Posts by Richard Hernandez13

Let's just say that in their downtime, the Greeks loved nothing more than jumping around like they were possessed by pure, unbridled energy.

Do you remember that part with Isaac's passport?

The whole theater absolutely lost it during that scene. 😉

I decided to sit down and play around with some makeup today.
And crank that eight-track all the way up!
I'm pulling The wig down fra The shelf Suddenly I'm miss Farrah Fawcett fra TV until i Wake up and turn Back to myself baš
I'm pulling The wig down fra The shelf Suddenly I'm miss Farrah Fawcett fra TV until i Wake up and turn Back to myself baš
I'm pulling The wig down fra The shelf Suddenly I'm miss Farrah Fawcett fra TV until i Wake up and turn Back to myself baš
I'm pulling The wig down fra The shelf Suddenly I'm miss Farrah Fawcett fra TV until i Wake up and turn Back to myself baš
I'm pulling The wig down fra The shelf Suddenly I'm miss Farrah Fawcett fra TV until i Wake up and turn Back to myself baš

I was just sitting here listening to a concert recording from start to finish. The Polyphonic Spree I was just at this festival over in Belgium, and man, let me tell you—the energy was incredible. For their final set, they played... Wig in a box Honestly, my absolute favorite thing about it is... Hedwig and The Angry Inch.

The director and lead actor of this one... transsexual-gay-punk-glam-rock-camp-mjuzikla 😁 So, it turns out that John Cameron Mitchell is actually the one behind this, and the whole movie is basically an adaptation of his own work. It seems like you might have hit send too early! I'm standing by and ready to get to work whenever you have the text you need me to transform. Just drop the content here, and I'll handle all the rewriting, US-localization, and entity swapping exactly as you've instructed.A Broadway play.

So, here’s the gist: it’s about this young guy named Hansel living in East Berlin who ends up falling head over heels for an American soldier. Since the only way he can actually escape East Berlin and make a run for it is through... well, marriage, he decides to change his name to Hedwig and undergoes gender reassignment surgery. Sadly, the whole thing is only half-successful, mostly because he’s still left with about 3.5 centimeters of masculinity. 😳Ever since moving to the States, it’s finally hit me that my significant other has quite a few romantic interests scattered all over the globe—and yeah, that includes back home in the old country too. 😁 So, he teams up with his buddies from the trailer park to start up this "angry" little band. Angry Inch.
Along the way, they end up falling for this kid Tommy (played by Michael Pitt—you can actually catch him on screen these days if you look closely). dreamer I wonder which songs she should actually perform to really make her shine—you know, those tracks that would finally cement her status as a legitimate, bona fide rock star like Tommy Gnosis. 😉.
And just like that... while he’s out there performing in all those cramped, gritty little clubs, Angry Inch He's basically stuck playing gigs at those greasy dive bars and mediocre sushi spots.

It’s a pretty charming little flick… isn't it? 😁

Even though the movie is a total visual feast—honestly, that ultra-low-budget look forced them to be incredibly creative instead of just leaning on fancy tech—the real magic comes from Mitchell's sheer energy and confidence. It’s honestly enough to make you completely overlook his somewhat heavy-handed directing style and the fact that he seems to have absolutely no clue how traditional dramatic structure actually works.
The songs are actually pretty great. Catchy! Between those deep philosophical undertones and the quirky directorial flourishes—like those sudden bursts of animation, or that moment during the song where the whole movie just transforms into a karaoke session (man, I absolutely loved that part)! 😁 ).

I first caught this one about two years ago, but it's been much easier to track down lately—you can find it in most local video rental shops around here now, though if I recall correctly, it's only available on VHS. 🤔 ).

….
Has anyone actually sat down and watched this yet?

Ah, there it is... that classic, tired old stereotype that Mexicans are just nothing but vulgar provocateurs, while we Americans are somehow so incredibly refined and sophisticated Europeans. 😁

I'm pretty sure both of them were released on VHS and/or DVD back in the day (just imagine dropping some cash into Austin Powers' account).

Man, we absolutely loved that movie when we were kids.

...it was only way later on that we realized the whole thing was actually, well, just a huge parody. 😬

And honestly, what is all this linguistic fuss about in this movie? 😬
If you just take a look through all the user comments, you'll realize that the whole language situation isn't actually such a huge deal. 😁

Andrew Anderson6 said:I remember thinking he looked so tall and lanky in from Dusk Till Dawn, but then I recently caught Intolerable Cruelty (by the way, 🙂 👎 ) and honestly, standing next to Catherine Zeta-Jones, he actually looks kind of short...

So, I'm assuming James Lewis5 was asking how tall he actually is in real life, rather than just how he comes across on screen. 😁

Douglas Robinson12 said:...whereas Cole Younger (Cliff Robertson) is this smart, cheerful, Dionysian type who actually embraces the 20th century and understands what he’d call "progress."

Kaufman (wherever he ended up, by the way 😢) uses what I personally think is the absolute best way to demystify the Western.
It isn't about portraying cowboys as these filthy, greedy, corrupt, ugly thugs just shooting each other in the back (though there is some progress in The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid—I’ll never forget that scene where Duvall is dressed up like a little old lady 😁). Nor is it about any sort of gay subtext. I really have to set the record straight regarding Emily Torres when she claims that's my stance 😉—to me, trying to find gay subtext in every single movie or genre always felt like a bit of a stretch.

Kaufman simply lets us know that it was a mythic era, just like any other... one that passed. Dammit, new times came along, new people arrived, and new things happened.
Like in The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, at the end, when we see Cole Younger in that cage, the narrator explains how he survived his wounds and witnessed "a new era".
In Cable Hogue's (which happens to be Peckinpah's favorite film), the director does the exact same thing with a heavy dose of irony: Robards gets run over by a car at the end; that musical number didn't quite hit the mark for me. 😁

Good grief, now that I'm typing this out, I just remembered Andrija Maurović and his masterpiece Trio in the Dark, where technology also plays a huge role for the hero (the telegraph is way faster than his elusive horse 😉).
When was that comic even published? Honestly, you could probably argue that Maurović was the very first person to deconstruct the Western. 😁😁😁

...
By the way, Douglas Robinson12, since you're across the pond... have you had a chance to check out HBO's 🤔Deadwood
? Has that even started yet?

Douglas Robinson12 said:most are better than him, not to mention Unforgiven which was a total miss for me. Very predictable, overly dramatic, strained, a "heavy" film "with a message."

I get the feeling you feel the exact same way about Mystic River. 😉

Douglas Robinson12 said:It’s just like how Cole Younger comes across in Phil Kaufman's version of The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid—honestly, I think that one actually works better than Altman's take on the story.

Oh man, that one is just absolutely phenomenal. 👍

Adam Wright56 said:You know, you see these kinds of themes popping up all the time in Japanese RPGs because it feels like every third game uses the exact same tropes. It doesn't matter what you're playing, you're almost guaranteed to run into something like "Earth" or some variation of "Mother Nature" thrown into the plot.

I know, I know...

It’s that classic Japanese way of thinking, really, because what they're actually tapping into is their own indigenous faith—Shintoism, which is basically just pure, unfiltered animism. It honestly works so beautifully when you look at how it plays out in things like... Princess Mononoke.

But honestly, when you look at the Spirits Within film, everything just feels so washed out and hollowed out, like it’s been reduced to nothing more than some vague, New Agey spiritual babble—or, if I were trying to sound like a much smarter philosopher than I actually am, I’d put it this way: Honestly, I just can't stand all that tree-hugging hippie nonsense.That's just so typical of someone from a small Midwestern town.

I guess I was being a bit unrealistic by pushing for hyper-realistic animation back when the technology just wasn't quite there yet. We really have to remember that the true soul of Gollum was actually Andy Serkis, since the fans were essentially just using him for motion capture anyway -> so, that whole uncanny valley vibe actually made perfect sense to me, especially since I felt it personally while watching the movie. 😉

Back then, a buddy of mine was glued to his computer playing FFVIII (or maybe it was number 😁, I can't quite recall) - the cutscenes in that game were done in a sort of classic anime style and they were honestly phenomenal -> to my mind, that was a much better way to handle an animated feature.

mistyfox812 said:Is there any actual word on Troy, or is it worth my time? I’m just praying it isn't one of those typical American attempts at rewriting history...

I actually saw a little 'review' over on AITCN from someone who caught an early test screening.

Basically, if you're just looking for some good old-fashioned action and brawling, you'll definitely get your fix.

Adam Wright56 said:🙂

I think there might be a little mix-up here... Square isn't really an active game developer anymore; they just decided to stop messing around with movies after that whole TSW fiasco and shut down their film subsidiary.

My bad, I realize I wasn't making much sense there.

What I actually meant was their film division—specifically that studio they had over in Hawaii. Unlike the old SquareSoft days, that branch is definitely been shuttered.

....
Yeah, FF:TSW failed for quite a few reasons, and one major issue was how much Western influence seeped into the actual philosophy of the movie, turning it into this sterile, New Age rambling (you know, all that Mother Earth nonsense 🤮 ).
Another huge reason for the downfall falls squarely on the shoulders of the Square folks: their insistence on realistic animation back in the pre-Gollum era. 👎 Just take a look at the first question in this link.

...I should probably mention that those release dates aren't set in stone, as distributors always reserve the right to shift things around at the last minute.

...Sorry, fadedsailor932, I just couldn't help myself! 😁

Robert Wood2 said:Why am I even bothering to write anything here at all?😕

Honestly, I’ve been asking myself that very same thing. 🙄

...
Emily Torres2 ... if you're looking for a little more demystifying of the Western genre,
I remember seeing an article over on the Guardian's website by Alex Cox arguing that all Westerns are actually secretly gay—but I just can't seem to track it down right now. 🤔

Hmm... I mean, didn't Square Enix basically tank after that whole disaster with FF:TSW? 🤔

The individual moments really hit harder than the movie as a whole—it feels like even though Tim Burton has some great ideas, he just can't quite nail the actual storytelling.

...plus, I felt like Billy Crudup was a bit too lifeless in this one.

....
It’s definitely a step up from Planet of the Apes.

poirot said:I was just thinking about Jeffrey Wright—you know, the guy who played Jean-Michel Basquiat? He popped up in Shaft and a few other flicks too, but honestly, with his level of talent, I really feel like he should have been landing much bigger roles by now.

In my opinion, he’s primarily a stage actor at heart. It feels like Julian Schnabel was the one who actually discovered him while he was still grinding it out on the theater boards.

Honestly, I’d put this one right up there with the absolute worst movies I saw all last year. 👎

It had such an intelligent and imaginative premise, but it just got completely wrecked by a disastrous script—if you can even call it a script at this point—and some seriously amateurish directing.