and whether the Mad Men-esque ethnograhic detailing would appeal to anyone other than Classicists and randy teenagers. I didn’t care for 300 too much, but I admit that it’s well done, and I get why people like it — and of course they threw realism out the door immediately: if they hadn’t they would have had to call it “300 and their 9000 slaves”.

The idea that Sparticus’s violence is somehow not ‘over the top’ but ‘period’ is ridiculous — unless you think that iron-age Thrace is the kind of place where time suddenly slowed down and people threw buckets of blood in slow motion across people watching pitched battles. Equally, most of the sex was Spartacus-as-dildo: close up shots of his hot wife Liking It ending with an incredibly uninteresting All American heterosexual simultaneous orgasm, missionary position and all. There are certain moments in the show when I wonder “what is the director thinking?” except I already know the answer, which is “I know, let’s end this scene with… cunnilingus!”

Ultimately this is the real problem with Spartacus: its not the amounts of sex and violence, it’s how poorly its done. The balletic ultraviolence of 300 has been replaced with gory, by-the-numbers action scenes. Rome’s scene of James Purefoy au naturel getting dried off with a strigil — carefully designed to show off James Purefoy, make a point about Roman perceptions of rank and nudity, and, especially, demonstrate the use of a strigil — has been replaced by the usual large amount of totally naked chicks and just a couple of guys not wearing shirts. I’m not saying there isn’t a place for weird, derivative movies — Brotherhood of the Wolf anyone? — but Spartacus isn’t one of them.

Back in the immediate post-9/11 world people spent a lot of time comparing the US to Rome: imperial ambitious, shared trajectories of decadence, hubris, and decline. Spartacus has some interesting touches (the transitions between scenes through morphing backgrounds and zooming in on maps), but when watching it I can’t help feeling like one of the bloodthirsty, sybaritic bystanders in the show itself. How far we have come from Laurence Olivier hitting on Tony Curtis by talking about seafood. If we keep going at this rate, I shudder to think what is going to go down in the Ben Hur remake.

Joss probably didn’t intend for the name of the Dollhouse season opener to be some oblique reference to the upcoming kol nidre holiday, but regardless episode one had a strong sense of teshuvah to it as the show returned to where we left the season finale, wrapping up plot points and unleashing new ones for the new year. I watched Dollhouse and Flash Forward back to back on teh Tivo and the difference was striking — one a superbly executed but extremely derivative corporate project (start with sudden crash, include random uncannily placed animal — there was even an Oceanic Airlines billboard!) while Dollhouse is a resolutely original project that struggles to deliver on its promise. Some of the wrapping up on Dollhouse was disappointingly pragmatic: Amy Acker drove off to her other show, while Enver Gjokaj was on screen just long enough to explain why the makeup crew wouldn’t have to be reapplying the Alpha Scars for the rest of the season (as well as to telegraph future DeWitt intrigues). Dichen Lachlan was on for what appeared to be purely contractual reasons.

There were moments of sparkling dialogue — mostly of the DeWitt Vs. Guys In Suits variety — but I for one miss the days when in the course of 90 seconds Joss could simultaneously give David Boreanaz a cameo on the last episode of Buffy, explain why he wasn’t going to be on for longer than that, and tie up stuff with Buffy in a realistic way but non-subplot starting way. The scene where Bamber is convinced Dushka is spy and she explains away her attempting to break into his desk as a sign of her enthusiasm to find out where their honeymoon will be was very nicely written but man did the Topher/Saunders scene not do the work it was supposed to dramatically, although it did give me a very good sense of what the writers were striving for.

Meanwhile, we did get to see Apollo and Wesley again which is welcome and I look forward to seeing how they get incorporated into the show as Joss moves towards sukkot, and I’m hoping we’ll get to see Alan Tudyk before simchah torah. We’ll see — overall I’m guardedly optimistic that Joss will make good on the ‘do-over’ that Fox has handed him.

The price we have to pay for a new Joss Whedon show is, apparently, the gross hypersexualization of Eliza Dushku. I’m willing to live with this — Dollhouse is more than just another big-hearted, snarkily-written show where all the characters talk like Joss. The central technical conceit of the show — that you can wipe and replace people’s personalities — is also a wide open door to explore themes of world-bracketing and _mise en abyme_.

On the one hand, the show burrows down through multiple layers of reality anchored below the dollhouse — the various fantasy worlds the show uses to undress and imperil Dushku in each episode. This is a fantasy situation for the writers — the story arc of the Dollhouse reality can be interrupted in any episode by a one-off episode that can literally be about anything: its a situation drama without a situation. Or rather one which is a metasituation which can accommodate any number of stories inside itself.

Its also interesting to think about the character development that occurs between the Dollhouse reality and stata beneath it. The dolls and their support staff develop relationships in and through interactions in the lower reality. The friendship between Sierra and Echo thus develop half consciously (or not) (or consciously to a degree that the audience is not yet privy to) while they are other people.

On the other hand, you can’t give Joss a chair that erases your personality and not expect to see the technology ramify upwards. Honestly: Do you think Olivia Williams knows who she actually is? As the show looks for dramatic wallop it will surely give it to us by building narratives above the Dollhouse reality in which staff supposedly secure in their identities are revealed to be programmed pawns of bigger actors with darkly shrouded identities.

So despite the gross sexualization of Dushku the show has potential — there is always the possibility of the gross sexualization of Tahmoh Penikett and Dichen Lachman to look forward to, for instance. But seriously, despite my mixed feelings for the first couple of episodes, its clear that the world of Dollhouse is a big playground, and I look forward to seeing how Joss plays with it.

Years ago a friend of mine introduced me to “Action!”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0206467/, a short-lived TV series starring Joy Mohr. He had taped episodes off of the TV and then hoarded the precious, precious cassettes. I watched it, loved it, and then _totally_ forgot about it, only to discover recently that they have now (of course) re-released the show on DVD and that you can watch it on Netflix Streaming or IMDB.

Watching it a second time I like it even more than the first. In 12 twenty minute episodes the show explores the life of movie producer Peter Dragon (played against type by pretty boy Jay Mohr, who turns in a marvelous performance bristling with apoplectic rage) and his dysfunctional entourage as they try to make an action blockbuster.

The show is unique in many ways — guest cameos by A-list celebrities, it mocks its own executive producers, and so forth. But really makes it stand out is its overwhelming, over-the-top obscenity. ‘Edgy’ is not a good description and ‘raw’ does not do it justice. Antisemitic, homophobic, sexist, racist, and politically incorrect Action both makes me squirm in my seat and laugh uncontrollably. The last couple of episodes (written after they had gotten the axe, I reckon) aren’t as good, and I doubt if the show could have sustained its manic intensity for more than a season, but the hour or two of good TV that they’ve left us is truly worth watching.

“Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog”:http://drhorrible.com/ is, let’s face it, touch and go. If you love Joss Wheedon then its hard to ignore it, despite its unevenness and lurking doubts about Neil Patrick Harris’s ability to channel Joss’s dialogue. But if you sit through the first minute or so of the opening monologue you are rewarded with the Freeze Ray Song, which is definitely worth it.

The conceit of Dr. Horrible is pretty straightforward: post-college emo white boys are aspiring supervillains seeking to be included in the Evil League of Evil — sort of a cross between getting made by a mafia family and getting signed to a major label. In the meantime they are crushed out on girls who also secretly think their cute and would go out with them if only they had the nerve to say something to them when they saw them in the laundromat. Its bad guy as good guy, let’s turn this genre upside down and shake it and see what falls out, but in a ‘digital media microformat’ ‘Once More With Feeling’ kinda way.

This mix of romance/superhero show is epitomized in the Freeze Ray song, which combines tropes of supervillain ultraweapons with love song imagery of freezing the perfect moment of intimacy with your beloved so you can experience it forever (I’ll bend the world to our will/and we’ll make time stand still). Its clever and sweet and even a little catchy despite the occasional lyrical misstep (You make me feel/what’s the phrase/like a fool/kinda sick/special needs) and, let’s face it, a melody written for a singer whose range is only a major fourth.

Its not that supervillains have never been examined before, but Joss’s work with them really is interesting. In some way it follows logically from his previous work: Buffy was about a powerful woman with a tremendous destiny who wished she could live an ordinary life. Angel was about powerful people living an ordinary life wishing that they could have a tremendous destiny. In Dr. Horrible supervillains share the same aspirations that superheroes have in other movies: to save the world. But Joss’s insight is that superheroes never actually make the world a better place, they only keep it the same — they work to protect the status quo. Dr. Horrible, in contrast, wants to change the world, to remake it and remove the glaring injustices he sees around him — by putting himself in charge. On this account, supervillains are not bad people, they simply represent the authoritarian urge — the urge to remake with one’s own hand — to fix what is obviously wrong.

On the other hand Captain Hammer, the Dr. Horrible’s nemesis, is a bit of a flop. I get that in Joss’s reverso-world superheroes are smug sadistic assholes, the star quarterback to Dr. Horrible’s science fair nerd. But Nathan Fillion simply doesn’t suit the part, and to be really effective as a character Captain Hammer would have to be sickeningly violent — too brutal for the tone of the show. I think it would have been more effective to play him stupid instead of cruel, as someone who only saw things in black and white and was thus at first more attractive for the love interest than Dr. Horrible, who could then be seen as more nuanced and human.

At any rate, worth watching. And its Joss singing the Bad Horse letters!

Iron Man is about America’s love affair with guns. It exults in the way that weapons and technology magnify power and amplify the ability to make the world safe, even as it shows how terrifying it can be to be target or victim of violence. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people, and because this is a post-9/11 movie, the line between Good and Evil is drawn ever more clearly, even as it cuts across familiar Cold War dichotomies. The conflict is not between good Americans and bad Foreigners, it is between the good Americans and foreigners versus the bad Americans and foreigners. Its a transecting of the usual alliances that makes the black and white morality of the movie more palatable.

Unlike a lot of superhero flicks, Iron Man really does bear comparison with Singer’s X-Men movies because both put the underlying themes of their source material in charge and harness the CGI and eye candy to them, rather than the other way around. The difference betwen Iron Man and X-Men, however, is that the underlying themes of X-Men are alienation and misunderstood powere, whereas the underlying theme of Iron Man is kicking ass and taking names.

But, like the obsession with guns, Tony Stark’s Hefneresque life style and gadgets could easily be part of a vapid cars-and-chicks summer block buster. And, of course, all of that is on display in the movie. But we also see a driven, obsessive genius — half Faust and half Edison (which mean, basically three quarters Faust) who, like all good Romantic Artists, externalizes his inner self in a work of art which (unlike the typical Romantic Artist) he then climbs back inside and uses to kick ass and take names. He is (for the first time since Revenge Of The Nerds?) a male role model who is both virile _and_ good at math and sciences. Although of course in an engineering, “working with my power tools in the garage” sort of way. It a combination that could fit together awkwardly, but which does manage to hang together mostly (I suspect) because of Robert Downey Junior. No one could redeem the keystone cops antics with the robots, but at least Robert Downey Jr. keeps them from being too embarassing. Equally, Gwyneth Paltrow (and some deft maneuvering by the screenplay) keeps Pepper Potts from being merely a doormat. And although Terrence Howard never quite gets the room he needs to become Tony’s moral compass, he does manage to become more than just the mandatory ‘Of Color’ member of the Scooby Gang.

Although its enages with the ambiguities of American power abroad and the military-industrial complex, it never ultimately escapes the idea that there are, in the end, good guys and bad guys. This is not the Marvel franchise with Film School ambitions to probe moral ambiguity. Iron Man is just as subtle as it has to be in order for you to enjoy the explosions — and Robder Downey Jr’s twitchy, charismatic delivery — with a clear consciensce.

I was re-watching “Withnail and I”:http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0094336/ recently. In the ‘making of’ bonus feature one of the producers remarks that it is “the Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid of the 1980s.” That sent a light bulb off in my head — in terms of fans, followers, and plot, it is actually the British Big Lebowski. Or maybe the feature-length version of the “The Young Ones”? But it’s missing the ska soundtrack.

I forgot how much I liked the film, as well as what a following it had. Some good soul has put “the entire script”:http://www.nasastooge.fsnet.co.uk/withnail/withnail-index.html on-line with audio from key quotes as well (the full script with stage directions is “here”:http://corky.net/scripts/withnail.html.)

“Balls. We want the finest wine available to humanity. We want them here, and we want them _now_!”:http://www.nasastooge.fsnet.co.uk/withnail/sounds/finewine.wav

My favorite line is actually:

Withnail:
At some point or another I want to stop and get hold of a child.

Marwood:
What do you want a child for?

Withnail:
To tutor it in the ways of righteousness and procure some uncontaminated urine.

But they didn’t have a .wav for that one.

I have to admit that I walked into Serenity with a chip on my shoulder. While I am not one of those people who walk around wearing “Joss Whedon Is My Master Now” t-shirts, I do think of Buffy as revolutionary, and thought Firefly was very good too. And… and… Ok. I’ll admit it. I _might_ be one of those people who walk about wearing a “Joss Whedon Is My Master Now” t-shirts, and this possibility makes me a little nervouse. As a result, when the lights went down in the theater on Serenity’s opening day, I was ready and determined to like the movie because it was good, not because I was a fanboy. Despite my best efforts to the contrary, the movie not only entertained me, it moved me a little as well. As great as the film was, managed, strange as it sounds, to reaffirm my belief that Joss Whedon is a great master of the medium of television.

First off, the film demonstrates what we all already know — Joss started as a script doctor and will die a script doctor. Serenity manages to be unbelievably tightly written without sacrificing a certain depth as is done in, say, the original Star Wars or Indiana Jones flicks, which are so briskly paced that the dialogue explicates the backstory and character motivations that are necessary to get you to the next fight scene — and little else. So it’s pointless to note that people unfamiliar with the TV series will have no trouble picking up the backstory to the film or that Joss continually writes himself into and out of corners in the film — he’s a script doctor. This is what he _does_.

For those of us who have seen the original series, there are some small differences. In the series, Kaylee is a shy, vulnerable tom boy unsure of how to court her gentleman doctor. In the movie she’s a bit more the randy farm girl saddled with a disasterous masturbation one-liner. Mal is also more darkly drawn. On the show he the strong silent type, a cynical outsider with a heart of gold and unexpected depths of empathy. In the movie he seems not just driven, but much more conflicted. Joss may be going to far when he predicts Nathan Fillion is the next Harrison Ford, but I have to admit that Fillion certainly deserves to be. Adam Baldwin continues to shine as Jayne, and his ability to turn a two dimensional thug intended for comic relief into a three dimensional thug intended for comic relief is a credit both to his own acting abilities and Joss’s ability to write parts that good actors can sound out and round out. Chiwetel Ejiofor equits himself admirably, and Sean Maher is still pretty. Although to be fair to Sean, there points in the film where I heard some scratching coming from inside the paper bag he was trying to act his way out of. Ok that was mean, and he doesn’t deserve it. But I couldn’t let a line like that go.

Of course there isn’t much time for character development in the film. The most important thing about Buffy, in my mind, was its length — a single story arc (reconceived during fliming, but still basically a single story) stretched out over hours and hours of showtime and years and years of production. Joss demonstrated with Buffy that one could develop characters and plots across vast stretches of time while still preserving the coherence of a single episode — providing you had good enough writing. But if Buffy is a marathon, Serenity is a sprint. Joss doesn’t have time to let the characters develop, or let the mythos of his world mature. So instead of capturing our attention with painstaking wrought polyphony, Joss just writes everything with a double forte. The stakes start out high in the movie, and they keep getting higher. We can forgive the occasionally stilted western dialect — laid on more heavily here than in the show — and the intermittent bits of atrocious Mandarin — thankfully rarer in the film — and the “a man’s gotta walk tall” hyperbole because, well, these people’s lives are on the line.

The movie also manages chase and combat scenes well. I’ve never been impressed by the fight sequences in Buffy, but then again, a good fight sequences in a movie can take as long to choreograph, film, and edit together as an entire season of a TV show. Most reviewers were impressed with the “Summer Glau kicks-ass” sections of the film. I thought the choreography was ok — a typical chinese-influenced, LA hybrid thing — and I suppose some people still find it interesting when Joss Whedon writes physical strong female characters dealing with emotional trauma with the help of their gang of friends. I worry that this sort of thing is all he’s ever going to produce. So I fear for Wonder Woman and hope that Joss doesn’t end up being a one-trick pony. Much more interesting to me was the close-up work done by Chiwetel Ejiofor (and his stunt doubles) — a lot of precise short-range work perfectly in keeping with the character. It reminded me of the knife fighting sequence from the end of Brandon Lee’s ‘Rapid Fire,’ an underappreciated film which with a lot of interesting Jeet Kune Do work in it.

I’ve heard Serenity described as the Firefly season finale, but I think of it more as the pilot that Joss never got to make — not surprising, since he’s made no secret of his ambition to resurrect the TV series. As much as I was drawn in by Serenity — and I was — there was something about it that made me feel that while Joss aimed and succeeded in making a great film, what he had really created as utterly superb television. It’s hard to say why I think this — the pacing? The dialogue? The striking (and often elaborate) camera work of someone who _finally_ got the time and money to do all the fancy shots he wanted? I think the true test of the film is if it bears repeated rewatching — I’m not sure it will. Regardless I think he has a much clearer understanding of what he does than Tarantino. The comparison between the two of them is apt — both are from the first (and perhaps last?) wave of directors to grow up working in video stores. “Actors start as waiters — directors start as video store clerks” Joss once remarked. While both Tarantino and Whedon wield the full force of pop culture, Joss continues to deliver great television (even in the movie theater), while Tarantino’s aspirations to ‘art’ (Kill Bill, Foxy Brown) have, in my opinion, failed. Hmm…. now that I think of it it would be interesting to compare Joss to Roberto Rodriguez (they both write music for their scores, tend to be polymaths, etc. etc.). I’ll have to think more about that.

At any rate, calling Serenity superb television is a statement about attitude and atmosphere, not a put down. If anything, the line between television and movies as a genre is fading, and it seems to me that Joss had a lot to do with this. There have always been made for TV miniseries, but the success of through-written, season long shows like Buffy and The Sopranos (and their inheritors such as Six Feet Under), and the rise of high-budget miniseries and microseries such as the Sci-Fi channel’s Dune and Clone War series have demonstrated that there are lots of different genres to experiment with. Crossing over from TV to movies (and computer games, and novels, etc. etc.) is also nothing new — think of the Star Trek franchise. And if anyone has mastered the ability to leverage financially risky undertakings with a fan base, it’s Joss Whedon. It will be interesting to see how and where Firefly finally lands — I for one am dying for more.

Martial arts flicks are like the Catholic Mass – if you’ve seen one you’ve seen them all. The key to appreciating them comes in understanding the variations in each and the history that lies behind them. Faure’s Requiem is a wonder to listen to, but it’s even more amazing if you understand its extended, sublime setting of the Pie Jesu in contradistinciton to to Mozart’s wrathful Dies Irae. So too with martial arts films, which are – like all cultural production – inevitable commentators on the tradition out of which they emerged and responses to what has come before. And Dreadnought, like Faure’s Requiem, wafts us up to heaven on angelic wings of hook-happy chop-sockey virtuosity.

If you are a fan of martial arts flicks like I am, you get a bit teary-eyed the minute that Wong Fei-Hung’s theme song starts playing. Like the X-Men or Jesus Christ, Wong Fei-Hung is a character that the popular imagination refuses to give up on. We’ve grown up on them. Every time Kitty slides through a wall or Jesus says something obscure about finding coins under a bed we nod in comprehension – we know where this is going. So it is with Wong Fei-Hung flicks. The minute we see the child Fei-Hung and his father enter in Iron Monkey significantly clutching their umbrellas, we know the whole future story, from Jackie Chan’s impish misbehavior as the adolescent Fei-Hung in Drunken Master II to Jet Li’s Confucian rectitude in Once Upon a Time in China. This biographical scope sweetens a viewing of Yuen Woo Ping’s Dreadnought all the more – one of the earliest Wong Fei-Hung movies filmed and simultaneously one of the latest in the character’s biography, this flick fulfills our expectations more fully than the Gospel of Mark or the now-hoary Trial of Magneto in X-Men Episode #200.

The movie is, quite simply, perfect in idea and execution. Kwan Tak Hing excels as the elderly wuxia – indeed, watching the last of his landmark performances of Wong Fei-Hung (cited by Fei-Hung’s widow as ‘just like him’!) makes you keenly aware of the massive shadow out of which Jet Li and Jackie Chan were trying to step. And a youthful Yuen Biao excels as the timid laundry boy whose mastery of textile-washing kung fu allows him to blossom – in a single fight – into a hero.

This film has got it all. I’ve already mentioned the out of control laundry-kung fu (including a training sequence that puts the sequence in Tai Chi Master to shame). But there’s more. The scene where Fe-Hung fights off the ‘Demon Tailor’ while simultaneously being measured for a suit is just a start. And let’s not forget the full-on martial arts medical diagnosis that involves Fei-Hung setting his own hand alight in a sort of Chinese pyrotechnic version of a Vic’s Vapo-Rub rubdown. Finally, the movie feaures a Lion Dance scene which is quite simply the best I have ever seen on film or anywhere, period. Liberal playing of the Wong family theme song and a decent dose of No-Shadow kicks more than makes up for the lack of umbrella work.

But in the final accounting, it is Kwan Tak Hing as the elderly Fei-Hung that carries the day. As irrepressible in old age as he was in youh, Hing’s (Tak Hing’s? Kwan’s?) Fei-Hung is as compelling as you would expect from a man who has played him in over 80s films. Like the chariot race is Ben Hur, Kwan Tak Hing maintains his classical compellingness despite – or perhaps because – of the advances made in special effects in recent decades. We’re talking about a man who played to soldiers during the Sino-Japanese War. His performance as Wong Fei-Hung at the age of 76 is exactly as remarkable as the opus he had created up to that point – which is to say, ‘extremely’.

With Dreadnought now available on DVD, a valuable piece of cinematic history is finally available to a wider audience. Let he who has ears hear.

I just watched The Transporter, which I missed in the theaters. There is a lot to say about the film. There are probably about thirty things wrong with it, and about a hundred and fifty things right. France, China, and American have been triangulating the action film for some time, and the creative ferment has yielded scores of great films. Besson watching American directors watching the Shaw Brothers; Jet Li, Chow Yun Fat, Jackie Chan, and John Wu attempting to integrate themselves into an American film industry that has its own ideas about what makes them special; the Tarantino-Rodriguez balletic expansion of filmic genres whos lack of realism are rooted in the tradition of Cantonese Opera and Wu Shu; the European hyperbolic appreciation of cool with its heightened drama and flattened out psychology, a cool which we know from Besson but which can ultimately be traced back to French New Wave; the sets and car chases of Ronin combined with an action sensibility that is half Die Hard and half Police Story III – all combine in this film which, if not a masterpiece, demonstrates how potent the genre flick can be when done right.

But above all Jason Statham shines. Not since Wesley Snipes have we had an action star who so clearly knows how to fight. And, like Snipes, his physcality exudes the street and not elaborate martial arts training. No matter how many fast cuts you do and no matter how skilled the director there is simply no replacement for genuine physical ability, and Statham exudes a cagey street-saviness in the roll. Also, his leg-work is pretty fierce. While Keanu Reeves has learned enough poise to demonstrate his chops when surrounded by skilled martial artists and a lot of special effects, Statham just kicks ass. He definitely gets to play me in the movie version of the novel of the blog of AHATPOLS.

All of this has tempted me to imagine a 10 week course – probably a summer or extension class – on ‘the transnational action flick’. It would begin with a Western and some classics 70s Hong Kong martial arts, and then trace the development of the genre across the globe. I can just see it now: Week Three: “Car Chases”. Week Four: “The Collision with Science Fiction: Aliens II and The Fifth Element in Comparative Perspective”.

Maybe we should run it as an informal, once-a-month salon in the old-school style. Except with more whiskey and less powdered wigs and stockings. Any philanthropists interested in hosting?