Foreign Matter

List of the movies I've watched so far since January 1, 2009:

La Mome / La Vie en Rose

A superb biopic from French director Olivier Dahan about the life and times of the legendary Edith Piaf. The film stars Marion Cotilliard, who was awarded the Academy Award for Best Actress last year for her efforts.



Cotialliard's performance is mesmerizing, and it's tremendous how she uses every bit of body language, make-up, and voice-talent to bring Edith Piaf to life.

Crappy Rating Rhyme: La Vie en Rose certainly won't make you doze!

Lust/Caution

A glib analysis of Ang Lee's canon would be to say that he keeps remaking Romeo and Juliet, i.e., his movies all have the following elements:

• two people fall in love/lust/passion... whatever...;
• each person is bound to an entrenched lifestyle governed by societal and/or familial traditions;
• their shared love in in major conflict to their life, and because of that...
• their love is doomed;
• one of the lovers dies and/or runs away to the South American jungle in an effort to control his Hulk powers;
• the other lover tries to come to terms with the ruined affair (ultimately futile)

Thing is, he does it so well. And aside from the unfortunate detour that was the Hulk, he keeps getting better and better.



A lot of the buzz about this movie comes from the explicit the sex scenes, and holy crap, are they scorching. Hint: If you like sex scenes where you see the guy's ball sac, prepare yourself to see some ball sac! Kudos to Tang Wei and Tony Leung who demonstrate such bravery in their performances. And not only in the sex scenes. There is a raw nakedness to the performances throughout the film. It's quite astonishing

Crappy Rating System: Who has two thumbs and likes Ang Lee movies? THIS GUY!!!
(I couldn't rhyme "caution".)

Sukiayki Western: Django

Director Takashi Miike is well known for his arresting cinematic mash-ups. In Audition, he mixed light-romantic comedy with psychological horror. With Ichi the Killer he mixed a Japanese Yakuza epic with... well horror again in such a disturbing manner part of me wishes I could un-watch that movie. With Sukiyaki Western: Django he mixes the spaghetti western with a samurai epic.

I, soooo, wanted to like this film. A Japanese film homage where all the actors speak English. Sound like it was right up my alley. But instead of kitchy-cool, the movie was like to dialogue: Without context, hard to understand and out of sync. Still, it has one of the best final scenes in movie history. Yep, even better than Deathproof. For those of you who don't like spoilers, beware the following clip:



Cool, huh? I just with the whole movie was like that.

Crappy Rating Rhyme: I'm sorry but Django is a no-go.

Misc:

• I really liked Zack and Miri Make a Porno. It was sweet and disgusting at the same time. Pure Kevin Smith.
• I'm bumping Q-Tip's The Renaissance on the I-Pod quite regularly know. It's the return of soulful, creative and innovative hip-hop.
• I tried reading The Last Temptation of Christ, but like the Bible itself, I lost patience with the language. The Scorsese film is superb, though!
• Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima's Samurai Executioner is fantastic. A sobering and sometimes very graphic meditation on justice and punishment. Not recommended for every reader. Pick this one up using your own discretion.