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Reviews
Separated (2014)
Live Action Toy Story
I just caught the last few minutes when it was on Showtime surfing after CSPAN presentation on duck mating biology. While Toy Story was computer graphics, this is filmed entirely live action with a pair of real wind-up robots in close up with action scenes even one slow-motion kung fu jump. It's cute as all heck and the 1st reviewer sees a tender love story romantic ending.
The Secret History of 9/11 (2006)
Excellent summary of how Al Queda foiled US attempts to stop 9/11
Story of 9/11 plot goes back to Ramzi Yousef's 1993 bombing of the WTC, the bojinka plot in the Phillipines and the bombing of a flight to japan which was the pattern for 9/11, and attempts to get bin Laden after he is identified as a threat, but thwarted by politics. The 9/11 hijackers are tracked, then lost by US intelligence as they enter the US into San Diego and into Florida, Fall church Virgnia and Florida.
If there is any doubt from the "truth" movement of the amount of evidence that Islamist terrorists carried out 9/11 and were working on it throughout the 1990s, and the US fumbled multiple times to try to stop them, you need to see this. The story is about the same as was dramatized on "path to 9/11" which also blames Clinton and Bush for failures. A copy is posted on google video. The story does not go into reports from "the third terrorist" that Yousef apparently aided the Oklahoma city bombers where Nichols visited the same location in the Phillipines were Al Queda was operating and may have recruited Nichols for the operation, which was aborted after their apartment was searched and his accomplice was arrested
Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors (2005)
Great story of amazing battle of little guys against battleship Yamato
Most complete TV treatment of the obscure but remarkable story of "Taffy 3", the tiny toy fleet left behind by Bull Halsey's mighty task force when it fell for a decoy. They left nothing but tiny destroyers and even tinier destroyer escorts to slug it out to defend their defenseless escort carriers from annihilation from the largest Japanese fleet since Midway led by the formidable Yamato, the most powerful battleship in the world. Destroyer Johnston fearlessly and recklessly charged headfirst to launch a suicidal torpedo salvo against cruisers. The Samuel B Roberts went down as the destroyer escort that fought like a battleship slugging it out with a much larger cruiser for over an hour before being sunk by other cruisers. The Dogfights Death of the Japanese Navy has better effects but is a much shorter less complete account and both don't spend as much time on the pilots who probably contributed as much as the surface ships in harassing and driving off the superior force which in theory should have been able to steam right through them to destroy American landing forces instead of being driven off with serious wounds and leaving behind a number of sunk or damaged capital ships.
History asks how Yamato would have fared against American battleships, but it was effectively defeated by a light escort task force meant to defend cargo ships against aircraft and submarines, and demonstrated the difference between the philisophy of making a few very big ships and highly skilled pilots, and cranking out lots of inexpensive ships with inexpensive aircraft and lots of moderately trained pilots and sailors.
Gran Torino (2008)
Reverse Kung Fu Kid, Neighborhood missionary with rifle, Do the Right Thing
People really should support this movie which has a really big heart. It's too bad that Hollywood won't support a movie where a) the main characters are unknown Asians and b) the hero is a straight racist white military veteran. The movie starts by portraying the old Korean vet as a racist who is angry starting with his own family, and goes downhill from there, and the Asian neighbors as the enemy. The meek boy is the worst example of their people. But in the end, Walt is revealed to be the hero, and the boy becomes his spiritual disciple. As with the story of the good Samaritan, the "invaders" become his true family that he loves so much he gives up his own life for them. It's no coincidence that he ends up sprawled on the lawn as if nailed to a cross.
As one who has seen many movies portray the story of (sometimes doomed) white men against a romantic backdrop of (sometimes savage) Asians such as Sand Pebbles or Clavell's Shogun, Walt on one level appears to be an unwitting white missionary who, instead of traveling to far off places, is left behind when far-off peoples transform the neighborhood. It also evokes a flip-mirror version of Spike Lee's controversial Do the Right Thing which at one level presents the imperialist Pizza parlor as the enemy and the bomb tossing radical as the hero, but on another revealed the folly of destroying local businesses to make a political point of racial assertiveness.
On another level, he is the Western blue-collar mirror image of Kung Fu Kid's sensei or Obi Wan Kenobi who skillfully insults fellow Americans of all races with a signature move of pointing his M-1 Garand rifle into the faces of punks. Meek Thao / Toad is trained in the fine art of BS, asking a girl out, and fixing things. When we see the promo shot of the Gran Torino driving by the water, it's actually the young Jedi carrying on Walt's legacy in his car, with Walt's dog by his side.
As an Asian American who has had to find his own way of assimilation, (and still can't cuss quite the way Walt can or shoot) I can empathize with people who find America as exotic and unscrutable as America finds the "orientals". The film suffers a bit from casting punks as Latinos (low rider chevy), Asians (giant winged Civic) and whites as posers, redneck (Ford pickup) or successful grown yuppies (Land Cruiser) but the Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese as well as the Hmong have suffered from gangs at different times and places in history. Older sister Sue come across a bit mismatched as the interpreter when her brother looks and talks like he just got off the FOB boat. She seems to be on vacation from Asian American studies at Ann Arbor. (The girls go to college, the boys go to jail) The shaman and grumpy grandmother are marvelous even if we have no idea what they are saying. ("She says welcome to our house"???) There is just so much going on between the characters, this movie deserves to be watched and torn apart much more the flicks like Catch-22, Cuckoo's Nest or Cool Hand Luke that I watched back in the 70s. On the surface, it looks like Dirty Harry Rides Again. I'm still not impressed by the movie that made him famous (what was with those nude scenes anyways??), but there's much, much more to it than that in this latest effort. BTW, the Gran Torino was one of my favorite muscle cars of the 1970s, and if you are interested in other Asian-themed movies, you should watch Letters from Iwo Jima, it's much better than Flags of Our Fathers.
The Sand Pebbles (1966)
Sometimes the Indians win
It would be 10 if it weren't such a huge movie to digest..
All 3 hours of Sand Pebbles was featured on the History Channel. It was quite an important, if more somber movie than Flower Drum Song about Asians and Americans. It was directed by Robert Wise who also did the more popular West Side Story and the Sound of Music. Filmed in Hong Kong and Taiwan, it was set on the gunboat San Pablo which protected American interests in China while forces gathered to expel the western powers which dominated China. As the film alternates between downtrodden Chinese heathen savages and racist American jerks, I was often split between cheering and booing both the Chinese and the American sailors.
The film came out in 1966 as the Americans were ramping up involvement in Vietnam. The current mess in Iraq and Afghanistan came to mind when American sailors marching back through the city are turned back by Nationalist troops, and were pelted with garbage tossed by angry mobs. As with movies about General Custer and Blackhawk Down, there is a limit to what a few serviceman can do when you are surrounded by lots of people who want to hurt you.
The troubled hero Jake Holman is played by Steve ("Lightning") McQueen. It seems for this guy that no good deed goes unpunished. He finds the Navy ship is actually run by Chinese coolies who do the dirty work for peanuts, but insists on working on the engines himself. When Holman tries to fix a broken part, the Chinese engineer is crushed in the giant piston. Po-Han played by a young Mako is trained as a replacement. Holman sticks up for Po-Han against a bully, and sets him up to win in a prize fight against his tormentor. Frenchy uses the money to pay for the freedom of a Chinese hooker (Why does every movie about westerners in Asia revolve around the oldest profession??) She was played by Thailand-born Eursian Emmanelle Arsan who was infamous for her novel about exploring her sexuality in France. Jame Hong, who seems to be cast in every American movie with a Chinese part, is the pimp who loses his bet. But Frenchy dies of cold in bed with her and her former associates find and kill her. Po-Han gets kidnapped and tortured by a communist mob, and begs McQueen to shoot him, which he does.
More Americans get shot as the gunboat boarding party wipes out a blockade of junks manned by the very boys educated at the missionary school. When they arrive to rescue the missionary, he decides to stick by the Chinese who then shoot him anyway. The skipper and McQueen get shot holding off the bad guys "I was home. What happened? What the hell happened? " The remaining sailors and Candace Bergen slip away, and we last see the boat steam away to freedom. Of course after that, China descends into a living hell, embraces communism, and by the 21st century becomes lead-contaminated toymaker to the world infamous for ThomasTank engine recalls and killer tires.
(this review to be printed in Asianweek.com 2/2008)
Zanna Bianca e il cacciatore solitario (1975)
Kung Fu Quality Italian - Canadian Adventure
Just viewed this with the intent of helping my boy do a book report on White Fang by Jack London. VHS jacket says "A boy and his dog in the wilds of Alaska", but the dog belongs to the hunter, and it's set in Canada, where the good guy sets off to deliver incriminating documents to the Mounties. I haven't read the book yet, but since the title dog does almost nothing except bite the bad guy, I suspect "based on the story by Jack London" means that the dog got his name from the book. Dubbing is terrible, music is silly and repetitive, reminds me of bad Kung Fu movie dubs, but scenery and costumes are OK. Does have a fake First People (that's Canadian for Indian) woman. They actually have a guy in snowshoes leading a dog sled through the snow and hike through snow covered mountains. The only clue that something is up is "directed by Alfonso Brescia", and a big credit at the end to some Italian guard dog training unit or something to that effect.
Wondered what IMDb had to say, and sure enough, it's an Italian stinker. I agree, if you want to expose your kids to a really hokey north-western, this it. Don't pay more than $1 if you find it in the video bin.