Saturday, July 3, 2010

Viewing Journal: 7/3/2010




69) TAOISM DRUNKARD
(1984 dir. Cheung-Yan Yuen) Date Seen: July 3 2010

The majestic Simon Abrams recommended I watch this to wash the taste of Shyamalan's horrid LAST AIRBENDER adaptation out of my mouth. & I'm glad I did, 'cause it's pure cracked out craziness. A healthy dose of bizarre Chinese slapstick coupled with jaw-dropping fight choreography. Not your run of the mill straight faced wuxia at all. 

I must say that the current streaming version Netflix has looks terrible. The subtitles are almost unreadable. The fact that I couldn't understand what was going on half the time made my viewing even funnier.












68) BLACK RAIN [KUROI AME]
(1989 dir. Shohei Imamura) 2nd Viewing: July 3 2010

Not to be confused with the Ridley Scott/Michael Douglas film of the same title from the same year. I originally saw this version in 2000 on VHS. It made me terribly sad. The horror of the bombing of Hiroshima seems unreal to me. Today, I FINALLY got a hold of the AnimEigo dvd and the transfer pretty much still looks like a VHS. I wasn't as picky back in 2000 and I didn't notice the video quality as much, but nowadays it's just sad to me that a historically important film like KUROI AME can have such a crumby looking print available to American audiences. 

The one good thing I can say about the dvd is that it has good extras. There's an entirely different color ending Imamura originally intended on using but changed at the last minute. It's a shame too, cause I think it's a far superior ending.





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