… is on the ABC now! For all kitsch martial arts film lovers. Wacky film – Bruce Lee wrote the screenplay in 69 with James Coburn but they had a falling out, and it wasn’t made until 78, after Lee’s death. His idea was to combine his “zen philosophy” with martial arts to bring the world “the first mystical martial arts adventure”. It’s incredibly silly and erm, the philosophy ain’t that profound. David Carradine is eminently watchable (he took on all the parts Lee was to have played), but Jeff Cooper as Cord is either doing a convincing impression of extreme unflappability or is a terribly wooden actor. But it’s all enormous fun!
Hmm sounds good. But I’m enjoying my APEC public holiday eve listening to the new Johnny Irion. Shan’t be moved, I’m afraid. I’ll wait for the DVD.
Actually, Amanda, just between us, if you watch the trailer I’ve posted, you’ll get a very good idea. It even has Christopher Lee in it!
I would but I used up my bandwidth limit last week and am stuck on dial up until off peak starts at 2am.
No YouTube pour moi. Even LP is a trial.
Hmm… a little Bruce Lee hype. How about the 1929 Shanghai silent classic “Red Heroine”?
I wonder though why enjoyment of Asian genre cinema is so often framed in terms of “camp” and irony?
Amanda – yikes!
Any ideas, MH?
Seen it, enjoyed it but life’s too vibrating to watch it again. But if you haven’t seen it, it is worth seeing. Low budget, exuberant and whacky exploitation flicks with no one really in overall control is not the worse thing you can do with your life. Whether it’s making ‘em or enjoying ‘em.
An interesting sidelight on James Coburn. He was doing acid in 1962, provided through a CIA contractor who went seriously off the reservation.
Man, I love James Coburn – anyone that can do In Like Flint and later do Cross of Iron is just gold. I can’t watch him and Donald Sutherland at the same time for fear of my head exploding.
Not around here my friend.
Then you will enjoy this Ants. I mean the film, not the review of course.
Oh, yes, James Coburn.
For me he’s up there with Bogie, Mitchum, Marvin, Warren Oates, Al Pacino and Jack Nicholson in creating a classic American male movie archetype – a star power rascal almost accidently cast as a hero. Crowe, Cage and Gibson try to do it now but they’re too tight-arsed and self conscious. Tho I thought Russell did make a good Aubrey in Master and Commander.
And Coburn also had the sly self-deprecating humour of Douglas Fairbanks Jr, Jeff Bridges and Robert Downey Jr.
And like all the others I’ve just mentioned, even in bad films he was always great value.
Coburn’s last film, “The Man From Elysium Fields” is well worth seeing. He does Hemingway better than Hemingway. Plus as a bonus, Mick Jagger shows he can actually act well.
(Wry smile). A rhetorical question met with a rhetorical answer. Mmm… as the Sage said, “the phoenix can fly only when its feathers are grown.”
But, seriously, a couple of names in response: Hou Hsiao-hsien and Tsai Ming-liang.
Or a rhetorical question met with a rhetorical question. Very Zen!
A great screencap of James Coburn at his insoucient best. An American actor playing an Irish terrorist in Mexico, filmed by an Italian in Spain.
Now don’t get me started on “Danger: Diabolik” or we’ll be here all night.
No time for that. You’ve got a haiku to compose. And some portraiture to supply.
http://larvatusprodeo.net/2007/09/04/guest-post-by-audrey-hard-to-believe-but-apparently-even-feminists-can-be-sexy/#comment-400305
I did enjoy that Nabs. I want that hair and I’ll have those glasses. And spot on on the modern pretenders. Lot to be said for a job outside of acting for grounding like a mechanic – I think Russ would have been all the better for a six month stint in a meat packers. Sad though to see the news on Owen Wilson too, he had that rare effortlessly disarming quality.
Thats the star value in one.
Yes, I forgot about Owen Wilson. He definitely has a certain timeless rascal with a heart of gold quality about him too. And remember Owen, it’s not over till the fat lady sits on you.
And oh yes, two more classic US male movie stars (not actors) in the same vein I discussed above: Clark Gable and George Clooney.
But for me, the coolest US male movie star ever is Robert Mitchum. He got busted for pot decades before it was fashionable.
“I’ll play anything except a dwarf or a lesbian. No damn good at either.”
“Just paint eyes on my eyelids and move me in front of the camera.”
Made Jack Nicholson look like Lindsay Lohan.
Ah yes,
It’s a fantastic movie! David Carradine did a really good job playing all of the “bosses”. He has a really interesting discussion of the making of this movie and working with James Coburn in his autobiography.
Seconded re Mitchum. Far more menacing with far less effort than (even) Robert de Niro in the original version of Cape Fear c. 1960. And breathtaking in his cameo appearance in that great, great movie Dead Man, shouting at the stuffed Grizzly in his office.
God I love Dead Man.
Johnny Depp, Jim Jarmusch, Mitchum, Niel Young…
I found it a bit low on the wimmens, but then JJ’s movies always are aren’t they?
Mitchum is just about the best male American actor. Evah.
That was a strange movie. I switched on when he was talking to a guy who’d been in standing in a cauldron of oil for ten years trying to dissolve his genitals off.
Way too over the top and ham-fisted adolescent for me, though the guy in the cauldron was interesting, could have been straight out of a Samuel Beckett play.
Brian took me and my sister to see this when we were kids at the old Valley Twin! It may have been my idea. I taped it and am watching it now. It’s a hoot!
The guy in the cauldron properly played his role for laughs, I thought.