Euphoria #25

Funny scene from KUNG FU HUSTLE, directed by and starring Stephen Chow, suggested by film student and action movie enthusiast Rehan Yousuf.

Reehan is rendered EXTREMELY VOLUBLE by all action-related thoughts. John Woo is his God. He is a spiritual brother to Nick Frost’s character in HOT FUZZ. Yet I feel he is redeemed by his affection for Jean Arthur.

Though never really wooed by Woo (I get TIRED of blood capsules and slomo), I admit to admiring Stephen Chow enormously. PRINCE OF BEGGARS is fun, SHAOLIN SOCCER is lots of fun (my friend Garry Marshall’s three little kids thought the goalkeeper having his clothes blasted off by a supercharged football’s aftershock was THE FUNNIEST THING EVER), and KUNG FU HUSTLE is possibly the best live-action Warner Bros cartoon ever. It shouldn’t be possible to sustain a feature without any respect for the laws of physics, but Chow gets away with it, partly by keeping his central character on the sidelines for so long (and acting as a BAD GUY), and partly by sheer invention. Apart from the grotesque exaggeration of much of the action (like the guy who mutates into a toad thru Kung Fu), mostly this is done by clever stuff of the kind seen here: unusual visual gags of the kind nobody’s really thought to try before.

I love the way the knife handle sticks to her face.

Best of all, apart from a spot of axe-related unpleasantness at the start (setting up the Big Bad Guy’s Big Bad Guyness), the film is enjoyable innocent and not really violent in a Bruce Lee or even a Jackie Chan way. It’s a lovable action movie.

Start looking forward to the next Chow NOW: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0940709/

Quote of the day: King Zog Shot Back!

 

“I might have known: every time I try to see The Magic Flute, something happens! I have yet to get a peek at the third act. Last time, King Zog lost Albania right in the middle of the opening aria!”

~ newsman Walter Abel in ARISE MY LOVE.

Directed by Mitchell Leisen.

Screenplay by Billy Wilder and Charles Brackett.

The beautifully-named Albanian monarch is the only world leader in history to have responded to an assassination attempt by drawing his own pistol and blasting away at his assailant, a noteworthy fact commemorated in Nicholas Roeg’s installment of the operatic compendium film ARIA – which makes the connection between Zog and opera two-fold.

Now we know…

More on Cronenberg and bodily fluids. 

Thanks to regular reader and pal Chris Bourton for this screen grab from Cronenberg’s EASTERN PROMISES. I wondered awhile back about whose name was chiseled into the gravestone that gets pissed on partway through the film. Does the fact that I care about this trivial point so much mean that I really liked the film, or that I didn’t really like the film?

One theory I entertained was that this might be Mr. Cronenberg’s way of getting back at a critic. But there might be legal repercussions in using somebody’s name this way, and also, it would be distracting to many if the gravestone read “R.I.P. Robin Wood”… so I would expect some kind of code to be used. It wouldn’t matter if nobody ever decoded this, it would just give a quiet satisfaction to whoever placed the name. Can we unmask Hastings?

Hmm, Elliot Hastings is an anagram of “hostile slating”… also “Ealing shot list”, which is nice and filmic, “genital slosh it” (fairly appropriate), “still not geisha” (a gnomic plot synopsis of Cronenberg’s M. BUTTERFLY?), and the very apt “slashing toilet”.

Apart from all that, the only film-related reference I can find to an Elliot Hastings is a character name in the 1956 jungle romp BEYOND MOMBASA. The role is taken by Ron Randell, in a cast also including Cornel Wilde and Cronenberg’s future fellow horror stalwart Christopher Lee.

Hmm, better put this one down as “unsolved”…for now.