Marian_typepad_com Reviews

Bam Bam and Celeste (2005)

A New Cult Classic!

[8/10 · 28 June 2009]

I LOVE this edgy flick and I'm here to tell you Celeste & Bambam is gonna be a CULT Classic. YOU HAVEN'T SEEN A FILM LIKE THIS BEFORE! The kinda wild combo of a funky Korean-American girl, Celeste Chun (MARGARET CHO) and hip, gay Black American guy, Bambam (BRUCE DANIELS) teams up to escape "in your face" white racism in the U.S. Midwest. While they work their way cross-country to overcome their past, Celeste tells Bambam "Someday people are gonna wanna hear what WE have to say!" Right on, Celeste! Then there's Margaret's spot-on interpretation of a goofy yet loving Mom, also played by HERSELF. "Who is this?" Mommy asks Celeste on the phone, "I'm sorry, I have to ask everyone for security reasons." There's so much going on in this film and there are more memorable lines & quirky characters. Brit actor ALAN CUMMING plays nice guy Eugene: "High school is the natural habitat of dictators," while JOHN CHO (Harold of "Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle") plays the host of a TV show called "TRADING FACES." I love JANE LYNCH, too, as "Darlene Dawson" - "Just a leeettle bit'a in-breedin'. Just-a touch." And later to Celeste: "I think you're even more beautiful-er in the mornin'." Darlene's the white "lesbian Lone Ranger" with a sweet heart of gold. Later Celeste has a run-in at a gas station where she tells off a racist store attendant calling her ALL kinds of names. "If you're gonna be racist, get a 'neo-Nazi to English' dictionary!" You go, Celeste! I'm not giving away anymore, but mark my words: CELESTE & BAMBAM IS a whole new Cult Classic. If you can handle it check out this flick. Thanks Margaret and Bruce!!

Besieged (1998)

An African woman immigrant in Rome; David Thewlis miscast?

[7/10 · 8 October 2006]

I stumbled upon Besieged on TV. The film's views of Rome brought back my homesickness. It's funny how, to me, Lazio's natural summer light reminded me a bit of a similar luminescence in next-door France. Lazio is the region in central Italy where Rome is located. I found the film and its premise intriguing even though one might do well to doubt that the dynamics in Besieged reflect what usually takes place between many women refugees and local men in countries of refuge. Yet this film does shed light on two people in a situation where marginalised Blacks such as refugees (including in Europe) are largely ignored and actively rendered transparent or totally invisible in all forms of media. The African refugee housekeeper role is a good one for actress Thandie Newton, who actually is African and European, and not Black American as some roles she's taken. Interesting that Newton's character in Besieged is a refugee and a student. Perhaps a metaphor for the difficult present and brighter future, and maybe even a future that's relatively secure. In Italy and elsewhere in Europe daily life for African refugees is quite difficult. So I wonder exactly how many refugees and Black women refugees in Rome, in Europe and elsewhere actually are able and allowed to do academic studies in their country of refuge. Few to none, I suspect. On another note, isn't David Thewlis physically miscast? Sorry. In the film he portrays an expat Brit pianist living in Rome, and in whose home Newton's character works. But there's just something about the actor that makes him less than credible as a man whom some women might see as attractive. Is Thewlis trying to project a more "macho" stance for his character? That perception may be wrong but it feels that way to me. I also find Thewlis's overbite... distracting. Back to the interpersonal. In one scene Newton's character goes dancing with a male friend. It's a bit amusing to wonder how that scene might look and feel if Thewlis's character as portrayed would have gone out with the same friend. Even platonically. De toutes facons I am proud of this Bernardo Bertolucci film and the fact it's an Italian production. Despite the "woman's man" 'believability' problem for Thewlis and his character, I intend to see Besieged at least once again.

All the King's Men (2006)

King's Men: Fake accents and no featured Blacks

[3/10 · 8 October 2006]

I write from south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Look it up - it's the American South, which starts "all the way up" at the Maryland-Pennsylvania border. I find All the King's Men rather laughable, maybe to keep from crying. Its major cast line-up touts Anthony Hopkins, who is English, and Sean Penn, in a film "loosely based" on the life of major southern populist politician Huey Long of Louisiana. Yet among the film's top eight or so cast whose photos I see featured online, none are Black American actresses or actors. Then there's the film's northern U.S. cultural imperialism and regional colonialism with its assumed "superiority". With generation after generation of poor-to-mediocre media portrayals of the U.S. South, aren't filmmakers (in Hollywood and elsewhere) and viewers as TIRED as some of us of movie-making that casts persons obviously FAKING Southern speech in the roles of Southern characters? During casting, WHO IS IT who apparently considers Southerners "not good enough" to portray themselves?? Spare all of us - for once.

C'mon, Let's Live a Little (1967)

"American corn"; utterly horrible must-see; portends today's "retro" US society

[7/10 · 11 August 2005]

This corny 1967 film could yet earn itself a serious camp following. I stumbled onto seeing it and thought it must date from the late '50s. Boy was I wrong. It was shocking that someone in Hollywood actually made something like this in 1967. It comes off like they were still trying to save "mainstream" (read white) American youth from the dangers of soul and r&b music and such. Much in this movie seems to fit in well with today's full throttle attempts to throw (not turn) back the clock. Jackie De Shannon, Bobby Vee (whom I don't remember except the name), and also singer Kim Carnes who made this one film appearance. As an American in and from the Upper South I did not find that this film offends the South. It offends everyone in it. Actually one has to brace oneself for its backasswards gender attitudes expressed by some of the guys. Without giving everything away I'm left guessing that (stereotypically) the tail-end of this film (the cinematic equivalent of "the back of the bus") seems to advocate nonverbally the existence of Equal Opportunity Corniness. Some critics have dismissed this poor film as a bomb. They're right. But there's much more to it than that which makes it worth seeing. ... a jaw-dropping, side-splitting, cautionary reality check on today's societal resurrection of the whitebread past.

Catch-22 (1970)

A great movie, but lacks honesty & realism of U.S. military's people of colour

[8/10 · 4 May 2005]

I read Heller's book and saw the film when they were new. This film has only gotten better 35 years after its original release. I find nothing dated about it in the way it was shot - the filmwork is impressive. Being set in Italy - and with some outstanding Italian actors, both female and male - increases the film's historical, cultural and visual depth. "Gli italiani" know a thing or two about empire and its fall, which comes through articulately in this flick. The evident craft and care in this film point out by their presence how vapid, vulgar and ruthlessly commercial so much U.S. cinema still is. I do have to add it's a shame the movie - and apparently Joe Heller's book - hasn't a single representation of the Black American and other men and women soldiers of color: American Indians, Latinos/as, Asian & Pacific Americans. I had to re-think and lower my rating due to this fact. The absence of any depiction of the US military's disproportionately large numbers of service persons of color makes a great film noticeably less effective, less biting, and less believable. Americans of color serve their country and confront all the horrors and ironies depicted in Catch 22 - plus some extra, core layers of the same around issues of race, ethnicity and white domination in U.S. society including our military. Those aspects deserve to be conveyed. Still this remains an articulate and even harshly beautiful film. Deservedly it has become a classic - a cautionary tale of the brutality and futility of war & empire.