christopher-underwood

What a delightful and quirky little film this is. A very unusual Japanese one, although there is mention of the 'The Family' and yakuza but this man, the rather good actor, is Yusaku Matsuda and in this one a blues singer called BJ. When this film was made we could see where the massive docks and train tracks were beginning pulled down turned into the new. But there still is the old town, the other side of the tracks and that is where this is set, especially in the dark, at night and the cinematography amazingly almost poetic. Much like a noir and we see BJ as a loner, walking around and singing in cellar bars but getting involved with the corruption and drug trafficking and the underground gay and seedy biker underbelly. There is something of the wit and melancholy of Robert Altman's, The Long Goodbye, although there are no cats here but instead splendid jazzy, blues.

I got this DVD from a charity shop and I didn't even realise it was a Scorsese one. And for the first hour I thought this was thrilling and amazing. The nightlight, the cars, the ambulance and the music was great. The Paul Schrader dialogue is great too and both Nicolas Cage and John Goodman are funny and there certainly is some action but after a while we wonder what is really going to happen. Okay the ambulance teams change but we always have Cage. There is the always the night and sometimes the hookers and druggies but people dying and Cage wondering why he cannot catch them still alive. There is humour in the hospital, on the street and with the ambulances but surely, the lovely Patricia Arquette could have had a better part, instead of being wasted. There is something about of a back story but it is very weak and it doesn't really hold it together. Instead, maybe we should have had a taxi and Jodie Foster....

What a great documentary this is a Eureka Blu-ray Hitler's Hollywood. Actually it has two made by Rudiger Suchsland from the splendid book, 'From Caligari to Hitler' written by Siegfried Keacauer and covers Germany society and films between 1921-1933. Although this one is more or less between 1918 and 1933 and it is so well done. Brilliantly narrated and so well put together by the shots of old film and, of course the amazing films themselves. There is a lot of Fritz Lang but scores of others and so interesting with stills and movies, black&white and also some tinted. There are wonderful historical shots of the streets and some dazzling Roaring Twenties and then the emergence of the Nazis. We also had moments of Marlene Dietrich, Louise Brooks and Leni Riefenstahl and it is so impressive and delightful I shall have to watch the other one - Hitler's Hollywood (2017) covering the years 1933-1945.