Ahoy, squirts! Senior member of the Church of Chow (or simply COC), Quint here with Unk, the spy with no name, and his marvelous conversion to join the rest of his brothers and sisters. COC is a great thing to have in your life. COC will enlighten you, make you a better person... matter of fact, the more COC you have in you, the better your life will be. See, Unk has only had COC in him for a day and I bet you he doesn't know how he survived all those years without COC. Praise be the COC. Anyway, Brother Unk was able to fit in this screening of KUNG FU HUSTLE in his busy schedule of bothering producers and directors trying to get his script made and now he knows how it's really done. Now I will pray to the COC and I suggest you do the same, for the sake of your mortal souls!
Unk, the spy with no name (lol!) is back with his 3rd and 4th days @ the Sundance Film Festival!
More mini-reviews, more cautionary tales, more harassing!!!
3rd day - Stephen Chow's "Kung Fu Hustle"
Today, I got to see Stephen Chow's latest,"Kung Fu Hustle". Chow is the same fella who directed "Shaolin Soccer", one of the most creative Kung Fu movies ever - where a bunch of players use their Kung Fu to win soccer games (can you picture the sequences in your mind?)
Stephen Chow is also the guy who would directed MY freakin' film "The Metal Vendetta" - a story about a bunch of musicians who use their own instruments as weapons. I mean, literally. In this cartoonish world, that I've invented, dart-throwing flutes can be as deadly as metal-made cellos - being used as giant hammers by a hideous orchestra!!!
Can you picture anyone better than Mr. Chow to bring this idea to the big screen!?
Well, me neither. But his publicist disagreees. That's why I said "WOULD" directed my film.
As soon as I stalked Mr. Chow all the way to his car and managed to have my sorry-ass-screenplay 5 inches away from his hand... And closed my eyes, picturing myself swimming in a 200x200 yards Beverly Hills' pool, surrounded by Nicole Kidman, Penelope Cruz and Marisa Tomei...
The freakin' publicist went like...
-I'm sorry, we cannot take scripts due to.... You know, right!?
"Damnit, of course I do. But I DON'T CARE!!!!! Is it okay if I give you my word I won't sue you if you ever make a movie similar to my screenplay? I was a boy scout once. I keep my word... most of the time!" - That's what I planned on saying... As Mr. Chow's car ran into the sunset, leaving a big "FADE TO BLACK." action line in my pathetic life script. (see? I'm not only a screenwriter, I'm a poet as well!!!)
Anyways, let's get back to the meat. KUNG FU HUSTLE is awesome! 4 stars out of 5!
If it is awesome why am I not giving it 5 out of 5 stars?
*It is a bit too long.
*Some of the sequences are completelly unbelievable.
*The CGI (especially the supporting cables, for the 50 feet jump scenes) is evident in quite a few fights.
But hey, who freakin' cares?
I mean, Kung Fu Hustle is the kind of movie that does not need to be "perfect". At least CGI-wise. Actually, you WON'T want it to be perfect.
Why? For instance... One of the Top Fighters in the movie is... a disgusting lady who rents apartments to the other fighters (beggars, butchers, hair-stylists, etc) and can rip people's clothes off with her screams...! Well, technically, they are not screams, they are an ancient and powerful Kung Fu Tecnique known as "The Lion's Roar"... )
See what I mean? Kung Fu Hustle is like a Troma movie with 100 times more budget and without the massive suckage level! It is intended to be outlandish, and wayyyyyyyyyyyyy over the top. The not-so-good CGI does not make the movie worse. It highlights its comic aspect - like when the Roadrunner kept running over thin air, and Wile Coyote looked down and fell, in the Disney cartoon.
KFH is not intended to raise the Kung Fu movies bar. It is intended to take the bar, brake it in two, and return it to the owner saying "Goddamnit, you should use stronger wood, grasshopper"...
I was going to say more, but this is the kind of flick that has to be SEEN, not read. Sufice to way... It works! Works in a Troma-esque way, works as visual entertainment, works as a comedy. It just plain... works! Go see it, I'll shut my mouth right now...
And instead, will just try to remember, with a big smile on my face... [TINY SPOILERS - 'cause you have too see these with your own eyes, to have your fun spoiled]:
The guy who fights a mobster using his shower curtain rings as protective bracelets... In one of the best fight scenes ever since Jackie Chan's "The Legend of the Drunken Master"...
The skinny kid who spends his family's life savings buying a crappy Kung Fu manual that was only offered to him because he cleary has the "bone structure" of a Shaolin master... Reminding me of the funniest scene in Dumb & Dumber, when the little blind boy buys a dead bird...
The landlady that kicks the mobsters' assess own her own... The funniest version possible - of Kill Bill's Pai Mei...
Ah, heck... Forgot what I said ^upstairs^... 4 out of 5 stairs is bullshit. Screw the CGI problems, and the pointless sequences inserted to make a 70-minute script (tops!) into a 99-minute movie. I'll give Kung Fu Hustle 5 stars out of 5, anyway!
4th day - Michael Daniel's "Walking with Freedom"
Busy day harassing directors and producers. Couldn't do much, as far as movie-watching.
Only saw the "off-Sundance" (like in NY, where there's the Broadway stageplays, and the Off-Broadway stageplays, here it is the same) "Walking With Freedom" by director Michael Daniel.
It is a TERRIFIC documentary, about a guy who hikes from John Browns raid in Harpers Ferry, to the first Washington Monument, to small forgotten places that had a permanent impact on the power of the people and the freedoms they fought and died for. He covers American History from The American Revolutionary War, The Civil War, through all the trails that made America what it is from the wildness that it once was, as its website claims.
Won't say much more about this one, cause it's not an "official Sundance flick" (So... What is this supposed to mean!?). But if you want to know more about it, just go and check walkingwithfreedom.com .
