madget,

Oh, I caught the playfulness of your last few posts -- for the most part. What I sorta skipped over somehow was the "when I get a free rental" bit, indicating, to me at the moment at least, that you were taking our recommendations of the flick a little more seriously, tho.

The small screen, tho? Nah -- I need it on the BIG screen, maaan... Altho I am gonna watch my previously-viewed video store copy of the first picture before I see the sequel.

PS -- sorta related: I want Drew Barrymore to play Jay Stephens' Jetcat in a feature film!

Matthew

Sure, you know; I respect your tastes, and Charles', in a general sort of way. But I have a very strong suspicion that your mutual appreciation of Charlie's Angels is the result of some severe critical malfunction, probably the same that deems Buffy laudable television programming.

And for Charles to snub The Heroic Trio as an inferior effort! An uncalled for provocation which I refuse to believe can have a basis in anything other than a crude mixture of TV nostalgia and misguided libido.


K

Well, my love of the series is certainly part of it, but, on the other hand, it doesn't touch upon some of the facets of the motion picture I liked best. The biggest one would be the action about which I've rhapsodized so. The series had some action, some physical violence, even some person-to-person "fighting" -- but not really that much, surprisingly, and nothing remotely of the nature or on the scale of the motion picture.

Matthew

This TRIO vs. ANGELS controversy is something on which reasonable men can disagree. To me the former is only a middling attempt of the crazier genre-films of Hong Kong (with which I'm not all that enamored), whereas the latter is a superlative example of spectacle commodity being churned out by the contemporary Hollywood machine (with which, likewise, I'm not all that enamored). It's my belief that neither is intrinsically more aesthetically worthy, though.

You know, K, Bordwell makes an interesting point about how "Hollywood" current Hong Kong is, but with films like TRIO, it just seems like a sloppy substitute. Unfortunately, I think the cluttered action sequences of undefinable objects in motion that you see in films like TRIO have spilled over into Hollywood product like BATMAN & ROBIN, ARMAGEDDON, and even ANGELS 2 -- sort of a live-action equivalent to all those fucking background lines in cheap anime. (Granted, TRIO is still one of the better superhero films. Tsk, tsk for the genre as a whole, I say.)

A "superlative example" of spectacle Hollywood commodity? Surely you exaggerate. Robocop is a superlative example of spectacle Hollywood commodity. I have a very difficult time believing "McG's" work is on anywhere near the same level.

As for The Heroic Trio, Siu Tung's early action work is definitely a bit cluttered, but to set it alongside the likes of Batman & Robin or Armageddon suggests to me you haven't watched these films very carefully.

(Not that TRIO is anywhere near the best HK cinema has to offer, of course. I'm a little curious which HK genre films have left you particularly disappointed ... or is it just the style of that industry in general?)

As for Bordwell, I acknowledge it's a very mainstream and sloppy industry, but I'd argue it's still a much different animal than Hollywood; but that's another discussion all together.


K

PS - Btw, I dunno if you got my reply via e-mail, but I just wanted to mention I got your brief note from way back when the other day; sorry! I don't check my hotmail much so I missed it until now.

On the babe-itude factor: can't imagine why anyone wouldn't put CHARLIE'S ANGELS

As far as the babeliciousness factor pertains, I've no problem putting CHARLIES ANGELS 1 on the same level as THE HEROIC TRIO.

THE HEROIC TRIO is overall a better movie than CA, though, and I didn't find HT "cluttered." Superhero/adventure narratives in general were never meant to be models of the Aristotelian unities. I've got a Robert Louis Stevenson quote around somewhere to support this, if I remembered where it was, but the gist is that adventure-stories are meant to be filled with "incident" rather than characterizational depth. One has only to read TREASURE ISLAND to see how Stevenson put that into practice.

I think HT may appear cluttered because it lets conventional narrative go hang and just plows ahead with a cornucopia of familiar story-motifs that I (for one) find irresistable. The recognition of long-separated siblings (here substitute fellow students), the fiendish master with a vague world-conquering scheme, the recalcitrant slave. And somehow there is a sort of loose consistency of characterization that one doesn't find, say, in your average Jackie Chan film.

CA 1 (I haven't seen 2 yet) wasn't quite that good, but it did establish its tone early on with the in-flight movie, TJ HOOKER THE MOVIE.

I think CHARMED is Spelling's best series, but CA is the more iconic.

JLA fans have really ruined the word "iconic" for me, but anyway...

Young Michelle Yeoh is way better looking than Cameron Diaz. That's all I need to know when it gets right down to it.

Heroic Trio has a much smoother plot than Charlie's Angels. I still have absolutely no idea what most of the "undercover" scenes were about beside the novelty factor of seeing Drew Barrymoore dress in drag in at least two of them and I've seen episodes of the G.I. Joe cartoon that made more sense to me.

Other than that one scene where Barrymoore was wearing the NASCAR jump suit and had the Farrah Fawcett hair, I didn't find any of the "sexy" stuff particularly sexy... so ultimately, the movie exists just to show the three leads in a lot of different clothes.

There's a villain to catch and stuff, but I stopped caring right around the point Sam Rockwell revealed he was evil.

Heroic Trio's plot revolving around stolen babies was... odd, but at least the film got me to care if the heroines won or not.

Here's a belated response to some've the posters so far.

First, I just saw AUDITION and loved every minute of it. Like PSYCHO, this is a film that sneaks up on you, with a deceptively tranquil first half that suddenly vears off into total horror, hallucination, and perversion. The castration-anxiety bit, in particular, was very creepy.

I also saw Godard's ELOGE DE L'AMOUR (IN PRAISE OF LOVE) again and liked it even more the second time. Who knows, maybe this is one of my favorite Godard movies, up there with VIVRE SA VIE and WEEKEND. Anyway, now that 9/11 has receded into history, Godard's anti-Americanism/anti-Spielbergism seems far less shrill than when this movie first came out--in Sept. '01. Reviewers thought it was their patriotic duty to fend off Godard's attacks. But, you know what? Godard's right on nearly every point, even if he's a bit shrill at times. The criticism that the film is "too sad" or "not happy enough" strikes me as a peculiarly American criticism. The first things that European
tourists notice about Americans when visiting the US for the first time is the epidemic of obesity and the ever-present "fixed smile", the creepy rictus of enforced optimism that greets you everywhere, from the stewardesses to the waiters. As Eisenhower's vice-president said, "In America these days, to be unhappy is to be un-patriotic." Yes, it's a sad movie, but its also beautifully filmed and extremely funny.

THE BELIEVER is far from being just another self-hating Jew story. What I liked is the way it develops thae main character's thinking about anti-semitism until he comes, full circle, back to being a Jew. Actually, this kind of circular-reasoning is very typical of Judasim and he seems to realize it and resent it (what he hates about the Jews above all is their "abstraction"). Toward the end he tells a bewildered group of anti-semites that the way to defeat the Jews is "to love them" and he seems serious about it--at this stage he's still a devoted neo-Nazi. What he resents is the notion of Judaism as a masochistic religion in which one is encouraged to embrace one's victimhood, Jews as "a people who never take yes for an answer". He sees the Abraham and Issac story as the epitomy of this attitude. And the cult of Holocaust-victimization allows the Isreali state to, with good conscience, subjugate another people. All of this is food for thought. What's clever is the way the writer/director has him say things that, on further examination, actually have some merit as argument. "The Israelis aren't really Jews because they have land", in particular, is an argument that many anti-Zionist Jews have been making for years now. Don't agree with it myself, tho.

No comment on CHARLIE'S ANGELS. Haven't seen it, don't plan to. Finally saw the HULK and liked everything but the tedious pop-psychology--in other words, I liked 10% of the film. I wanna see Hulk break things, I don't give shit about his childhood traumas.

Terminator 3 was way better than Angels. Man, that was a great fucking film!