dancefloorlandmine

A rather fine Aardman Animations film. Which will probably need watching more than once to catch all of the details.

Heroic pirates! A monkey butler! (OK, he's a chimpanzee butler, but anyway, you get the idea.) Charles Darwin! Less heroic pirates! Queen Victoria being the villain! Exclamation marks! And BRIAN BLESSED (or at least his voice)! (He provides his own exclamation marks.)

If you like Aardman Animations, and/or you like pirate films, then you'll probably enjoy this.

Last night I watched part of the handful of DVDs I picked up in one of the charity shops in Whitby. Someone had obviously ditched a fairly reasonable collection of classic martial arts films - or, at least, a collection that duplicated quite a few of mine. But I spotted a couple of names that I recognised that I didn't already have, and grabbed those.

Zu: Warriors From Magic Mountain is a classic. It has often been cited by John Carpenter as one of the influences on Big Trouble In Little China, and is regarded as the first film that attempted to combine classic wuxia with Hollywood special effects - including flying an effects team out from Los Angeles to do them, headed by Robert Blalock, who had worked on Star Wars: A New Hope, Airplane!, Carl Sagan's Cosmos, and Cat People - and went on to work on Jaws 3-D and Robocop.

The list of names involved reads features a few major figures in the HK action genre - several of whom have gone on to revolutionise action sequences for Hollywood movies as well. Hark Tsui directed with Golden Harvest, obviously, as the production company. The cast includes Biao Yuen and Sammo Hung (in two roles), with the action choreographed by Biao Yuen and Corey Yuen.

The film opens with a warrior for one of China's geographical regional factions (colour-coded for convenience - the Blue Army in this case) who is accused of treachery due to a disagreement between the two generals. Rather sensibly, he runs for it, and then meets up with a member of the Red Army. After a discussion about the state of China, and an interesting approach for surviving a battle with two more factions, they get separated, and our hero enters a mountainous region - which is where the magical elements kick in, as he encounters a scholar-swordsman and then a Buddhist warrior-monk and his apprentice. And after that, it's pretty much non-stop choreography, with exuberantly acrobatic fight sequences, sizzling bursts of magic, a sage who uses his eyebrows to fight, and ... well, lets just say that it's full-bore wuxia throughout, closing with an epic battle with a demon and the potential destruction of this universe. Nothing like a low-stakes fight ...

The effects are much as you'd expect from the very early 80s (i.e. somewhat dated, and on a par with fantasy films of the period), but it works well with the bright and colourful concept of the rest of the film. The plot and character motivations may at times be hard to follow, but that doesn't really matter, or stop the film being very enjoyable.

(The DVD also includes the abysmal bracketing sequences that were added for the International Dubbed version as extras - these converted the original film into a traditional 'it was all a dream' coma hallucination, presumably on the basis that would be more acceptable to international audiences than a magical epic set in the warring states period. In order to fit these in, several of the fight scenes were apparently shortened considerably, and it does undercut the epic finale somewhat. My recommendation - watch the original, subtitled. It still won't make a huge amount of sense, but the action sequences are what you want.)

And this evening's choice of DVD-viewing - 1985's Jackie Chan classic, Police Story (which spawned a bus-load of sequels). I've seen it several times before, but this was the first watching of this particular copy (picked up for under £2 in a charity shop).

This film is justifiably renowned - bringing a whole new meaning to the phrase "catching a bus", while the final sequence in the shopping centre brings a whole world of wincing impacts along with some fine demonstrations of the reason why Jackie Chan is so well known for his use of props. Along with a stunning demonstration of parking. It makes a fine introduction to the Jackie Chan oeuvre, for the unfamiliar.

Made in 1986, released as a 97p DVD in 2006 ...

• Tommy Lee Jones
• Linda Hamilton
• Robert Vaughn

And, to top it off ...

• Bubba Smith

Oh, and, I suspect, a dyslexic scriptwriter - there's something made of "Kelvar [sic], the same stuff as bulletproof vests". A highly enjoyable 80s-tastic evening, complete with big hair, bad suits, the obligatory bad club scene and a cellphone the size of a brick. Oh, and to top it off, a story written by John Carpenter (who also put in some time on the screenplay). And released by Roger Corman's old company. I think that ticks about every box!

The DVD also has the trailer, which is even more 'of its time' - Voiceover Man™ doing the whole "They made one big mistake ..." schtick.

And the name of this paragon of the cinematic arts? ( Look away now if you don't want to know the answer. )

And, for forthcoming attractions, I bought more of the 97p DVDs at the same time, in the same series of re-releases - one of them's even a sci-fi film featuring Roddy Piper (of wrestling and They Live fame) and Billy Drago.

All of the photos from IMDB look like scans of the VHS or DVD case, or possibly the poster (if any were printed) - and have one of the least flattering examples of the cover artists work I've ever seen, even including the one done for Highlander.

Yesterday afternoon mitchy came over for some cinematic cheese. And lo and behold, the Landmine Library provided - all were films that I'd already watched, but that my guest hadn't, as I like to be able to a) recommend films and b) share ones I enjoy with friends. The programme went as follows:

Silver Hawk (Michelle Yeoh as masked vigilante in comic book adaptation)
Ballistic: Ecks vs Sever (Tony Bandyass looks unshaven and Lucy Liu acts best without lines)
Bullet-Proof Monk (Chow Yun-Fat winds up both Sean William Scott and Nazis)
Sharp Guns (Excellent HK caper movie, with a conman hired to form a team to rescue his old boss's kidnapped daughter)

And this morning, a special showing - another Michelle Yeoh film to bookend the run ...

Wonder Seven (Team of Chinese state-raised orphan operatives in pre-handover HK against a crooked CIA operative)

Oh, I do love my crap movies! [grin] I'm considering it research for running Feng Shui, obviously! Although Sharp Guns is probably one of my top ten, actually - the kind of movie that Tarantino wants to write.

Seeing as other people have had the good idea of making a note of the films they've watched, I'm going to make a list of the DVDs I've watched this year - starting from the weekend just gone. It's mostly for my own purposes, mind, and it's unlikely that the majority of the films will be especially erudite or admired ...

Clerks: The First Cut
Mallrats
Showdown in Little Tokyo

That's the ones since Sunday - two Kevin Smith, and one kung-fu with the worst Tia Carrera body-double in history. Did I ever claim to be classy?