"Lethal Weapon", from
Johnny Web
Lethal Weapon 1,2, and 3
were all released or re-released on DVD this
week, in director's cuts. Of course, these movies
are purely entertainment flicks, so a director's
cut doesn't have quite the same impact as seeing
the missing scenes in "Touch of Evil",
but what the hell. The first one was a good
action flick, with cosmicly sadistic
international drug dealing bad guys with a
mercenary army, and enough humor to carry it
beyond the rank-and-file to box office success.
The second one was a pretty funny character study
with a cops-and-robbers backdrop and a funny
performance from Joe Pesci. Sorry to say that #3
was pretty damned lame. The nudity also went
downhill. #1 featured the entire first scene from
Jackie Swanson, and a whole bunch of Mad Max in
the buff. #2 was a little Patsy Kensit and a peek
of the ol' road warrior.
#3 had no nudity, and I
think the bad guys were like shoplifters at
7-Eleven or something. I think Joe Pesci kicked
their asses with no weapons. He just irritated
them into surrendering by trying to sell them new
homes and solid homeowners policies.
I didn't re-watch #2
because I just saw it a short time ago, but
here's the nudity from #1.
Jackie Swanson (1,
2,
3,
4)
"Shaft's
Big Score", from Tuna
Speaking of series
flicks, three Shaft movies also appeared on the
shelves this week. Tuna's comments: "Shaft's
girlfriend has a brother who is blown up. Shaft
finds himself between the police, the Italian
businessmen, and the Harlem black mob. Oh, and
women keep begging him for sex. It is an
enjoyable piece of mindless entertainment."
thumbnails RosalindMiles (1,
2)
Marilyn Hamlin (1,
2)
KathyImrie (1,
2,
3)
Stripper (1,
2,
3)
New from GR
Joan
Hackett in "One Trick Pony" Mare
Winningham, "One Trick Pony" (single
image) Click
here for Scoopy's overview of "One Trick
Pony".I am a
great, great fan of Paul Simon. If you say he's
the greatest musical genius of the 20th century,
I might try to throw Stravinsky at you, but I'd
probably concede. Despite my hero worship for the
man, I barely stayed awake in this movie. When it
ended, I rewound back a few minutes because I
thought I missed something. I didn't. You are
going to think I'm kidding when I say this, but
they actually played a complete song as
background while he took out the trash in real
time. What's that, maybe two and a half minutes
of screen time to throw his trash bag in the
dumpster? Now that's entertainment! If Aristotle
were still with us, he'd be so proud of this
application of the Unity of Time. Kim Cattrall, "Sex and the
City" Priscilla Barnes, "The
Crossing Guard" (single image)
Visitor's
Corner
This from the mailbox, about the film where
Mastroianni played General Custer
Re: "Touchez Pas la Femme Blanche"
I was lucky (or unlucky) enough to see this
truly odd film in a first-run theater in Nice the
week it was released. Although my French
wasn’t nearly as fluent then, it was plenty
good enough to recognize that I was witness to a
marvelously surreal event. To make sure, I would
occasionally glance at my fellow-patrons - yep,
they were just as slack-jawed as I. (To no great
surprise the audience numbered about 20 in this
500 seat theater - the film had been playing
about four days and the word was very definitely
out.)
What drove me into the movie-house was
probably the same impulse that made you pop it in
your VCR - and I was just as disappointed to
discover Deneuve stayed clad. After this apparent
train-wreck of a movie was over I became mildly
fascinated to discover how it came about. This is
some of what I read/was told/remember.
Ferreri, coasting on the bounce from "La
Grande Bouffe" could basically do what he
wanted. One story is he complained to Mastroianni
that he had nothing ready to film and Mastroianni
said in effect C’mon, Marco, you’ll
never have a chance like this again - you can
take the worst piece of shit script out of your
trunk and they’ll let you do it! Ferreri
confessed he’d always wanted to do a Western
and had an old unfinished script. Perfect, said
Mastroianni but he couldn’t be in it; he had
about 5 pictures lined up and wouldn’t have
time to go to the US. So Ferreri said fuck it (or
the Italian equivalent), we’ll shoot it
here. Whaddya mean, here? They were in cab
passing through Les Halles. (You know, Les
Halles? Of course you do. Paris’s centuries
old meat market district where we all used to go
at 2 am in our black existential turtlenecks for
onion soup and frîtes with the ouvriers…)
Mastroianni: Whaddya mean you’ll shoot it
here?? In the meat market??
Ferreri: They’re tearing it down,
they’re moving it all out to the suburbs. In
two months none of these buildings will be
standing...
And so it came to pass, the burgermeisters of
Paris in their infinite wisdom gutted the center
of the world’s most beautiful city and
created the biggest vacant lot in its history.
Within three months Marco Ferreri was directing
the re-enactment of Little Big Horn. It’s
been a while, but if memory serves aren’t
there a couple of shots of buildings coming down
in the background to Custer’s Last Stand?
The reviews in the European press were
uniformly savage. No great shock, Ferreri
admitted he improvised two thirds of the film.
But he and all the actors got paid and, we can
assume, smiled quietly all the way to the bank.
There was some Cahiers speculation that this was
his attempt to ingratiate himself with the
Godardiens and try for the same ambience of
light-hearted (light-fingered?) anarchy of
"Pierrot le Fou" or
"Weekend". If that’s the case, he
missed by country kilometer. I think
Ferreri’s biggest burden finally was his
joyfully-trumpeted misogyny. Strange behavior
indeed for an admittedly mother-fixated Italian.
But what the hey, in his following film "La
Dernière Femme", he had our beloved
Depardieu emasculate himself with an electric
carving knife and in my book any director who
gives me that image can’t be all bad now,
can he?
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