Category: 1. Jason Apuzzo

Classic Movie Update, 6/13

Raquel.

By Jason Apuzzo. • The biggest classic movie news by far this week was the discovery in New Zealand of a treasure trove of silent films thought previously lost, including a print of John Ford’s film, Upstream.  LFM contributor Jennifer Baldwin covered this story yesterday, including the fundraising efforts of the movie-blogging community toward film preservation.  Check Jennifer’s post for full details on these efforts, as well as links if you wish to contribute.  You can also read more about the New Zealand discovery and ongoing preservation efforts in The New York Times or in The LA Times.

• The New York Times also did a joint review of the new autobiographies out by Raquel Welch and Pam Grier – Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage and Pam’s Foxy: My Life in Three Acts.  These two extraordinary ladies were the top cult movie heroines of their era, although Raquel’s career also crossed over into big mainstream faire.  Raquel recently had some electrifying appearances on Fox News (especially her hilarious interview with Neil Cavuto), and also guest hosted on Turner Classic Movies a few months ago.  Both of these ladies are still going strong, looking fabulous, and are dispensing a lot of good advice to the young women of today.  And can we all agree that Beyond the Cleavage is easily the greatest title ever?  (Surpassing even Russ Meyer’s 3-volume autobiography, A Clean Breast.)  You can buy both Raquel: Beyond the Cleavage and Foxy: My Life in Three Acts in the LFM Store below, along with some of Raquel and Pam’s best films.

• A new Charlie Chan box set is out from Turner Classic Movies.  Pick up a copy in the LFM Store below.

• Can it be 35 years since Jaws came out?  Apparently it is.  Next week marks the 35th anniversary of Jaws’ release!  I still remember seeing the film with my grandmother when it came out … and I still think it’s the best non-Indiana Jones film Spielberg’s ever made, with really nothing surpassing it as a thriller except maybe Hitchcock’s Psycho.  Jaws and Star Wars together are probably the greatest summer movies of all time, films that really defined the moviegoing era of the 1970’s.  There’s a documentary that’s been making the rounds the last few years called The Shark is Still Working about the making of Jaws and the film’s impact on our culture, and the doc just had a screening yesterday at the Portland Underground Film Festival.  Best wishes to the filmmakers on that, and Happy 35th to Jaws.  You can buy a copy of Jaws in the LFM Store above.

• AND FINALLY … Andy Warhol’s classic print of Elizabeth Taylor has gone up for sale. I have a bid in but it’s probably on the low side …

Posted on June 13th, 2010 at 3:51pm.

Forbidden Planet, Iron Man 2 and Soviet Cosmonauts in 3D!

By Jason Apuzzo. Just for fun on the weekend, we thought we’d post some 3D video.  You will need an old-fashioned pair of anaglyphic (i.e., red-blue) 3D glasses in order to enjoy these videos to their fullest effect.  If you don’t happen to have such glasses, you can get a free pair here, or you can even make your own.  [Another thing you can do is buy a DVD for an anaglyphic 3D film like Robert Rodriguez’s Shark Boy and Lava Girl.  Such DVDs always come with a few pairs of anaglyphic 3D glasses.]

• Up above, Andrew Murchie and the team at Enhanced Dimensions have retrofit the trailer for the classic 50’s sci-fi epic Forbidden Planet into anaglyphic 3D.  Take a look at it … preferably at a distance of about 3-5 feet.  It’s really fun.

• Ever imagine what Iron Man 2 might look like in 3D?

A company called 3DGuy converted one of the flashier scenes from Iron Man 2 into anaglyphic 3D, and you can check that out here.

Make sure to watch the Iron Man 2 video in the highest resolution possible for the best possible 3D effect.

• You can also check out a campy, eccentric little short film called “Glory to the Conquerors of Space in 3D,” from Atomic Cheesecake Productions.  “Glory” is about a retro-style female Soviet cosmonaut who has a strange series of pseudo-erotic encounters on a planet full of blue people.  [There’s no graphic imagery.]  James Cameron might want to take a look at this one.  The film played in Slamdance’s online competition in December.

[Editor’s note: “Glory to the Conquerors of Space in 3D” features some mature situations.  Viewer discretion advised.]

3D can be a lot of fun, and we’ll be keeping a close eye on 3D projects large and small here at LFM …

Posted on June 13th, 2010 at 1:36pm.

The Fresh Prince of Beijing: A Guest Review of The Karate Kid

Jaden Smith, the new "Karate Kid."

[Editor’s Note: since the Chinese government exercised editorial control over the new Sony remake of The Karate Kid, LFM has decided to invite an officially sanctioned Chinese film critic, People’s Film Commissar Wo Fat, to do a guest review of the film.  This review has been translated from the original Mandarin by Jason Apuzzo, a long-time friend and golfing-partner of Wo Fat’s.]

By People’s Film Commissar Wo Fat. Greetings, dear readers of Libertas.  It is my pleasure to accept Comrade Apuzzo’s kind invitation to review the new American-Chinese co-production of The Karate Kid. I feel that by reviewing this most extraordinary and historic cinema co-production on the arch-imperialist website Libertas, that we are opening up a new era of cooperation and understanding!

With special assistance from the Sony corporation, we have made several changes to your original Karate Kid, a warmongering, Reagan-era film that was pock-marked – like the blemished faces of your pimply American teenagers – with the backward, revanchist rhetoric of that era.  In our new Karate Kid, we no longer have young New Jersey teenager Daniel and his economically disenfranchised mother seek a new life in the state of California.  Instead, we have young ‘Dre’ – played with scrappy insouciance by Jaden Smith (son of your American movie star, Comrade Will Smith!) – seek his fortune in a more suitable land of opportunity: mainland China.  In the new Karate Kid, a heartless American automotive company in Detroit shifts the job held by Dre’s mother to Beijing.  Since America offers no other possible job opportunities for her, she is forced to make the only economically rational decision: move herself and her son 10,000 kilometers to the (Far) East, even though they don’t speak Chinese!

Once in Beijing, young Dre begins to learn salient facts about our glorious People’s Republic!  For example, in his first encounter with Wise Mentor Jackie Chan, young Dre learns that unreliable electricity in Beijing has the side benefit of ‘saving the planet’ – unlike in America, where a consistent power supply in suburban homes causes excess fuel consumption.  True!  [Jason Apuzzo asks: didn’t this scene omit the fact that China is actually the world’s largest polluter, and that millions of Chinese citizens have been forcefully moved from their homes to make way for the enormous, electricity-generating Three Gorges Dam? [Comments edited by Wo Fat.]

A forbidden romance at The Forbidden City.

Young Comrade Dre also develops a schoolboy crush on a cute Chinese girl named Meiying (played by Wenwen Han).  Meiying is an aspiring violinist, trying to rise in China’s glorious and edifying music world.  Dre’s vitality  and rough American charm (son of Will Smith!) warms her heart, and brings added zest to her music playing … and isn’t this a marvelous metaphor for Chinese-American cooperation?  Young Dre even lets Meiying listen to hip-hop music off his Sony music player, a product that neatly matches the Sony computer screens and Sony TV monitors placed conspicuously throughout the film.  The Karate Kid is part of the Sony product line, after all!

Anyway, young Dre’s growing affection for Meiying gets him in trouble with some local bullies who are friends of her family’s.  And here I want to point out: the bullies depicted in this film are not normal figures in the New China.  They are counter-revolutionaries, and enemies of the people!  The People’s Republic has graciously consented to allow this depiction of anti-social behavior in order to further the plotline of Sony’s film, but the actors depicting these bullies have since been reprimanded and are currently serving 70 years’ hard labor in a coal mine in Shanxi. Continue reading The Fresh Prince of Beijing: A Guest Review of The Karate Kid

“The Young Marines”

By Jason Apuzzo. Later today we’ll be posting a review of Sony’s Karate Kid remake. The Karate Kid, as everybody knows, is about a young kid who trains himself in the martial arts in order to protect himself from bullying and to rebuild his self-esteem.

The Karate Kid reminded me of a nice little short that I caught recently called, “The Young Marines.” “The Young Marines” is about the Young Marine program, that serves a similar function for young people – and also puts them on a path to serving their country.  Enjoy.

Footnote: unlike with The Karate Kid, the Chinese government did not have editorial oversight of this short.

Posted on June 11th, 2010 at 9:11am.

Hollywood Round-up, 6/10

Would you want this woman as your queen?

By Jason Apuzzo. • More celebrities are starting to weigh-in on the BP oil spill. Consensus is: Kevin Costner coming out on top right now over James Cameron in the race to be the MOST HELPFUL CELEBRITY IN THE GULF.  Costner apparently spent $20 million of his own money to invent a technology to separate oil from water.  [I have that problem all the time whenever I’m eating a salad.]  On a related note, I’ve just started work on special glasses that can separate Alec Baldwin’s image from my Turner Classic Movies cable signal.

• Rumors flying (see here and here) about Angelina Jolie being approached to play Cleopatra, in a forthcoming adaptation of Stacy Schiff’s book, Cleopatra: A Life. Word to the wise, Jolie-Cleopatra rumors have actually been around so long I covered them on the old version of Libertas.  So we’ll see.  One thing’s for sure: Jolie’s juggled enough men that playing Cleopatra shouldn’t be much trouble.

• Green Lantern 2 is apparently already a ‘go,’ even before the first film is out. In other superhero news, Flash also looks like it’s going forward, and now there’s word coming about a Fantastic Four ‘reboot‘.  A ‘reboot’?  Coming so soon off the last Fantastic Four film, what they really need is a ‘mind-wipe.’

Rosie arrives.

• John McCain tweeted Jersey Shore‘s Snooki the other day, assuring her that in a McCain Administration she wouldn’t be taxed for her tanning sessions. As I write that last sentence, it occurs to me that our civilization must be reaching a terminal stage.

• Sony will soon be releasing a huge range of 3D products for the home theater market. I wasn’t aware that I was going to need a special 3D Blu-ray player, to go along with the new 3D flat screen.  This is getting expensive, guys.  I’m starting to re-think my Blu-ray pre-order of Piranha.

• AND IN TODAY’S MOST IMPORTANT NEWS … Rosie Huntington-Whiteley has shown up on the Transformers 3 set to start filming.  See photos of that here.

In more Transformers news, Michael Bay confirms that Transformers 3 will, indeed, be shot in 3-D … but he’s apparently having some difficulty getting city officials in Washington, D.C. to let him blow half the city up.  It’s OK to blow up the budget in D.C., just not the city parks.

And that’s what’s happening today in the wonderful world of Hollywood …

Posted on June 10, 2010 at 8:16pm.

Sony Agrees to Chinese Censorship of Karate Kid

From Sony's new "Karate Kid" remake.

By Jason Apuzzo. Yesterday LFM was the first site (so far as we’re aware) to make a fuss over the fact that Sony agreed to let the Chinese government have some editorial oversight over the new Karate Kid remake.

I wrote about this issue in the context of the forthcoming Red Dawn remake from MGM, which certain Western critics are already deriding (see here and here) as being unduly harsh on the Chinese government.

Again, here’s the money quote from the LA Times article about the decision:

“If Sony made Karate Kid with a Chinese partner, it could be a part of that Asian gold rush, but the deal would come with some foreseeable obstacles, including possible government censorship.

[Doug Belgrad, president of Sony’s Columbia Pictures] didn’t think long before giving his answer. “That was enough to say yes,” says Belgrad.”

The LA Times article goes further and reports the following:

The “Karate Kid” decision not only launched the biggest modern movie co-production between an American studio and China, but also opened up the film to government-mandated creative controls that ultimately yielded two slightly different movies, as Chinese censors asked that several scenes, including sequences of bullying and a kiss between two young characters, be trimmed.

Now, based on my reading of the full LA Times article, my sense is that the changes required by the Chinese censors were relatively minor.  Additionally, it’s not as if this is the first time American filmmakers have bowed to Chinese censors (some recent cases include Mission Impossible 3 and The Painted Veil).

With that said, what strikes me about this decision by Sony are two things:

  1. If the editorial demands from the Chinese were indeed minor, why give in to them – since the film otherwise seems to depict Chinese society so favorably?
  2. Why did a simple Karate Kid remake have to pass through the hands of Chinese government censors in the first place?  Wasn’t there some other way to do this film? Continue reading Sony Agrees to Chinese Censorship of Karate Kid