Jan. 1st, 2010

zustifer: (Beetlejuice: Delia day-o)
Evil Dead (1981), Sam Raimi. Dec 30, 5pm. View count: Two.
Kung Pow: Enter the Fist (2002), Steve Oedekerk. Dec 31, 9:30pm. View count: One.
Grappler Baki (1994), Hitoshi Nanba. Dec 31, 10:45pm. View count: One.
Blazing Saddles (1974), Mel Brooks. Dec 31, 11:45pm. View count: Four?

Evil Dead I found rather lacking, really; I respect it as a student film (which I know it isn't technically, but that's what it feels like to me), but the pacing is so repetitive and uninteresting that I can't go too much farther than that. The effects are fun, and the Raimi touches are always something to love, but I won't be going back to this anytime soon.

Kung Pow I'm actively angry at. Its ratio of funny to not funny is something like 15%/85%. The few actually funny bits usually occurred during What's Up Tiger Lily style dubbed sequences, and I think if it'd been limited to those, it could have upped its funniness to something like 50% with little further effort. I enjoyed the funny voices in general, and there really were a few genuinely amusing bits, but then I had to watch the rest of it. Additionally, looking at Steve Oedekerk's face is an onerous chore.

Grappler Baki is hilarious and overdone, with over-muscled weirdos making weird expressions at each other, the dubbers trying frantically to make sense of the little smirks and 'ah!'s. This is a short pilot for a series. It's about a fighter of some sort, Baki, who is not in fact any sort of grappler, but seemingly a karate master with a preternatural ability to assimilate other people's techniques. It's about punching, and kicking, and the occasional nonstandard technique. In general the action is over-animated, but not to its detriment. Really, the whole thing comes off as somewhat fetishistic, but in an odd and straight-faced way.

Blazing Saddles is still brilliant, with everyone doing a much better job than necessary. Madeline Kahn particularly, whose Dietrich impression is impeccable. I miss Madeline Kahn. Here's the trivia page on imdb, which has a few serious gems (Hedy Lamarr actually sued, a guy Mel Brooks used to work with actually punched out a horse, Barack Obama snuck in to see Blazing Saddles).

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Karla Z

February 2012

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