Monday, November 3, 2008

Halloween beats me down, THE RED SHOES (44) and SAMURAI I (14)

Alright, it was Halloween this weekend, a few highlights/lowlights:

1. My brother asking me if my beer gut was a "pillow stuffed under my shirt". It was not.

2. Dressing up like the mustached brother from The Darjeeling Limited. This included: hair straightening and the grossest mustache ever shaved on to this face. Somebody pulled on said mustache 'cause they believed it had to be fake. At the end of the night I was told quite frankly, that it was disgusting. I concur. It is gone now.

3. Realizing that straightening my hair and shaving a mustache makes me look exactly like my father circa 1976. I will never shave a mustache and straighten my hair again.

4. Walking home two or three miles, in a pair of cheap slippers I purchased at the Goodwill ... in the rain.

5. Telling people, drunkenly, that indeed I was not the "The Love Guru".

6. My brother, dressed as a pony-tailed, bearded witch and high off that wacky tabacky, standing by himself in the living room of the house party listening to a Britney Spears song he liked. He then wondered the next day why he felt like the creepy older guy at the party. I think he might've been adopted.

7. Going to a party where only a handful of the girls were dressed like "Slutty ____". Surprisingly, and quite nicely, most of the girls had spent a considerable amount of time building really high quality costumes that did not just showcase the fact that they had nice racks. It was a shocking change from Slutty Maple Valley last week.

8. My friend Pete getting pushed down a hill by other friend Markham 'cause he wouldn't admit to peeing on Markham's car. I didn't witness this, but my mental image of the event is pretty hysterical.

All in all a pretty successful Halloween, I woke up still fairly drunk at 10:30 the next morning and had to be told by a handful of people the various stages of the night and my roles in each, and you know, I call that a success.
Turns out The Red Shoes (44) was one of my favorite Criterion films yet. Sure, criticize my already lacking manhood for loving a movie about ballet, but the whole film was just so impressively put together. Even the gigantic dance sequence in the middle, which I thought I was going to hate, was this epic, surreal usage of the effects of the time, and if anything it was really entertaining (though ballet still seems for the most part like a bunch of spinning and head bowing if you ask me, but you shouldn't because I'm an idiot). Pressburger and Powell managed to use the idea of a story within a story to really nicely capture the pressure and fear of this successful ballet dancer's life. The end was both shocking, poignant, and depressing as all hell. "Julian, take off the red shoes." Duhn duhn duhn. Seriously, get over the fact that it's a film about dancing, it's a classic and you'll hate yourself for not sitting through it.

Yikes, the Samurai Trilogy (14, 15, & 16) is the first Criterion I've talked about that I've actually owned. There was point in my life where I was actually attempting to own every single film in the entire catalog (an endeavor that would've cost my like 8 grand and taken me the rest of my life). I ended up getting all three of the Samurai films for Christmas, along with a handful of other releases and then giving up on this pricey attempt and renting them from the library. Nonetheless, I'm glad I have these films, 'cause they sort of kick ass. Yes, I was certain that this life story of Musashi Miyamoto would involve a lot more high-octane back flips and sword fighting but that's because we as Americans have been conditioned by shitty action films. The films star Toshiro Mifune (Akira Kurosawa's main man) and track the life and times of the most famous of Japanese legends as he fights people, is chased by people, fights more people, ditches this one girl like ten times, and then fights more people. The first film, Samurai I - Musashi Miyamoto follows him as he actually becomes the samurai we know and love. It's a good one, but I prefer the second where he fights a bald man with a sickel and chain and a beach. I'll talk about it more tomorrow.

Tuesday: Samurai II - Duel at Ichijoji Temple

2 comments:

wescoat said...

I still don't believe the beer gut was real. Or the mustache.

anna said...

umm you could actually create something that someone would ask if it was a mustache? that alone is impressive. the beer must be infused with hormones.