We are studying Neuroanatomy
and Occlusion during this block.
Thank goodness I took anatomy this Summer! Nothing has been too bad so far, I don’t
think this will really be any different.
I am looking forward to Thanksgiving Break. I will be reading, writing, studying, getting
outdoors, and lounging. Just need to
make sure I pass the next test so I won’t have to be stressed.
Started reading a really good Leonard Cohen biography called “I’m
your Man”. It tends to put Natalie
asleep when I read out loud, so whenever I start she starts accusing me of
trying to knock her out. I just thought
she would be interested in the Canadian stuff.
Ha ha. Reading some of his early
poems and excerpts of stories…it’s pretty impressive. It’s like he always could write.
Gonna go see James Bond this weekend. I loved the first Daniel Craig one, not so
keen on the second one. Supposedly this
one will be great. My expectations are
high.
This past week I watched both The Killer and Hard Boiled, directed
by John Woo. I figured since they feature the same actor director and
genre I should just watch them in quick succession to get the most out of it.
Watching these films took me back to High School, a time where my brother
and I were obsessed with bad action movies and replicating a version of them
ourselves. If we had a free afternoon, the only option for us was to pull
out my Dad's clunky old black camera and start piecing together some sort of
Kung-Fu movie. When there were only two of us, one had to hold the
camera, and we had to get creative with the action scenes. In one short
in particular, we fight each other without ever being in the same frame even
once. It was an intense shoot out, and ended with the twist that we had
been fighting over a pair of high heels. We also filmed a few with our
cousins and friends. These always turned out the best because, like the
Killer and Hard Boiled, the body count could be high. With just 4 extra
people playing multiple people, the henchmen could become infinite. In
every scene, every extra would get killed before the camera would cut away.
Rinse and Repeat. Although we never pulled out the ketchup to make
fake gore, it was clear that we had an unhealthy penchant for violence.
The other funny
thing about those early movies we made was that the plot was always just an
afterthought. It was something obligatory only to get you to the next
scene where Keith would come at me with some sort of household appliance turned
weapon. In one scene, 4 people were all fighting each other.
Strangely, one was using a thigh master as some sort of bludgeoning
device while another was strangling people with a pair of my sister's grey
sweatpants. When choreographing action scenes, we spent time and paid
attention to all the details. We would think about them weeks ahead of
time and practice the whole thing long before we hit the record button.
With the editing system we had, you were much better off if you could
film all the scenes in order, and preferably only the once. The story
lines, on the other hand, were an off the cuff generic mess. Generally a
secret agent had to infiltrate some base and eventually fight the end boss.
Often there would be a partner who was a double agent on the inside who
would join forces with the hero, and usually end up getting killed towards the
finale for dramatic effect. There were just reheated standard plots from
the kung-fu and cop movies we had been watching. The reason I write about
all this in conjunction with John Woo's two movies is that if I would have kept
making films this way my entire life, I believe I would eventually have become
some sort of version of John Woo.
I understand
terrible action movies because of those experiences. The directors aren't
bad or dumb people, they are just overly excited about the action and don't
really get an adrenaline rush thinking about character interactions. They
just want to see stuff blow up, like my brother and I did. These days, I
have less appreciation for shoot-em-up style movies if they don't have anything
else going for them, but I at least feel like I sympathize with the director’s
mania. To John Woo the action scenes are
the art, the rest is all periphery.
He does some cool stuff as well.
Here are some of the things that stuck out:
-The whole final scene of The Killer is great because of the
contrast. Shoot-out in a church, blood
on the white suit, blood on flour, doves flying around during the violence…it’s all great. As a kid I would have loved to come up with
stuff like that, I would have thought it was hilarious. It makes everything so much more dramatic. Same thing in Hard Boiled, the last scene is
in a hospital with crying babies and sick people running for the exit.
-Out of the two movies, I think I preferred Hard Boiled. Keeping everything I wrote about above in
mind, it was because it seemed that Woo was a bit more concerned with making
the characters more complex. Amongst the
cops and criminals there are characters with honor and some without. The Killer tried to build this dynamic, but I
didn’t feel like Chow Yun Fat’s character really was all that tragic. I didn’t feel bad for him as a repentant assassin,
and the last scene felt even more videogame like. There was way more joy in finale of Hard
Boiled because of the unexpected nature of some of the character’s actions.
-Watching the movies through my young director’s eyes, I loved all
the sliding on the ground shooting scenes.
Or sliding down bannisters. Or
sliding around on gurneys in the morgue.
Or sliding in to a building on a motorcycle and shooting the entire
time. Somebody needs to replicate the slide
shoot in some video game. Best move
ever.
-Nobody ever, ever, runs out of bullets.
Next week is Walkabout.
Stream it on Hulu.
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