Friday, May 31, 2019

It's the FRIDAY'S BEST POP SONG EVER Podcast, Episode #19: Do Ya


The Move are one of the greatest British pop bands to ever fail miserably at charting in the U.S. The closest they came was with "Do Ya", which was covered and released as a single by Move member Jeff Lynne's subsequent band ELO in 1976. Their version is ok, but I, of course, prefer the original, which I delve into in detail in this latest episode of the FBPSE podcast.

Wednesday, May 29, 2019

Ek Tha Tiger (India, 2012)


As the man who literally wrote the book on 1970s Indian action movies, it was enlightening for me to see a more recent example of the Bollywood spy films that the Hindi film industry is so fond of revisiting. And while 2012’s Ek Tha Tiger testifies to an industry miles ahead in terms of slickness, technical prowess and production value of the one that made films like Golden Eyes: Secret Agent 077 and Gunmaster G9, it also demonstrates that Bollywood is no less, if not more, influenced by Hollywood in its approach to tackling commercial genres.

For instance, within the first ten minutes of Ek Tha Tiger, I pegged it as being an Indian take on a very specific type of Hollywood action film--by which I mean a vehicle for a bankable, preternaturally fit star with an unlikable public persona who does penitence by sacrificing his gym-toned body on the torture wheel of post-millennial action spectacle. In this case, that star is accused domestic abuser and animal murderer Salman Kahn, who, in the film’s opening scene, is involved in a harrowing foot chase along the alleyways and across the rooftops of an Iraqi city (which I imagine was described in the script as “just like the one at the beginning of Casino Royale.”) Of course, Khan’s alleged crimes are more serious than those of Tom Cruise, who was made to hang from the roof of Singapore’s tallest building for sullying Oprah Winfrey’s couch, which kind of makes us Americans look like quite an unforgiving lot.


But that doesn’t really matter, because, almost as soon as that opening scene ends, Ek Tha Tiger shuffles genres like a well curated mixtape and plants us down in the middle of a pretty by-the-numbers Bollywood romcom. This happens when Khan, playing the dutiful Indian secret agent known as Tiger, meets Zoya (newcomer Katrina Kaif), the comely housekeeper of the professor whom he has been charged with protecting from Pakistani assassins. While Tiger is immediately, if reluctantly, smitten, Zoya, haughty and Western educated (this part of the film takes place at Ireland’s Trinity College) is resistant to his charms. So, yes, the type of by-the-numbers Bollywood romcom I’m talking about is that one where (sigh) a red blooded Indian boy is tasked with breaking the spirit of a willful girl via a nagging ritual that seems a lot more like stalking than courtship.

This conflict between love and duty, along with the academic setting, gives Ek Tha Tiger a superficial similarity to Farah Khan’s Main Hoon Naa, though to compare the two doesn’t flatter it. Khan and Kaif simply lack the chemistry and charm of Main Hoon Naa’s stars, Shah Rukh Khan and Sushmita Sen, while Salman Khan is too self-absorbed to attempt the type of self-parody that SRK proves so expert at in Main Hoon Naa Furthermore, Main Hoon Naa, as directed by Farah Khan, both a choreographer and a director, is a film that pulsates joyously with its music, while Ek Tha Tiger’s score is meager (I don’t think I counted more than four songs) and the dancing prosaically staged.


Eventually Zoya is revealed to be a rogue agent of the Pakistani secret service and she and Tiger, now pursued by the intelligence agencies of both of their countries, must go on the run. This leads into an episode marked by a series of the kind of beautifully shot location sequences that beg the question, "How can two such pretty people in such pretty places not fall totally in love?" And the answer is that they totally do.

Zoya is finally captured and taken hostage, at which point Tiger and his colleagues must enact a daring rescue. It is at this point that Ek Tha Tiger awakens from its reverie as if having received a well-intentioned slap to the face and becomes the stunt-filled, explosion laden killfest that we all (well, some of us) have been hoping it would become all along. During this section we get to see Zoya repeatedly demonstrate the She-Hulk like ability to drop from thirty feet and land on her feet without shattering her knees. We also get to see Salman Khan punched in the face in slow motion, which is pretty gratifying.



I don’t mean to be too hard on Ek Tha Tiger, but I think that, given it was an international box office smash, it can stand to take a few well-intentioned knocks to the chin. It is, in all honesty, not a hard film to watch. It’s an expertly made commercial entertainment that gives its audience everything they could ask for, though in a perhaps less manic and well apportioned manner than the Masala films of old. And there lies the greatest difference between it and the Indian spy films of the 60s, 70s, and 80s: rather than stirring its disparate genre elements into a rough stew, it puts them in a kind of narrative Cuisinart, providing its audience with a ride that is less bumpy and dizzying than its predecessors. If you see this as some kind of loss (as I do), I prescribe that you chase this film down with a viewing of James Bond 777.

Tuesday, May 28, 2019

A Heroic Fight (Taiwan, 1986)


Over my years of writing 4DK, I’ve developed an obsession with the Taiwanese actress Lam Siu Law, an extremely appealing performer who, for the better part of the 80s, played the adolescent male protagonists of a series of increasingly bizarre fantasy martial arts films. A Heroic Fight is not one of those, though it might be, despite its contemporary urban setting, even more bizarre than any of them.

The film begins with Thai crime boss Mr. Duh (Yuen Cheung Yan) arriving in Taipei for a meeting with Mr. Barner (Chin Ti), leader of the Golden Triangle gang. Barner wants Duh’s assistance in trafficking his drugs into Thailand, but Duh, having reformed, gives him a hard no. Enraged, Barner swears to avenge himself on Duh and his family. Going by the old “eye for an eye” rule, the commensurate revenge for being refused would be to refuse a request made by the person who refused you (say for a drink of water, or directions to the train station), but Barner is all about escalation. He will kidnap Duh’s little daughter Ting (who is not the same Ting seen in King of Snake, although that would be a fun bit of synergy.)


In a scene pretty typical of A Heroic Fight, the first attempt to kidnap Ting Ting happens while the child is happily karaoke-ing to Madonna’s "Material Girl" in a public park while wearing an age-inappropriate crop top. One of Barner’s men, disguised as a balloon vendor in a bootleg Mickey Mouse costume, hands her an enormous bouquet of helium-filled balloons and, of course, she immediately rises hundreds of feet in the air because helium was invented by NASA. Another henchman on the balcony of an adjacent hotel is able to snatch the tiny, distaff Icarus from the sky before the sun can ignite her and rushes her downstairs to a waiting van.

Fortunately for Ting Ting, young movie stuntman Lin Siu Long (Lam Siu Law) is nearby, miming a cover of Celine Dion’s “Power of Love” with his band. Hearing Ting Ting’s cries, he takes off after the van on his tricked-out bicycle, which, among other things, fires missiles and poisonous gas. The chase that follows is filled with crazy, dangerous looking stunts, as well as more than a few incidents of cleverly executed slapstick comedy, preparing us for the manic cacophony of tones that A Heroic Fight has in store for us.


Lest you assume that Long is a professional Celine Dion impersonator, we have already learned that he is part of a family of movie stuntmen who live in a gadget-filled house with their master/stunt director Master Lin (Yuen Cheung Yan.) The scene that introduces Long is one that easily could have been lifted directly from one of her earlier films, like Child of Peach or Kung Fu Wonder Child. It’s a movie-within-a-movie in which Long plays a young swordsman doing frantic, wire-assisted battle with a giant demon head that looks like it’s made out of yarn. A Heroic Fight’s film industry backdrop allows it to make some gentle fun of the Taiwanese commercial movies of its day and, in this case, the sometimes threadbare practical effects that they employed. A joking reference is even made at one point to Long always playing boys in her movies. She is also shown to have an appetite for peaches, in keeping with her career defining role in the Peach Boy movies.

And while the movie’s definitely a comedy--and often a funny one, even—I think it’s also fair to say that it was also intended by its director Chiu Chung-Hing, an action director who also worked with Lam Siu Law in Child of Peach and its nominal follow-up Magic of Spell, as a heartfelt tribute to the stuntmen of Taiwanese cinema. And it can’t be said that the stuntmen here don’t work hard to earn that honor; The film is nothing if not manically frenetic and loaded to bursting with cheekily over-the-top stunt sequences.


The movie is also as 80s as a spandex-clad Morgan Fairchild doing aerobics on top of a Delorean. From the numerous needle-dropped pop tunes ("Girls Just Want to Have Fun" among them) to little Ting Ting’s colorful dance/workout ensemble, to the BMX Bandits’ style dirt bike shenanigans, and pretty much everybody’s big ‘ol hair, this is a movie that is absolutely saturated with neon decade kitsch. Of course that will be a strike against it for some people, as will the fact that it’s a martial arts comedy, and I can’t really argue with that. Nonetheless, I think that to dismiss this movie too hastily would be a shame, because if you give yourself over to it (which I did), it’s a pretty fun ride. The in-jokey swipes at blockbusters both Hollywood and Mandarin give its humor a bit more of an air of self-referential sophistication than it might have if it simply relied on poop and piss jokes (though there are those, too.) and the action scenes are both directed and performed with a surplus of good-natured enthusiasm. It’s like a giddy celebration of everything that’s great about Chinese language action cinema.

Although it has to be said that it’s also fast paced to the point of being nearly incoherent. Once Long has rescued Ting Ting, he and his brothers become allies with Duh in his fight against Barner and his gang. This sets the stage for the films wild, all-fighting final third. Finally, Barner manages to take Ting Ting hostage, and the action takes on a more purposeful cast. Thankfully, as in her other films, Lam is never allowed to look totally convincing as a boy while she’s demonstrating her formidable fighting skills. One could hope that the makers of Lam’s films, in casting her as a boy, in no way meant to downplay the fact that she was both a woman and a kickass fighter.


To state the obvious, I liked A Heroic Fight a lot. I might even say that it is my favorite Lam Siu Law film that I’ve seen so far. This is not only because it provides a great showcase for the actress’ fighting skills, but also because it contains more madcap martial arts craziness than all of her other movies combined. That is not to say that I am suggesting someone try to combine all of Lam Siao Law movies, or to even watch them in one sitting. For that is surely the way to madness.

Podcast on FIre's Taiwan Noir episode #29: Kung Fu Wonder Child and The Legend Of All Men Are Brothers


You may have noticed that, in recent episodes of Taiwan Noir, Ken and I have fallen down something of a K hole with these crazy taiwanese fantasy matrial arts films. But oh what a sweet, um, hole it's been. For example, this latest installment features Kung Fu Wonder Child, a revered classic of weird fu starring the Peach Kid herself, Lin Shao Lu. Alongside that we discuss the lithesomely titled The Legend of All Men are Brothers, which takes a recognized classic of Chinese literature and spins it into something that can accomodate a pair of jabbering puppet aliens, zombies, and a master swordsman in a souped up wheelchair. It's pretty weird, is what I'm saying.

If you want to join us in our happily delirious state, you can stream the episode here.

Thursday, May 23, 2019

Friday's best pop song ever

A miniature offense


On last week's Pop Offensive, we conducted an experiment in scale and learned that, like Ant-Man, a very short song can be just as powerful as one of average length. That's right, for the better part of two hours, I played nothing but songs that were two minutes or less in length. If you listen to the show, I think that, like me, you will be surprised by the diversity and quality of these tiny blasts of pop goodness, and impressed by the number of iconic artists that were behind them. So why not take a minute to stream the episode from the Pop Offensive Archives and bask in the brevity?

Ironically, time is something that's in short supply for me these days, so I will be uploading the playlist for the episode onto the Pop Offensive Facebook Page sometime this weekend.