16 Blocks.
The combination of Richard Donner and Bruce Willis must be
every Hollywood movie producer’s ideal ‘dream-team’.
Both are associated with an extraordinary amount of commercial
‘hits’. Donner’s directorial credits include
‘Superman 1 & 2’, ‘The Omen’,
‘Ladyhawke’, ‘Assassins’, ‘Conspiracy
Theory’ and ‘Lethal Weapons 1, 2, 3 & 4’.
All amazing ‘blockbusters’. Bruce Willis first
came to fame as the breezy private detective in TV’s
‘Moonlighting’, but, the Silver Screen beckoned
and Bruce became an overnight sensation with ‘Die Hard’.
Through-out his phenomenal career Bruce has desperately tried
to break away from his ‘action-hero’ persona,
but the American Public will not accept him as anything else,
and his forays into comedy, drama and romance have always
received a frigid box-office response. ‘Action’
is what the public wants, and ‘action’ is what
the public gets. Bruce has become a formulized ‘Movie
Star’, which is a shame, because his acting talents
have been greatly under appreciated. ‘Blind Date’,
‘Color of Night’ and ‘The Sixth Sense’
are just some of his movies that display a broad range of
roles that don’t include ‘saving-the-world’.
At last, a movie director has come up with a project that
will satisfy the public’s craving for ‘action’,
but, also allows Bruce a chance to display the depths of his
talents. Richard Donner’s ‘16 Blocks’ is
an exhilarating chase through the streets of downtown New
York. Bruce is a tired cop, coming off night-patrol, when
he is cajoled into escorting a prisoner downtown for a court
appearance. It is a short trip in a patrol car, a mere 16
blocks, but there are some ‘bad guys’ out there
on the streets that ain’t gonna let it happen. The action
in the movie never stops. All through it, Bruce creates a
marvelous character of a principled policeman who will not
succumb to pressure, particularly when he believes ‘right’
is on his side. Bruce has put on a bit of weight. The face
is craggy, and he isn’t hiding his receding hairline
anymore with ridiculous wigs. This willingness of Bruce to
display himself as he now is, warts and all, helps to strengthen
and emphasis the character he has created. Richard Donner’s
movie is superb ‘escapist’ cinema, and Bruce is
fantastic in it. Just don’t miss it what ever you do!
The Mistress of Spices.
The incredibly beautiful and enigmatic Indian Bollywood movie
star, Aishwarya Rai, stars in this co-produced Indian/English/American
‘magical-realism’ romantic movie, ‘The Mistress
of Spices’. Aishwarya plays Tilo, a woman who has been
trained from youth in the mysteries of spices. Sent by her
ashram to San Francisco, she operates a spice store there
and has a magical ability of seeing into her customer’s
lives. She recommends different spices for each customer’s
particular needs, but, for her magic to work, she must observe
the three rules of her calling. Never to leave the store,
never to touch another human being, and never to love anything
else but the spices. If she breaks any of these rules the
spices will cease to obey her, and chaos will result. Naturally
enough, one day a handsome man, in the form of Dylan McDermott,
comes sauntering into the store, and Aishwarya is forced to
choose between her duty and her desires. Constricted by the
requirements of the script, most of the action of the movie
is contained within the spice store, and this is a remarkable
cinema set. Baskets of spices litter the floor, garlands festoon
the walls and ceiling, and countless shelves contain jars
of aromatic herbs. You can practically smell the heady scent
of the spices. Director Paul Mayeda Berges plays with this
set like another character in the movie, and he continually
finds intriguing camera angles so that the limitations of
the locale never become boring. Dylan McDermott isn’t
required to do much except look sexy, and that he can do quite
easily. But, the undeniable star of this show is Aishwarya
Rai. She is mesmerizing. Nothing else can compete with her.
She is like a sublime Hindu goddess as she glides through
this movie, and, as the love story develops, she allows a
tiny glimpse of the woman beneath the reserved veneer to appear.
The movie is a captivating love story, yet, it is Aishwarya
Rai who completely enthralls.
Insecticidal.
Pardon my French, but this is a direct quote from American
film director Russ Meyer: “I always had a tremendous
interest in big tits”. Back in the 1960’s and
70’s Pop Art inspired ‘underground’ cinema
was having a huge impact in cinematic intellectual circles.
Much of its methods, such as improvised acting, hand-held
cinema-photography, and free-form plot development, eventually
found its way into mainstream cinema in movies such as ‘Easy
Rider’, ‘Taking off’ and ‘Midnight
Cowboy’. But, back then, ‘professionalism’
was not to be admired. Rather, a blatant ‘amateurism’
was all the rage, for, in this ineptness, could be found a
new ‘reality’ or ‘realism’. Andy Warhol,
Paul Morrissey and John Waters were to become the star directors
of this movie genre, dubbed ‘Schlock Cinema’.
A much maligned, but major cult figure of this cinema school
was Russ Meyer. Basically a pornographer, Meyer was to go
off on his own tangent and create an extraordinary body of
work that combined eroticism with horror. Movies like ‘Motor
Psycho’, ‘Faster Pussycat Kill Kill’, ‘Vixen’,
‘Super Vixen’, ‘Seven Minutes’ and
‘Black Snake’ all had one outstanding feature
in common. Big-breasted women in perilous situations. It is
not hard to see where director Jeffery Scott Lando’s
inspiration came from when he was creating his ‘schlock-horror’
movie ‘Insecticidal’. When a sorority girl’s
biology experiment goes awry the results are gigantic mutated
cockroaches, praying mantis and tarantulas. The cute and cuddly
critters are hungry, and one by one they devour the girls
in the sorority house. Big-breasted women are eaten in the
shower, big-breasted women are eaten in the kitchen and big-breasted
women are eaten in the basement. The production values of
the movie are woeful. The acting stinks and the special effects
are abysmal. But, you have to remember all of this is intentional.
It comes with the genre. Some of you might think it is pointless
and appalling, others will ‘dig’ it. I think it
is kinda fun. This is ‘homage’ movie-making. It
is a loving salute not only to Russ Meyer, but to all those
‘mutation’ movies of the 1950’s, which featured
gigantic spiders and ants. In the 1950’s the topical
issue was nuclear radiation. Jeffery Scott Lando has included
in his comedy a serious message about genetic engineering,
if you care to look past the big-breasts to find it.
