QUIDDITCH SUCKS


A big part of the appeal of the Harry Potter books is how easy they are for kids to relate to. Even though Harry spends much of his time at a magical boarding school, the personal struggles he goes through are not foreign to real-universe kids. The schoolwork is hard, the bullies aren't always easy to deal with and his family is a nightmare. I don't believe for a second that any of this is an accident. While so much of this saga is escapist, fantasy-fulfillment for kids, J.K. Rowling certainly works hard at making readers recognize Harry's plights in themselves. No one ever grew up wanting/expecting a honest-to-goodness magic broom, but creating a universe where there are different broom models and then having your hero look longingly at the latest and best model in a store window is completely germane to adolescent materialistic desire. It removes much of the abstractness of the supernatural, brings you closer to the story and makes you care more about the characters.

Perhaps the most hip, of-today element of the fantastical Harry Potter universe is the sport of quidditch. Again, what Rowling has done is take an old standard in supernatural lore (broom riding for witches) and Poochie it up for today's kids by turning it into an athletic competition. When you throw in all the normal sports-drama components - making the team, training, strategy and the big game - you have a story that's much more close to real-life than it is to one of wizards and witches. If you're looking for a big audience, it's a really smart idea. Almost a stroke of genius. The only problem is quidditch sucks.

In even a casual introduction to the game of quidditch, it's flaws are so obvious and so great that it strips JK Rowling naked and reveals just how divorced she is from our world of muggle sports. Perhaps her greatest flaw of all is how unafraid she is to go into the specifics of the game, despite the fact that she's way out of her depth.

The general idea of a broom-riding basketball/hockey/soccer game is not unsound. The problem is introduced with the position of seeker and the hunt for the golden snitch. The objectives of having chasers get the quaffles into the goals and the seeker catching the golden snitch are completely unrelated to one another. It's as if two separate games have been clumsily welded together.

I think the notion behind the creation of the seeker position is a cheap one: to create a position for the protagonist that's extra special. The seeker is the center forward, the quarterback, the fourth leg of a relay, etc. - except ten times more important. A quidditch game only ends once a seeker catches the golden snitch. It also gives his or her team an additional 150 points. (Quaffle goals are worth 10 points each)

If you were an avid quidditch fan, your most common feeling would be one of non-satisfaction. Essays by sports columnists attacking the rules would be commonplace. The better team would often lose and the winning team would often have hollow-feeling victories. There would be numerous tales of the seeker who lost the game for his team when he foolishly caught the golden snitch, not realizing his team was down by more than 150 points at that second. The fan outrage would dwarf all complaints about the BCS polling, Amateur boxing judging and World Cup penalty shootouts combined.

JK Rowling's creation of quidditch in the HP universe obviously had merchandising dollars in mind. This is completely fair game. Milking franchises for as many revenue streams as possible doesn't automatically hurt the art. It's all in the way it's handled. And again, quidditch just sucks. But there's no need for merchandising here. You can already play quidditch at home! The NBA finals are upon us. Bring a friend over, turn on the TV and each pick a team. Then pull out a chess board and play while the game is going on. If you win the chess game, give yourself 150 points and add it to the score of whichever NBA team you picked. If that total score is greater than the number of points of your opponent's NBA team, you win! The marriage of the two contests into one makes just as little sense as quidditch.

Although not without tension in the books and movies, in practice, quidditch doesn't hold up. As soon as I read the rules in the first book, my main thought was one of sympathy for the videogame designers who would inevitably be saddled with the chore of turning this reverse-engineered-for-dramatic-purposes smorgasbord of sports ideas into an actual game. It was therefore with great surprise that I learned that the game "Quidditch World Cup" was released by Electronic Arts.

What was I missing? I just couldn't believe that a game so ill-conceived could be made to work. Well, this is how they did it. They gave each team a "Golden Snitch Bar." As you and your opponent try to score quaffle points, your bar moves toward the center. Once the two sides meet, the golden snitch is released. This is an interesting solution, but certainly is not the quidditch Rowling describes, where the elements of quaffle play and golden snitch capture are concurrent, not sequential. The book of "Sorcerer's Stone" includes a second quidditch game, which was removed from the film. In it, Harry catches the golden snitch almost immediately, ending the game before it even began. Clearly, this game could not be replicated in the Electronic Arts re-envisioned version. Since no quaffle play took place, none could be rewarded with golden snitch bar advancement.

So why all the fuss? Well, I guess it's the snooty attitude that making a game that actually works isn't important as long as the trappings are fun. I truly believe that Rowling's cursory approach to designing the game thumbs its nose at all true sports enthusiasts. It trivializes us. It says "well the silly games that you watch don't make any sense, so why should mine?" Well, they do make sense, honey. And they're important. Although not exactly the same thing, look at all the work John Madden put into his line of videogames before he'd assign his name to them. He refused to allow technological limitations deter him from making games that were true to football. And his stubbornness yielded pure game greatness. It's quite clear that the game of quidditch has been devised by a soccer mom who most likely doesn't even understand soccer.

Well, the third AMERICAN IDOL will be crowned tonight.  The season hasn't gone without its share of controversy.  In fact, throughout its history, people have suggested the show might be rigged.  The phenomenon reminds me of a scene from QUIZ SHOW. 

GOODWIN:  I spoke with Herb Stemple.  And he told me that when a jew comes on and makes a lot of money they have a gentile come on and make twice as much.

Being a new dad in LA is crazy.  I often take my daughter out for walks.  Like you'd imagine, you get lots of smiles from people and have this unspoken camaraderie with other parent-child pairs as you pass them.  So I'm out the other day and who do I have one of these "hey-we're-both-parents-isn't-it-great-but-also-hard" moments with?  Former supermodel and Rod Stewart spouse Rachael Hunter.  She seemed to be about seven feet tall.  I think she lives around here since I saw her at the mall a while back. 

Truth be told, I am in the minority of fathers who push the stroller.  It doesn't seem that strange to me and I certainly have no problem with it, but yesterday, some guy in his car stopped when he saw me and said "Hey, you don't see a lot of dads pushing their babies around.  I'm going through a custody case right now and I just want to tell you what a great thing you're doing.  Keep it up."  Again, I don't think it's any big deal, but if you say so, I'll take the compliment.   

I had a bunch of errands to do and, later in the day, I had the dreaded chore of taking the baby to the post office.  In the long line, again, lots of smiles.  This time there was much attention coming from the mother and her teenage daughter in front of me.  On my way out (it took me forever to get out of there like it always does) the teenage girl comes up to me and says "If you ever need me to babysit, give me a call."  She then proceeds to hand me her card.  She had written in "babysitter" on the card because this wasn't the job that she had them printed for.  She, of course, was an actress.  A mini-picture of her headshot was on there as well as "SAG/AFTRA" and her agency info.   That a fourteen year old girl (she handwrote in her age as well) has a business card like this just floored me.  I should have said "We'd love to use you, but we're deciding to go another way."  I'm sure she wouldn't want the gig anyway.  We only pay guild plus ten. 

MORE POOCHIE EFFECT
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These two were pointed out to me..

EXTREME CHECKING  Poochieness ain't just for kids.

Here's a website called INCONSPICUOUS CONSUMPTION, which touches on a lot of "extreme" food products.  Note the sunglasses on the Pepridge Farm Goldfish.

Now here's something that will probably get me in trouble.  I'm kind of thinking more and more that Hollywood often aims to get Poochieness out of African Americans.  A while ago, I was working on a script idea with a producer and another writer for a pitch.  It's not important what it was or what it was about, but in the pitch there was a black guy who was a nerd.  It wasn't a huge character and we made him a nerd for some small reason that I don't remember.  After the pitch to the studio executive, he zeroes in on the character and asks if he has to be a nerd.  Not being insane, we all say that of course he doesn't, but what followed was this big speech about how you always want the black guy to be cool  -- like you're wasting his blackness if he's not or something.  I couldn't believe he was spending this much time on it, but it was, like, really important to him.  He kept saying the words "attitude" and "edgy."  Sometimes when I look at roles played by African Americans, I still hear the words of that executive.  A few examples.

--Queen Latifa as Charlene in Bringin' Down the House.  The whole point of the movie seems to be how uncomforable Steve Martin is around black people and how QF has to hip him up and teach him some attitude.

--Wanda Sykes as Wanda Hawkins on Wanda At Large.  The above example and this one should proove conclusively that Poochie attitude certainly isn't just for men.  Wanda definitely embraces the "in your face"ness that Poochie creators espouse.

--Will Smith as Agent J in Men in Black.  Yeah, Tommy Lee Jones wears the sunglasses as well, but, in the words of J "You know what the difference between you and me?  I make this look good." and
from the sequel (pointing at K) "Old and nasty." (pointing at himself) "New hotness." 

MORE CRIMES AGAINST FANBOYS

MORE PRETTY GIRLS FALLING DOWN

EXPOSITION

The chore of spelling out information that's vital to a story is the major struggle of all writers.  And I truly believe folks who write material that's meant to be performed have it the toughest.  In a novel, the writer can simply say exactly what's in a character's head and it doesn't feel like the bald delivery of story points.  

When you're working through this stuff, you try to be artful about it.  You try not to be "on the nose" or overexplain things.  You try to "show, not tell," but sometimes you just can't make it work and you chuk art out the window.   You give the character a diary, you have the character's new boss read his file to him, you have a character about to enter a room and overhear something, you begin a scene with one character turning to the other and say "Okay, tell me one more time, why are we doing this again?"  Whatever it takes.

The chore of expostion can be even greater when dealing with tales that are supernatural.  Science fiction, fantasy, horror  - by definition, stories in these genres have their own laws, which have to be explained.  If a character can fly, the audience has to know it .  Most of the time, supernatural stories are not just breaking one law of nature, but a whole bunch of 'em -- a bad guy has built a device which could destroy the world but it won't work because the good guys have invented a ray to block its effects -- and the audience has to be reminded multiple times just to keep track.  A very well done example of this is in The Terminator, when Reese has been caputured by the police.  The cops would obviously question the hell out of him and, backed into a corner like that, he'd do his best to convince them what's going on since the danger of the Terminator threatening Sarah Connor is still so great.   A ton of the laws of the Terminator universe are given out in that scene and it doesn't feel clunky because A: the way the drama has been built around it, and B: James Cameron spent a good deal of time making these laws seem reasonable.  This isn't always the case. 

The most stunning delivery of sci-fi exposition I've seen comes in the Six Million Dollar Man episode "The Return of Bigfoot."  There's a lot of discussion about SMDM by fanboys of when the show jumped the shark.  One school of thought is that the early stuff was the best.  The pilot movie took itself pretty seriously, had the realistic mission of Steve Austin trying to rescue captured Israelis and dealt heavily with the mental anguish of becoming a cyborg.  The next two TV movies, Wine, Women, War and Solid Gold Kidnapping, were also aimed for an adult-ish audience, but clearly were trying to give SMDM a James Bond spin.  ("Solid Gold Kidnapping" going so far as to have a S.P.E.C.T.R.E.-like group and casting Thunderball villainess Luciana Paluzzi).  After a while, the SMDB begain constructing plots aimed squarely at kids.  In my mind, this is when the show was at its best.  It had found its footing. 

The high mark of the show was clearly The Secret of Bigfoot.  While it may seem silly on the surface, it's easy to forget just how much this two-part episode delivered.  Bigfoot mania was a huge phenomenon in the 70s and twenty minutes into the first part, we got to see him full-on, in bright daylight.  Then, Steve Austin gets into a kick-ass fight with him, which ends in the shocker of him tearing off Bigfoot's robotic arm!  Steve chases the one-armed Bigfoot robot into a tunnel, which starts to spin and knocks Steve unconscious.   We learn that the robot Bigfoot is controlled by aliens.  Again, I know it all sounds silly but the internal logic worked and it was hugely entertaining.  I defy you to find someone who watched it when it first aired who doesn't have haunting memories of that spinning tunnel, which eventually became a stop on the tour of Universal Studios. 


I can't sing similar praises about Bigfoot's inevitable return a season later.  To me, SMDM clearly jumped the shark when Lee Majors decided to grow a mustache.  In "The Return of Bigfoot," Sasquatch isn't the only one with facial hair and, as shark jumping evidence, this episode is my "exhibit A."  The story somehow feels monumentally more ridiculous than the first one and I think that's just in the way it's handled.   Midway though the first part, Steve is blamed for the theft of some raw elements.   Oscar and Rudy confront him about it.     

OSCAR: …And now you’re caught at the scene of the third crime with one guard saying, quote, that he saw you throw a steel drum on him.
STEVE: Do you believe that?
OSCAR: I don’t want to believe it, but who else could throw a steel drum?
STEVE: Oscar, I didn't throw it at him. I...
OSCAR: Are you going to tell us what happened?
DR. WELLS: We're trying to help.
STEVE: I promised to keep it a secret.
DR. WELLS: Anything you say stays with us!
STEVE: You’re not going to believe it. In the California mountains, there’s a colony of aliens. Explorers from deep space.
OSCAR: Space people?
DR. WELLS: In the mountains? Where?
STEVE: I don't know exactly. They’ve been here for 250 years. They can move forward through time in the blink of an eye. They also control the sasquatch.
DR. WELLS: Bigfoot?
(NOTE: Although this two-part episode is a sequel to “The Secret of Bigfoot” from the year before, no one but Steve saw Bigfoot or was even convinced that there was a bigfoot creature by the end of the story. Steve is NOT saying “These aliens control that Bigfoot creature that we all know is real.” He’s telling Oscar and Rudy that the currently-only-known-as-myth of Bigfoot is real.)
STEVE: That's right. But a group of rebels broke away from the main complex. And they took the sasquatch with them. They’ve been using Bigfoot to steal these materials to create some sort of magnetic force field around their new base to make it invulnerable. Oscar, you remember last year that day I disappeared in the mountains?
OSCAR: Yes.
STEVE: Bigfoot took me to the complex. I met these people. I talked with them.
OSCAR: Well why didn’t you tell me about it then, Steve?
STEVE: Because they erased my memory!
DR. WELLS: Erased your memory?
STEVE: Look I know it all sounds crazy, but it’s true. Wait a minute. They gave me some of their wonder drug. It could cure most all diseases and help heal injuries in no time. They called it… neotraxcin.
OSCAR: Well, what happened to it?
STEVE: I gave it to you to give to Rudy to have it analyzed.
DR. WELLS: I don’t remember too much about that. I do remember I was worried about you. You had a head injury during the earthquake
STEVE: There’s nothing wrong with my head, then or now.
DR. WELLS: Steve, how come you can remember this now?
STEVE: Because sent this woman, named Gillian, to ask me to try and help them.
DR. WELLS: And she can move through time, like you say?
STEVE: Yes!
DR. WELLS: Well, maybe we can meet her.
STEVE: But she must have been captured by the rebels when the boron 3 was stolen! There’s proof. I was taken prisoner yet the Boron 3 was still stolen.
DR. WELLS: National Security Bureau had us check on that. Boron 3 leaves a radioactive infrared trace. Now our instruments picked up a trail, which led outside the compound and stopped.
STEVE: Well that’s right. Because Bigfoot carried it out. (putting it all together) And then the rebels must have taken it using their TCLs, traveling much faster than normal. Which means that this infrared trail must still be there, but much fainter than normal. Isn’t that possible, Rudy?
DR. WELLS: Well…
STEVE: Of course it is! And I can trace it with my eye. All I need is a helicopter.

The scene ends with Oscar saying that he's been asked to turn down Steve's bionics. Steve then breaks out of the room and takes off on his own. This is exactly what he should have done in the first place. The outrageousness of the lines is only matched by the horrible way in which Lee Majors delivers them.   As he's sitting captive, Steve Austin should just keep his mouth shut.  The truth is just so insane, no sensible person would even try to convince anyone of it.  Here's a tally of what Steve is trying to convince people of.

--1.  Bigfoot is real.  Obviously a huge thing to ask anyone to belive, but fine.  There was some rumors last year and Oscar saw the footprints.  The way that Lee Majors says the word "Bigfoot" in this scene is hilarious.  He's says the word quickly, like he's some guy they all know.
--2.  Bigfoot is actually a pawn of aliens.  Stop right there.  You're taking two completely separate but equally massive myths and combining them into one.  This is where this scene differs from the one in the Terminator, which, although outrageous, has cohesion.  
--3.  The Aliens have a wonder drug.  Yet another separate sci fi standard.  I like how the name "Neotraxcin," sound like something you could get at any human drugstore.   
--4.  The Aliens have a device that allows them to move forward through time.  The highlight of the scene may be when Dr. Wells asks to meet Gillain and Steve replies that she must have been captured-- like that's really obvious and Dr. Wells is just trying to be a jerk.
--5.  The Aliens have technology that can erase memories.  This is so convenient that at after mentioning it, Steve should realize how insane it sounds and say "Naw, I'm just kidding.  I did take the Boron 3."
--6.  The Rebel Aliens are building a force field.  A force field is probably less outrageous than a wonder drug or time-traveling device, but I think maybe the notion that Steve is caught in the middle of this war of aliens that no one can see makes it seem even more delusional.

   

 

BAD NEWS BEARS REMAKE

I have a file in "my documents"  of ideas for this blog.  One of them was "Ten Reasons You Couldn't Make 'The Bad News Bears' Today.   Then I read that a remake of this classic film is indeed being planned.  Billy Bob Thornton is attached as the lead and the script will be written by Glenn Ficarra and John Requa, who penned the Thornton-helmed hit Bad Santa.

I love the original Bears.  Although it's recognized as a crowd-pleasing hit, I don't think it's given the artistic acclaim it deserves.  The risks that it took just seem so out of bounds today that I have trouble envisioning the new film being remotely as iconoclastic.  I will present my list now, but now title it "Ten Things I bet Will Get Changed in the Remake of "The Bad News Bears."

10 .  Buttermaker gives the kids beer and isn't flayed alive for doing so.  They just might keep this for the remake and pat themselves on the back for being brave.  Granted, it is taking a legitimate risk, but I just think some of the other things the movie did are much ballsier.   Serving alcohol would circumvent the post-70s MADD and SADD movements since all of the kids are too young to drive. 

9. Kelly Leak smokes and isn't shown to get lung cancer by the end of the film.  Smoking has a much greater stigma attached to it today than drinking.  Kelly will most likely be a bad ass and curse, but I suspect he won't light up. 

8.  "This is for Allah, and it's going way out there, sucka!"   This line has about as much chance of finding its way into the remake as a new scene where Ahmad hijacks Kelly's motorcycle and suicide drives it into the White Sox's dugout.

7.  Coach Turner hits his son in public and isn't sent to prison to share a cell with a Mike Tyson lookalike.  I'm not saying that Hollywood has become so sanitized that it no longer is willing to show people do bad things, but they've really upped showing the "consequences" of them - certainly when it involves kids.  Yeah, in the original, Turner's son gets mad at him and allows the Bears to almost catch up, but the White Sox win the league, which is what really matters most to Coach Turner.   In the remake, look for agents from Child Services to be waiting on the sidelines at the conclusion of the championship game.

6.  Amanda fails to get Buttermaker to reconcile with her mom.  This is standard stuff these days.  Hollywood believes that getting old flames back together is their duty, except in sitcoms where they are a device for illustrating the strength of the love of existing couples.  I'm sure the exec on this will want to "explore the relationship" further, not realizing that its omission allowed original moviegoers to spend more time with the kids, which is what makes the film. 

5.  Amanda taken out of final game due to her arm giving out.  In the age of Title IX lies that we live in today, this just won't fly.  Look for Amanda 2.0 to fight through the pain and finish the game.  It's also quite possible that Amanda won't be the only girl on the team. 

4.  Kelly beats Amanda in the air hockey game.  Amanda is sent in to hustle Kelly.  He turns the tables on her, hustles her and makes her go on a date with him to a Rolling Stones concert as his prize.  This one is even more certain than the last item of not finishing the game.  There, at least she was hurt.  Here, she just gets beat.  No way that happens this go round.  Since Amada 2.0 will have watched Mia Hamm peddle Doritoes, she'll now have the self-confidence to win this contest. 

3.  The team the audience is rooting for loses at the end.  The wonderful films of the 70s were willing to have their heroes lose.  I suppose Rocky is the clearest example of that.  The new Hollywood mentality insists on winners.  Perhaps just how far Hollywood has gotten from the 70s can be found in the 1993 Searching for Bobby Fischer.  In final showdown in that film, Josh Waitzkin squares off against "Jonathan Poe."  The Josh character employs both the play-from-your-heart technique of streetwise, speed chess player, Vinnie (in taking his queen out early) AND the cold, calculating, academic approach he's gained from the brow-beating Bruce Pandolfini (seeing a winning position that's twelve moves ahead).  At that moment, Josh (filled with the selfless love he's gained from his mother) offers his opponent a draw, which is refused.  Josh then storms through the endgame which his opponent is happy to play through until he's lost. 

That climax is non-stop lies.  First of all, it's completely ludicrous that the game would continue to that point.  LONG, LONG before the march of the pawns to get queened, anyone with even the slightest grasp of chess would have resigned.  The over-explaining Hollywood of today feels it has to show the game come to an end.  Second, the notion that you need both the "heart" of Vinnie (Lawrence Fishburne) along with the "mind" of Ben Kingley's is completely untrue.  Speed chess only develops bad habits.  Moreover the portrayal of Bruce Pandolfini is monumentally distorted.  Yeah, he believes in learning all kinds of academic stuff, but he's also an incredibly gregarious individual, who's not cold at all.  The fact that his true persona doesn't play into the simplified drama of Scott Rudin development is the only reason he's presented that way.  Prepare to be surprised if you rent the 1996 documentary Chess Kids, which features the real life Josh Waitzkin and Bruce Pandolfini. 

Lastly, and I'm sorry to go off on this whole thing for so long, but the REAL-LIFE game between Josh Waitzkin and Jeff Sarwer (who the Jonathan Poe character is based on), indeed featured wildly dramatic moves, but was infinitely different.  Sarwer was punishing Waitzkin badly, but Josh was a half point up going into the championship game. The inventive move of moving a knight off to the side yielded a dramatic and much-needed DRAW, not a win.  But Josh won the title with the draw, since he had the overall lead before the game began.   In today's Hollywood, forget allowing heroes to lose - a TIE just isn't good enough, even when it means a win.       

2  The Bears lose and are allowed to be bad sports about it.  This is a separate risk from the one above and is even more brave.  In the remake, they'll probably win and the "risk" that the studio will be proud of is that they gloat about it. 

KILL BILL VOLUME 1

In the documentary, Jackie Chan: My Stunts there's a segment showing some behind-the-scenes work on the 1998 film,  Who Am I?, where Jackie fights Ron Smoorenberg.  The footage is fascinating in that it shows the always amiable Jackie Chan getting legitimately annoyed.  The problem? Real-life martial artist Smoorenberg wasn't executing his moves to Jackie's satisfaction and the scene had to be shot over and over again.  The scene struck me for two reasons.  The action excellence that Jackie Chan has dished out film after film is far from effortless and that a high calibre martial artist like Smoorenberg could have such trouble "catching up" illustrates just how high the bar has been raised.  In a way, Jackie Chan has ruined nearly every movie action sequence since the mid-80s since nothing can really compare.  It makes me wonder what Jackie would do if, instead of shooting the scene with Ron  Smoorenberg, he was working with Uma Thurman. 

I like Kill Bill Volume 1.  I like it a whole bunch.  But it really forces the issue of how much you can fake your way into making regular people into action superstars.  There is no doubt in my mind that upon hearing this argument, Quentin Tarantino would bring up Jimmy Wang Yu, kung fu movie superstar of the 70s who never took a single martial arts class in his life.  The difference as I see it is that Wang Yu had different goals for his fight scenes.  Yes, he wanted them to be satisfying, exciting and filled with drama, but not necessarily jaw-dropping on their own.  When you're watching the finale of Master of the Flying Guillotine, as wonderful as it is, the rush of it comes from the strategy unfolding against the seemingly invincible blind master.  You're simply not saying "Oh my god, let me hit rewind so I can see that flurry of action again."    In watching the "Showdown at the House of Blue Leaves" in KB1, I can't help but think that's exactly what Quentin wants us to say.   It feels like a desperate attempt to make a "classic" fight sequence.  During the battle between the Bride and Go Go (Quentin's admitted favorite part in the film)  there's no music, which really makes the audience focus on the fight itself.  The problem is simply that Ms. Thurman doesn't have the goods (and, with the exception of Gordan Liu, nor do most of the other actors in the film).  The result is a lots of quick cuts, which cheat the action.  Mind you, this is a Hollywood technique that is becoming more and more common every day, but I was still surprised to see Quentin resort to it so wholeheartedly. 

I'm not saying the solution is easy.  Yeah, he could have rewritten it for Michelle Yeoh, but although that might solve your action problem, it would completely change the demographic of the audience.  Michelle isn't the name Uma is and isn't the babe Uma is.  Am I saying that the part should have been changed to a male?  Of course not.  The story is what it is (and it's a fun, well-told story at that) and rewrites that change the gender of your lead (something I've had to do myself) tend to gut out a lot of why you wrote the thing in the first place.  In fact, it's almost a smart move to make your lead in a kung fu/samurai movie a babe.  In an age where society embraces endless lies about Title IX, the public kind of wants to see empowered, butt-kicking, girl power in full effect - even if the action is essentailly all the result of smoke and mirrors.

I haven't seen Volume 2 yet, but it should be better (again, I really like Volume One and this entry is just about going off on a very specific problem) because there will be less fighting.  And I never thought I'd hear myself say that.       

THE SECOND COMING OF JC

In summaries of some of the bigger film festivals last fall, you may have read about the new movie Ong Bak: Muay Thai Warrior.  The reviews have been very good, and the action on a level where people can't help but compare it to the Hong Kong films of Jackie Chan.  Although that obviously sounds hyperbolic, it's mostly true.  Above, I insisted that the action in Kill Bill Volume 1 doesn't deliver the goods.  Ong Bak is a relentless goods delivering machine.  Let's be honest, this movie wouldn't exist without Jackie and his influence is clearly felt.  But there's  a huge difference between wanting to make a film like Mr. Chan and being skilled enough to do so. Phanom Yeerum is amazing.  Period.  He's come out of nowhere, and, right out of the gate, he's one of the best action stars going.  If no one has coined the phrase "Phanom the phenom," let me be the first. 
 
I feel the need to respond to the reviews which implied that the story was tired.  I disagree.  It's about a village where the head of their sacred statue has been stolen.  Ting, the young heroic peasant, goes after it and, while trying to retrieve it, gets involved in an underground fighting ring.  That isn't a plot I've seen over and over.  It's sort of The Bicycle Thief meets Bloodsport.  If it were about a martial artist trying to get revenge against the guy who killed his master, then you'd have something.  The story is simple, which is fine.  I've kind of had enough of Joel Silver action movies that have nineteen double crosses at the end.        

In comparing any film to one by Jackie Chan, two elements have to be discussed: Stunts/Chases and Fight Scenes.  The chases and stunts do fall short to those of JC, at least to the ones he generated once he reached his peak (where he stayed for years and years).  Dont' get me wrong, they are a joy to watch.  Ting jumps over cars and through spaces in a way that makes your jaw drop.  These are all long takes and you can't believe he's doing what he's doing.  Although they are filled with the same amazing raw elements as those in Jackie movies, they don't have the artful, lyrical elegance that Jackie has developed.  But again, I'm talking about Jackie as his peak.  These chases are much better than anything in Jackie's pre Drunken Master 1 stuff. 

The fights?  It's too soon to honestly judge, but I think they may be as good as Jackie's best.  Part of the reason I'm hestiant to make a definitive comparison is that this is the first time we've seen Phanom Yeerum.  He uses a full-on Muay Thai style, which is a completely different fighting pallette than what most kung fu movie junkies are used to seeing.   It's filled with elbows and knees and acrobatic jumps and kicks.  I wonder if it's "freshness" might make it unfair to compare it to Jackie's films right now.  We've been seeing Jackie fights for decades and he's still managed to make them wonderful and exciting even if similar moves (kick high, spin around, kick low and knock the guy over) are employed with regularity.  I think only after five or ten more Phanom Yeerum flicks will his fight scenes reveal their genuine excellence.     

The big question I have is what is Phanom Yeerum doing next?  I haven't heard anything, which is shocking.  The obvious project would be something with Jackie Chan.  How about some period story where Phanom chases pirates to Hong Kong?  Can anyone say  Project A, Part III?
     

In the mid 90s, I saw this black-and-white Japanese noir film that I really loved - The Most Terrible Time in My Life (Waga Jinsei Saiaku no Toki).  The detective protagonist is named Maiku Hama (obviously a spin on the Mickey Spillane character) and has his office above a movie theatre.  You can literally see and hear the movie projector while in his office.  The theatre is playing "The Best Years of Our Lives" and for the title sequence they do this cool thing where several of the Japanese characters spin on the marquee to change the title of the movie that's showing to the title of the movie you're watching.  On the surface, the story might seem to suffer from the hero not being proactive enough.  He's sort of caught in the middle of this gang war between involving two Taiwanese immigrant brothers and doesn't solve a lot of mysteries or problems.  I really think that's not an issue.  While Maiku is indeed very reactionary throughout the film and gets beaten up by just about everyone, that's kind of the point.  I mean, this is an art film and it's certainly fitting to the title to have all of this stuff dumped on the hero.   The movie ends by bleeding directly into a preview for the next "Maiku Hama" film in the series Stairway to the Distant Past (Harukana Jidai no Kaidan).  Again, they do something cool, where Maiku has a sign on his door that says "Maiku Hama - Out."  He limps up the stairs and turns the sign to the other side which says "To Be Continued..."  All of a sudden, things are in color and you're seeing scenes from the next movie.