(The Unseen is the red headed step child of The Things That Don’t Suck columns. No matter how hard I try or how hard it triestopleaseme, I always seem to miss its ballet recitals and soccer games, and get it carton of cigarettes for Christmas. But here we are again and I’m going to try and do better. At least until the next time I get to drinking)
Why’d I Buy It?: Cheap Herzog film. Nuff said.
Why Haven’t I Watched It?: Only bought it recently at the Hollywood Video fire sale.
How Was It?: Buddhism is notoriously uncinematic. Unlike the operatic hemming and hawing of the Abramaric religions, and the exocitism of other Eastern religions like Shintoism or Hindi, there’s just not much to show, when it comes to Buddhism. Inner peace and harmony with ones surroundings is a more then noble goal, its just difficult to film. At one point Herzog even complains, that the "Culmination of the spiritual event is invisible to our cameras."
Wheel Of Time documents the Kalachakra festival (later combined with a second festival, when the Dalai Lama grows ill), held at the place where the Buddha first obtained enlightenment, an event for which over half a million Buddhists assemble. The film cuts between the festival itself; both the events, prayers, rituals and arguments and the logistics of feeding and housing half a million monks and lay people. The long arduous pilgrimage the faithful make. And The construction of the Mandala, at the center of both the film and the festival, a beyond intricate sand painting, which represents nothing less then the visualation of Nirvana.
Herzog captures his subjects and their surroundings with his expert documentarian’s vividness. One of my favorite things Herzog does, as a documentarian, is the way he’s not at all afraid to just let a shot run, unworried about communicating over much in story, character, or theme. Instead he just allows the detail to seep into the film allowing the world to sketch itself in its own intensity. He does it frequently throughout the film, seemingly trying to meditate with its subjects. But there is something furtive and restless about Herzog’s camera.
There are certainly shots here that in their oddity and perfection belong with the best of Herzog, like the long shots of pilgrims stopping at literally every step of their journey, to lie down in prostration on their bellies, on their way to the shrine. Its easy to see in these moments of single mindness what made Herzog want to make the film. Wanting to document those who, as he puts it with his inimitable Teutonic precision “Measure the length of the Earth with his body from head to toe.”
And yet, Herzog is a man who has made his reputation documenting the extremes of both human behavior and the physical world. Ironically this is the first time I’ve ever felt him out of his depth. Not that he makes a bad film, far from it. Its just that where he usually charges forth with teutonic vigor, here he seems not quite sure of himself. Its somewhat Ironic that a man might stare madness directly in the face, and yet be unsure how to react to peace and serenity.
Dracula's Daughter is like a Universal film to the tenth degree, emphasizing everything the brand does wrong and right by magnifying it to its full power. It’s gothic horror, its broad comic relief, its sinister only partially subliminated sexuality. Dracula’s Daughter has all that is pleasurable and cringe worthy about this particular subset of genre, and it has it in spades
Dracula’s Daughter is one of the few direct Universal sequels picking up mere seconds after Dracula ends, with Van Helsing arrested for having stabbed a prominent citizen to death. No one will believe that the count and Renfield were Vampires, not even the student Van Helsing brings in to defend him. Luckily for Van Helsing a new Vampiric pair show up in London, and start some Shenanigans. The film carrys over Edward Van Sloan, as Professor Van Helsing. Many criticize Sloan’s performance as Van Helsing as stiff, but I for one am drawn to Sloan’s Teutonic exactitude, over Hopkin’s thick slices of ham and even depending on the day, Cushing’s prim “all in a days work” professionalism.
Tod Browning’s Dracula is a perversely underrated film these days. I personally rank it only behind Whale’s glorious Frankenstein films as the finest of the Universal monster movies. Its stagy (it is after all, adapted from the stage play based on Stroker’s novel rather then the book itself) and is often considered the inferior film when compared to the legendary Mexican version that was made concurrently (and there is, at least in terms of performance some truth to that). But it has this musty old oddness to it, thanks to director Tod Browning that makes it a unique and even hypnotic viewing experience. Its filled with these odd little moments, like when a pack of Armadillos goes scurrying through Dracula’s castle, or a bit where Dracula seduces a pair of socialites by telling them how awesome it would be to be dead. Lugosi’s and Dwight Frye’s freakish performances combine with Browning’s fever dream direction to create something quite unforgettable.
Lambert Hillyer’s (As a side note, having admired the direction on this film I did a cursory search on Hillyer on IMDB and found that he directed 165 films. Not a single one I’ve heard of. Doesn’t that sum up the pleasure and terror of being both a film fan and an artist? I mean shoot even if I did want to explore Hillyer’s career where the hell would I begin? A hundred and sixty five films. Swallowed up, just like that) direction doesn’t isn’t quite as dedicatedly askew as Browning’s. Instead it’s a much more recognizable breed of Bavaesque high Gothic. Indeed the film’s best scene, where the title daughter steals her father’s body and then burns it in a graveyard as part of an archaic ceremony to rid herself of Vampirism feels like a lost scene from Black Sunday. At its best, as it is in this scene, and a vampire attack that is so unabashedly a Sapphic seduction that I’m frankly shocked that it made it past the prudish censors, Dracula's Daughter achieves a sensuous, nightmarish sensibility. At its worse though it keys up the beyond broad comic relief and bland “normal” leads, who are uninteresting even by the low standards of normal people in a Universal flick, to a prominence that is nigh unbearable.
Still there’s certainly more to love then not in this film. Not least of all Gloria Holden’s gripping and sad portrayal as the titular countess and the film’s shadow cloak style. Hambone acting and broad comic relief aside it almost feels more like one of Lewton’s films then the classic universal ones.
I’m a big Broken Lizard apologist. America doesn’t have a great record with comedy troupes. Beyond those annoying collectives that come along every couple of years at first seem so refreshing until they become so ubiquitous that everything that made them fresh and funny now seems like a dead dried husk.
By sticking to their own projects Broken Lizard has mostly avoided this problem. Although they do have the equally pressing issue that no one, save myself and a few dedicated apologists seem to find them very funny. After their out of know where film Super Troopers became a hit. It looked as though Broken Lizard had it made. But then their follow up Club Dread flopped hard and the hilarious Beerfest under performed. Now The Slamming Salmon limps to a DTV release, and for the first time I’m uneasily able to see why.
Like I’ve said I really like all The Broken Lizard films to one extent or another. Hell I even find a lot to like in Club Dread. Any movie that features a life sized Pac Man maze and Bill Paxton as the embittered song writer forever cursing Jimmy Buffet for stealing the thunder of his near hit, “Pina Coladaberg” is okay by me.
The problem with The Slamming Salmon isn’t that its not funny, its that its not funny enough. While the other Broken Lizard films build up such a head of steam that they can easily pass over a few clunker jokes, The Slamming Salmon never builds enough comic momentum to overcome its problems.
It has a pretty killer set up, set in a Miami restaurant, whose owner a former heavy weight champion offers a reward of 10,000 dollars to his number one seller, and a beating to the low man on the totem pole.
Michael Clarke Duncan, playing the owner, reveals a heretofore unknown comedic talent. His Salmon is a great creation, a violent, spoiled, nearly retarded creature of pure id who hasn’t met someone with the balls to tell him no for a very long time. His lines have a kind of absurdist poetry to them from, “Are You Lampooning Me Meat Drapes?” to him forcing his guests translator to repeat everything he says verbatim, but with an accent.
The problem is that few of the other cast members are playing to their strengths. One of the great things about Broken Lizard as a troupe is that they don’t assign character roles. The nutcase in one movie can be the leading man in the next, before he becomes the goofball and then plays the straightman. But this is the first time this really plays against them. Take Kevin Hefferman who also directed the film, though his role in Super Troopers as the sociopathic Farva in Super Troopers is say very different from his one in Beerfest as the walking pile of excess Landfill, both play to Hefferman’s comic strengths, odd intensity, single minded drive, and an almost pathetic desire to be liked. He plays the straightman in The Slamming Salmon, and really none of these skills are used. While Chandraseker and Eric Stolhanske where both able to make the straightman a figure of bruised dignity, Hefferman just provides a place holder for people to be mean to. We just don’t care that much. A fact the movie seems frantically aware of.
As the film progresses, it tries throwing subplot after subplot at the wall with mounting dismay, moving onto others before it has resolved virtually any. Will the former TV star and would be ballerina rekindle their romance? Well the movie figures that you don’t give a damn so it never gets around to answering that question. Will the former TV star, be able to schmooze his former producer? Played mystifyingly by Lance Henrikson looking like he’s finally crawled out of his Pumpkinhead grave. I dunno neither does the movie. Each unresolved subplot is a little speed bump, absolutely killing any sense of pacing the movie might have had.
The Slamming Salmon isn't a complete waste of time. Any movie that features Jay Chandraseker waiting on a table of cats and Michael Clarke Duncan’s profane emasculating wedding toast is not without its chuckles. The problem is even in its funniest moments, it still doesn't feel like enough.
Not because of embargoes or because the movies not worth writing up, its just that my thoughts on it can be summed up relatively simply. Matthew Vaughn has created a groovy little ultra violent piece of pop art that is no doubt the freakiest, funniest, and pound for pound best action movie since Kill Bill Vol. 1. To say Vaughn has a keen eye for action would be an understatement. There’s stuff here that would make John Woo’s balls drop again. He has a skill for editing and staging that is damn near preternatural. Remember I was at the Austin premiere, where the entire audience spontaneously began TO CLAP ALONG WITH THE TEMP SCORE, in an expression of pure movie going joy that has to be one of my favorite moments of film going ever.
In it he employs a performance by Chloe Moretz that’s as iconic as it is problematic (we’ll get to that later), one by Mark Strong that shows why he’s the go to guy for villainy in Hollywood, one by Christopher Mintz Platz which at once invokes Mc Lovin and suggests he’s capable of much more and one by Aaron Johnson that suggests all the depth and feeling of a block of wood.
It also, should be noted, that it contains a Nic Cage performance that made me realize just how much I miss great Nic Cage performances. His Big Daddy, is as mad a performance as any in the "Church Of Latter Day Nicholas Crazy". But its mad in the way that his performance in Raising Arizona, Wild At Heart, and Moonstruck were mad, with your jaw dropped because you had no idea what was about to come next (Of course he talks like Adam West) not because you’re dreading it. His Big Daddy is a grieving monster. And damned if the way he says “Child” didn’t make me laugh Every. Damn. Time.
I literally couldn't believe what I was seeing. And while part of me feels as though anyone who is worrying over the implications of onscreen violence in a movie that climaxes with the hero strapping on a JET PACK is over thinking things. Another part of me can’t help but uneasily think that twenty years ago a killer little girl who didn’t even end up killing resulted in nearly half the film being cut out for its American Release. And ten years ago, the sight of a teenage Japanese girls killing their classmates was enough to turn a film into a something that approached an Urban Legend in the pre bit torrents era. Now we can watch a little girl eviscerate dozens of people in the comfort of the multiplex.
My point is, that Hit Girl is nothing less then a great Pop Art Icon of Shock Cinema; she belongs next to Divine, The Mother Creature In Dead Alive, Ninja Scroll, El Topo, and the chainsaw in Cesar Hernendaz’s head. This isn’t a problem in and of itself. After all as the record shows, Iloveshockcinema. The problem is, this isn’t shock cinema. This is mainstream. You don’t have to go to Chinatown to find it like you did with Battle Royale. You don’t have to momentarily wonder if your friends are fucking with you, like you did the first time you heard about Lone Wolf And Cub or The Killer. You don’t have to muscle your way past the pimps to get to forty second street. Or drive down Deliverance Alley to go see this in some God forsaken Drive In.. Hell you don't even need to go down to the local comic book store, itself a journey well outside the mainstream these days. Nope. This is playing at your friendly neighborhood multiplex. Right next to How To Train Your Dragon.
And that’s what gives me pause. Not that Hit Girl is. But that she is going down without so much of a burp of indegestion. There’s a part of me that despite the awesome self financed, fuck the studio way this film got made, hopes that it flops. And flops hard. Because where does shock cinema go when it no longer shocks? The question leaves me uneasy.
So, now that I've destroyed the claim in the first sentence with eight hundred additional words. From what I intended to be a two hundred word intro, lets get down to what I think is really interesting about Kick Ass, and which in all the brew haha I’ve hardly heard mentioned at all.
(Huge Ass Spoilers Follow)
I’m sure you’ve heard by now how faithful Kick Ass is, to the comic. And how it was developed at the same time, and how it would make the meticulous OCD panel recreations of Watchmen look about as faithful as The Bat Credit Card multiplied by The Emo Spidey Dance?
Well here’s the thing. Kick Ass isn’t faithful. Like at all.
Oh it follows the broad beats. But It changes its story in fundamental ways at nearly every single turn.
For anyone who is interested, I suggest getting your hands on some copies of Kick Ass. Not so you can bitch and moan about what got changed, but because I honestly believe that you can use these two pieces of material as a litmus test for what you really want out of storytelling.
To use the most obvious example (And seriously leave now) is with Big Daddy and Hit Girl. A late period twist in the comic reveals that Big Daddy is completely fucking insane. Even insaner then you’d expect a man who dresses up in a costume and trains his daughter to kill would be. The entire back story he concocts about being a cop, and being set up by drug lords is a lie. He just kidnapped his daughter and turned her into a killing machine because he got bored.
Kind of spoils the fun. Don’t it?
Vaughn’s film bothers with no such grey area. Red Mist is no longer a spoiled sociopath who masturbates while the hero is tortured. He’s a friendly misunderstood nerd who’s somewhat tragic. The heroes’ object of lust is not disgusted by his deception, nor does she send him a picture of herself performing oral sex on his rival. No, she falls straight into his arms. Etcetera, Etcetera Etcetera.
Because say what you will about Mark Millar, but he’s not a coward. When he says he’s going to fuck with the conventions of the superhero orgin story, he means it. Matthew Vaughn not so much. That’s not to say that Vaughn isn’t a skilled filmmaker. Indeed, I’ve enjoyed, even admired to one degree or another, all of his films. Its just when you take thirty million dollars of friend’s money, subverting the narrative past the breaking point, is not first on your to do list. And like I said, I might think was Millar wrote is more interesting, but I’m damn sure what Vaughn made was more enjoyable.
But at the end of the day that choice is up to you. Do you want something that really pushes the envelope? Or safely approximates it? I don’t think there’s an inherent amount of shame in either choice. I just acknowledge that a question is posed.
(So I've been helping to program, a film noir retrospective here in SLO. I took a two month hiatus, while others took the hosting job. But I'm back this month for the final film in the series. The Asphalt Jungle.
Once again this was written for speech so the syntax might be a bit odd. Please forgive me. Otherwise Enjoy.)
The film we’re showing today is The Asphalt Jungle. It’s a noir film notable for the fact that many purists would contend that its not a noir film at all, but technically a crime movie. I obviously disagree, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
The film was directed by John Huston, whose famous for making films in virtually ever genre that exists. War films, Epics Westerns, Spy Films, Action films comedies, Musicals even adaptations of Flannery O’Conner and Joyce one of the things that makes Huston so much damn fun is the fact that he never allowed himself to be pigeonholed.
All of that being said, the one genre according to some people, that Huston never made, despite making The Asphalt Jungle and The Maltese Falcon as well as starring in arguably the great neo noir with Chinatown, was a noir film. The reason is simple, if you can remember back to when I first talked about Film Noir all the way back with Out Of The Past, I said that the thing that separates Noir from the crime film or the mystery, is that Noir usually deals with normal people being lured into committing evil desperate acts. In other words, its not the acts themselves that lend Noir films their power, but the fact that these seemingly normal characters at there center can be committing these acts.
Therefore, since The Asphalt Jungle, is a film in which career criminals, not “good citizen’s” are committing these crimes, just as The Maltese Falcon follows Private Eyes and gangsters, they are not true Noirs.
But what these films feature that is even more important, is the character of fate as a conscience force. In the key scene in Hammett’s novel, Sam Spade tells his client the story of a man who when he was nearly killed in a random accident one day, fled his family and moved to another part of the country in order to change the course of his life and avoid such a fate. After a few years he settled into the exact same groove, and even started a second family, only to be killed in another random accident. The point is, no matter where you run, your fate is your own. Once it has its knives sharpened for you, there is no way to escape.
The message is carried over in The Asphalt Jungle. Its characters are doomed, whether by fate in the external sense, or their own inescapable flaws matters very little in the end. The professor cannot help but stop and watch The Bobbysoxers dance. His nature seals his own fate.
The Asphalt Jungle, runs as smoothly as fate itself. Huston was one of Hollywood’s best storytellers as well as one of its most impeccable casters, and both aspects of his art are in full swing here. There is of course Marylin Monroe in her first role beautiful and doomed ("Do I still get my trip to Cuba?"), and Sam Jaffe, wonderfully perverse and corrupt as the dirty old man behind it all.
But its really Sterling Hayden who holds it all together. Hayden, never seemed quite so self aware, as Bogart and Mitchum. Though he can play shrewd and smart, like he did in his other great Noir of fate, Kubrick’s The Killers, he was also awfully good at playing dumb.
He’s just tough enough to take all the punishment the world can dish out at full brunt. And in this film, the world never runs out of ammo.
He is in the end what gives the movie the noble dignity required of noir. He’s what makes it hurt.
I’d have to go with Crawford. You can’t argue with Jowls like that.
2) What movies improve when seen in a state of altered consciousness? (Patrick Robbins)
An Altered state helps smooth over some of The Fountain’s sillyness while framing its magesty. But I think its underrating that film to term it a Stoner Movie. Oddly enough one of my favorite movies to watch in an Altered State is The Aviator. I don’t know if Improved is the right word, but the opulence of that film, relaxed pace, and occasional bracing bits of style make it a blast to watch.
3) Favorite studio or production company logo?
I’d don’t know if it counts but I basically have a Pavolovian reaction to the Janus film logo.
4) Celeste Holm or Joan Blondell?
Blondell. Nightmare Alley.
5) What is the most overrated "classic" film? (Tony Dayoub)
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest and Lolita both annoy me. The first because it takes everything interesting and difficult in Kesey’s book and throws it away. The second because, its to borrow from Ebert, your basic Dog walking on hind legs scenario. Just because one is surprised to see it done at all does not mean it is being done well.
6) What movie do you know for sure you saw, but have no memory of seeing? (Patricia Yokoe Cozzalio)
Hmm… No clue.
7) Favorite Hammer Film?
Brides Of Dracula. By Far. Its hallungetic, gorgeous, kinky, Basically everything I want from a Hammer film.
I do have to give a special jury prize to Captain Kronos Vampire Hunter (The K makes it sexy). Which is totally ridiculous and totally awesome.
8) Gregory Itzin or Joe Pantoliano?
Pantoliano, hands down. He may be guilty of over extending the brand, but no ones more dependable for a despicable scumbag. And Teddy in Memento remains a righteous performance.
9) Create a double feature with two different movies with the same title. No remakes. (Peter Nellhaus)
Off by a letter but I can’t help but go with Trick R’ Treat last years fun Creepshow Homage paired with Trick or Treat, the heavy metal horror movie featuring both Gene Simmons and Ozzy Osbourne.
10) Akiko Wakabayashi or Mie Hama? (Ray Young)
Mie Hama beat Diana Rigg to the punch. That and she also played a character named Madame Piranha in King Kong Returns. Which would give anyone a leg up.
11) Can you think of a (non-porn) movie that informed you of the existence of a sexual act you had not known of prior? (Bob Westal)
The only things that come to mind are comedies.
“What’s a ZJ?”
“If you have to ask. You can’t afford it.”
12) Can you think of a black & white movie that might actually improve if it was in color? (Patrick Robbins)
Once again I don’t know if improved is the right word, I just know that every time I watch an Ozu color film, I’m sad that there aren’t more.
13) Favorite Pedro Almodovar Film?
Volver. Cruz has never been lovelier.
14) Kurt Raab or Udo Kier?
Oh that’d be Kier for sure and certain. If only for the moment where he feeds his guts through the projector in the underrated Cigarette Burns.
15) Worst main title song (Peter Nellhaus)
Die Another Day. Which Manages to be the worst Bond Theme in a category that includes a Sheena Easton song.
16) Last movie you saw in a theater? On DVD, Blu-ray or other interesting location/format?
Theater: How To Train Your Dragon (meh) DVD: Blue Collar (Schrader)
17) Favorite movie reference within a Woody Allen movie? (Larry Aydlette)
Any from Love And Death. If I had to sum up Allen’s career in one image it would be his riff on Bergman’s dance of death at the end of the film.
18) Mary Astor or Claudette Colbert?
There’s something in Colbert that makes you want to protect her. There’s something in Astor that looks as though it never needed to be protected. Take your pick.
19) Favorite trailer (provide YouTube link if possible)?
I love The Gangs Of New York Teaser Trailer. Much better then the film’s clumsy trailer and makes better use of Horner’s Charging Fort Wagner, then Glory ever did.
20) Oddest double bill you either saw or saw listed in a theater?
I came of movie going age after the fall of the double bills. Much less the really odd Double Bills.
I’m going to have to go for the obvious one, with Walking Tall.
22) Favorite “social problem” picture?
I still say Stone’s Natural Born Killers is an underrated movie. Sure its overwrought. Its made by Oliver Stone. But it’s points about how we react to violence by safely cloaking ourselves in moral outrage hit a lot closer to home then it gets credit for.
23) Your favourite Harryhausen film/monster? (Ali Arikan)
Skeletons man. Skeletons.
(Skeletons)
24) What was the first movie you saw with your significant other? (Patrick Robbins)
I’m currently single (shocking I know). My last SO and I met at a Cirio Santiago double feature at the New Bev.
25) John Payne or Ronald Reagan?
John Payne as he was presumably not responsible for deregulating big business, throwing insane people out on the street, and ignoring the spread of AIDS.
26) Movie you feel a certain pressure or obligation to see that you have not yet actually seen
Almodvar. I’ve seen some of his movies but have always sort of ignored him because of his Anti Catholicism. Now that, as Jack Nicholson put it in The Departed, “The Confessional Seal is a little iffy these days. I have less reason not to see it.
Also Goddard, but I’m more annoyed at that pressure. I’ve seen Band Of Outsiders, and Alphaville, and Weekend and I still just plain don’t care. I’m glad he made Breathless but that was fifty years ago. I haven’t been glad he’s made a movie since.
27) Favorite “psychedelic” movie (Hey, man, like, define it however you want, man…)
If bad trips count I’d say Alan Parker’s The Wall.
Gotta love Gerald Scarfe
28) Thelma Ritter or Eve Arden?
Ritter. My love for Pickup knows no bounds. The whole Rear Window and The Misfits thing doesn’t exactly hurt either.
29) Favorite iconic shot or image from a film?
John Wayne clutching his arm, before leaving civilization forever in The Searchers.
30) What is the movie that inspired the most memorable argument you ever had about a movie?
Hmm… this is tougher then it sounds. I have entire friendships that are basically long memorable arguments about the movies. And there was the time when I had an argument with a customer over a hundred and forty dollar late fee for Fritz The Cat and she beat up a strangers Vespa outside which she for some reason thought was mine. But I don’t know if it counts.
The most memorable argument I had though wasn’t about a specific movie. It’s more centered around the way the argument went down. It was with a friend of a friend, who I was annoyed with. One of those film geeks who doesn’t really like other film geeks. We where talking I was a bit drunk, and I admittedly made some dumb lapses in logic trying to “beat” him.
Which led to me admittedly getting my ass semantically handed to me. It was kind of like that scene in The Color Of Money where Newman gets hustled by Whitaker. This dazed sense of “Wow did that just happen?”
At the end of the day though I think it was good for me. As the old timer’s say “It learned me.”
31) Raquel Torres or Lupe Velez?
Lupe Velez never captured Groucho’s heart.
32) Favorite adaptation of Shakespeare to a film?
I have a certain affection for Julie Taymor’s batshit crazy artschool representation of Titus Andronicus. But I think I’d either have to tip my hat to Polanski’s Macbeth, surely the most underrated and misunderstood film in his career, or McKellan’s Richard III.
33) Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein (in 3D)-- yes or no?
Haven’t seen it.
34) Favorite movie rating?
Pre PG-13 PG. It’s a mysterious rating. You genuinely never know what you’re about to see. Could be something Bambi safe, and there might be Blood and Tits galore. You just never know!
35) Olivia Barash or Joyce Hyser?
Olivia Barash.
36) What was the movie that convinced you your favorite movie genre was your favorite movie genre?
Don’t have one. Youu can’t make me pick between Chopin, The Beatles and The Ramones.
There are some movie critics who after reading a while you have to wonder whether or not they even like movies.
This is not a problem one has with Steve Hayes.
Hayes has been doing this for awhile, but I just discovered it through TCM's Movie Morlocks Blog. Its not hard to see why they felt compelled to share. Hayes enthusiam is contagious. So get thee to his You Tube Channel. There are worse ways to spend an afternoon then with a Tired Old Queen.
A Demon To Some An Angel To Others. Critic/Filmmaker/Factotum dedicated to engaging art on its own terms. Occasionally cruel but never incurious or dismissive. And always enthusiastic
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