There's a meme going around that I am certain others may have seen. I've been tagged twice by two distinguished residents from the left coast, Kimberly of Cinebeats, and Michael of The Evening Class. Aside from the fact that she tagged me first, I'm not going to say no to a woman who loves all manner of cinematic mayhem, and may love the films of my youth even more than I do.

The meme is this:
) Pick up the nearest book.
2) Open to page 123.
3) Locate the fifth sentence.
4) Post the next three sentences on your blog and in so doing…
5) Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Halle Berry in Things We Lost in the Fire (Susanne Bier - 2007)

Flower Drum Song
Henry Koster - 1961
Universal Region 1 DVD

One last contribution to the Invitation to the Dance Blog-a-thon, a more traditional kind of musical, and a choice made more timely by a posting over at Edward Copeland's by Josh R.

There is so much both right and wrong with the film version of Flower Drum Song. The film and original play were made with good intentions, and yet . . .

Having a virtually all Asian cast in a mainstream Hollywood film was admirable, but having them portray Chinese or Chinese-Americans seems to emphasize the idea that all Asians look alike. I also have a problem with the casting of American-American Juanita Hall as a Chinese matriarch, no matter that Rogers and Hammerstein loved her. Even when the older characters do not speak pidgen English, there is still the taint of Hollywood stereotypes. Had Anna May Wong not died, and played the part filled by Hall, that may have been another reminder of how little had changed for English speaking Asian actresses since the release of Picadilly. Flower Drum Song works best in not looking too deeply at what may be wrong, and enjoy what is best in the film, primarily Nancy Kwan.

Karumen kokyo ni Kaeru
Keisuke Kinoshita - 1951
Panorama Entertainment Region 3 DVD

The song heard at the beginning of Carmen comes Homes is a tribute to the small mountain town where the film takes place. The elegiac feel to the song reflects a part of Japan that Keisuke Kinoshita must have known would eventually disappear. What I was not prepared for is that while Carmen comes Home is about the cultural shifts in Japan after World War II, the film also brings up points about art and culture that are still being discussed.

Hideko Takamine plays the small town girl who ran away to Tokyo, and returns to visit as a celebrated artist known as Lily Carmen. Even before she shows up, the head teacher of the village school, Chishu Ryu, talks about the importance of art and culture, with the opening scene being of the school children performing a circle dance. One of the other characters, a former teacher, blinded in the war, is known for his musical compositions, and his loss of his beloved harmonium sold to pay for expenses. Added to this mix are the town's entrepreneur, who will always find an angle at making money, Lily Carmen's best friend, a dancer who almost immediately misses Tokyo, and Lily Carmen's parents who try to make sense of their very westernized daughter.

Rene Cardona III - 2006
Laguna Productions Region 1 DVD

I'm combining Marilyn Ferdinand's blog-a-thon with Cinco de Mayo today. This is a major holiday not just in my town, but especially in my neighborhood. Mesa que Mas Aplauda is about a small town restaurant without customers, that becomes an overnight success when Las Vegas showgirl Liz Vega shows up to introduce pole dancing. Rene Cardona III's film is closer to a Mexican version of Coyote Ugly than Showgirls, with fewer pretenses. The film was inspired by the Latin hit song recorded by Osskar Lobo y Grupo Climax, performed at the end of the film. Mostly Mesa que Mas Aplauda is an excuse to have close ups of jiggly parts of the voluptuous cast. Viva La Vega!

Howard Marion-Crawford and Jesus Franco in The Castle of Fu Manchu (Jesus Franco - 1969)

Anna Biller - 2007
Anna Biller Productions 35mm film

Is it possible to create a parody of a film that was never meant to be taken seriously in the first place? Or can one make fun of a movie that may have been unintentionally comic? As one who has seen some of the films that served as inspiration for Viva, my reaction was that audiences might be better served by another viewing of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls and Camille 2000, perhaps topped off with a bit of Jesus (Franco) and Venus in Furs.

I feel bad in that Anna Biller totally put herself into the film as writer, director, costume and set designer, animator (!), song writer, producer, editor and star. Biller not only stars, but allows her beautiful and naked self to be exposed. The only multi-hyphenate that I can think of that came nearly as close was Clint Eastwood offering a posterior view in Space Cowboys. The best thing I can say for Viva is that Biller and co-star Bridget Brno have gorgeously fleshy bodies, rather than the stick figures that usually parade on screen.

Tian Tang Kou
Alexi Tan - 2007
Fortissimo Films 35mm film

Blood Brothers has a running time much shorter than that of the films that served as sources of inspiration. The look and feel of the film are closer to Once Upon a Time in America, mentioned by Alexi Tan, with more than passing resemblance to some of the style of Coppola and Scorsese. Currently seen at several film festival's, the film is an extremely accomplished. If Blood Brothers were an English language film with Hollywood stars, there would be talk of Academy Awards. Even if the story line can also be anticipated from the first few minutes, when the small town boys discuss making their fortune in 1930s Shanghai, the classic visual style of the film makes Blood Brothers satisfying to watch.

The original title translates as "Mouth of Heaven", which is also the name of the Shanghai night club where much of the film takes place. This particular heaven is run by Boss Hong, who wields the power of life and death over much of the Shanghai underworld even though his front is that of movie producer. For the three young men who initially come to Shanghai to work as waiters, the Paradise Club appears as a form of heaven with the well dressed men and women who come to dine and dance, and the stage show with scantily clad chorus girls and featured singer, Lulu. It is Lulu, mistress to Boss Hong, who warns one of the young men, Fung, to not get involved with Boss Hong. It is also Lulu who provides the motivation for the steps and missteps of the men who orbit around her.

The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic Book Scare and How it Changed America
David Hajdu - 2008
Farrar, Straus and Giroux: New York

Artists and Models
Frank Tashlin - 1955
Paramount Region 1 DVD

I was taking classes in the summer of 1971 at the University of California in Berkeley. At a course on Mass Communications, I was discussing underground comics with a teacher. He encouraged me to read Seduction of the Innocent, the influential "study" of comic books by Fredric Werthem. A psychiatrist adept at self-promotion, Werthem's book fed into the fears about the corrupting influence of comic books of the kind that were available in the early Fifties. While I don't think my parents read Werthem's book, the hysteria regarding comic books was such that by the time I started buying them myself around 1960, the only kind I was allowed to buy were Classics Illustrated. I had also been aware that many of the comic books I wasn't buying featured a special seal of approval, stating that the comic met some designated code. David Hajdu's book tell about the history of comic books up to the time that the code was mandated.

When Artists and Models was released, the comic book industry had already changed. The screenplay refers to a kind of comic book that no longer was published. To a degree Tashlin's film reflects the film industry's attitude at that time towards comic books, both as a rival form of entertainment and for its depiction of violence. The middle class attitude toward comic books is reenforced with the main characters leaving the comic book industry for the more wholesome pursuit of children's stories and advertising art.

John Garfield and Jennifer Jones in We Were Strangers (John Huston - 1949)

Suay Laak Sai
Piraphan Laoyont & Thodsapol Siriwiwat - 2007
Magnolia Home Entertainment Region 1 DVD

I first read about Sick Nurses through Curtis, also known as Wise Kwai. You can google the term "Thai logic", or you can use this film as Exhibit A regarding the wide, undisturbed release of this film in Thailand while Syndromes and a Century finally gets released in a censored version. Curtis has noted several times the scenes that caused offense to the Thai cultural gatekeepers. Two of the offending scenes involved the medical profession - a doctor has an erection pressing inside his pants, his response to being with his fiancee, a female doctor, and some doctors imbibe on some alcohol while off duty, but on hospital grounds. To the best of my knowledge, no one speaking on behalf of medical professionals has expressed outrage, but these scenes were among the handful that has caused this critically acclaimed Thai film to be seen as intended almost everywhere, except Thailand.

In the meantime, Sick Nurses is in part about a doctor who works with a black market organ market. Doctor Tar is also revealed to have had affairs with most of his team of nurses, impregnated one, and had wistful flashbacks about the hunky male doctor who proposed marriage to him. One of the nurses, discovering that the good doctor was not going to marry her, gets killed by the doctor and the other nurses to prevent her from spilling the beans about the illegal activity. The ghost of the nurse goes around killing the nurses in a variety of inventive and increasingly gory ways.

Showa Kayo Daizenshu
Tetsuo Shinohara - 2003
Synapse Films Region 1 DVD

The title Karaoke Terror suggest someone just drunk enough to get onstage to sing "Feelings", "Achy Breaky Heart" or "I Will Always Love You", very, very badly. The original title , from Ryu Murakami's novel, means "Complete Showa Era Songbook". Most western viewers will miss any significance from that title. Overlooking the silly English language title, this is a film that will probably be most appreciated by those familiar with author Murakami.

The store is about two bands of outsiders. One is a group of young men who hang out together and periodically dress up to perform songs in costume, in a remote beach location, with no audience. The Midoris are a group of divorced women ranging in age from the early thirties to forties, unrelated but sharing the same last name, who also share an interest in music from their youth. The film follows the escalation of revenge between the two groups, after one of the men murders one of the women following her decline of his advances.

Todd Rohal - 2006
Benten Films Region 1 DVD

I hope whomever gives out prizes will remember The Guatemalan Handshake for best DVD packaging. The illustrations by James Braithwaite have a homey charm that held my attention in a way that the slapped together photoshop jobs from the big boys never will.

The two sports that are featured in The Guatemalan Handshake serve as fitting metaphors for life, especially when faced with limited possibilities. In the roller rink, the object is to keep on going forward, in a circle around the rink, or fall down. In the demolition derby, the goal is to be able to crash into another car until it no longer can move, while keeping your own car in motion. The winner is the last mobile car. Both of these sports involve repetition of movement to the point of monotony, kind of like the jobs most people have, and to a certain extent, like real life.

Supakson Chaimongkol in Art of the Devil (Tanit Jitnukul - 2004)

Gidam
Jung Brothers - 2007
TLA Releasing

Epitaph recently was shown as part of the Danger After Dark series at the Philadelphia Film Festival. It is a very ambitious film in that the Jung Brothers are attempting to smarten up the Korean horror film. That is is a ghost story, and that some of the ghosts are reminders of past horror films is in itself nothing new. What makes Epitaph interesting is the narrative structure which is mobius strip that repeats scenes from different perspectives, answering some, but not all questions, about the relationships of the characters in a haunted hospital.

The film takes place almost entirely in a hospital in Japanese occupied Korea, 1942. Starting with the memories of Dr. Park when he was an intern, the film has three main stories that interconnect. Park is seen as a clumsy intern, but a talented sketch artist, who is assigned to morgue duty. It's a creepy enough assignment made more difficult with electricity that is inconstant, with faulty refrigeration and lights that suddenly go out. There are dead bodies, live ghosts, stabbings, brain surgery, snails, and even necrophilia, and yet Epitaph is much less over the top than its description might suggest.