Best of QT-Fest Night 1

I really don't like missing films, but tonight I had to. If I could chose to skip a screening, it wouldn't be the first film of the Quentin Tarantino festival that had a really cool premise to it, but, like I said, Gus Van Sant is a cool guy.

So, afterwards, with a little bit of haste, good luck in parking and a friend, making it downtown in time for the second screening was not a problem. We were even able to make it in before the pass buyers were able to buy, so that we didn't face the chance of not being able to get in (something I was dreading). This lead us to...

Snake in the Monkey Shadow
Or Snake Fist, Monkey Shadow. Or a bunch of other names. Either way, it lead us to what was being billed as "The Greatest of the Snake Style versus Monkey Style films". I love the Snake Style. So fluid, full of motion. Monkey style is a bit unpredictable. I really couldn't have guessed who would win.

The movie is pretty straightforward with one little twist. At the beginning they introduce you to the greatest of the Snake Style fighters. You think this guy is it, he's going to be a badass and you're going to follow him through the movie as he uses his Snake Style to beat people up. Not true. Turns out he's the bad guy and the Monkey Style guy is the one who's the hero. The Kung Fu films that I've seen have never really gone out on the edge in terms of plot or any sort of edge in terms of story, so this was pretty welcome. A nice change.

The story line is still incredible baseline. A guy wants to learn Kung Fu, has to fight a bunch of guys, learns Kung Fu, gets revenge. That's basically all you need to know, and it's basically every Kung Fu film ever made. It's a winning formula, it doesn't need to change. Sometimes you can throw in the student fighting the master for a little bit of spice, but other than that, it's pretty much paint-by-numbers plot. What you do with it, however, is where everything lies in the Kung Fu flick. And Snake Fist accomplishes a lot.

For a movie about Snake vs Monkey styles, there's a lot of different styles used in the film, Drunken, Hook, etc. By the end the main guy is combining two and three different styles into a completely new style, letting him just beat up people however he wants.

The movie has fantastic choreography, some funny bits here and there, no huge gaps, but it still drags a little bit. Because late in the film is a scene that absolutely blew me away.

Snake vs. Monkey.

As in a real snake vs a real monkey. It's basically what everybody wants in a film, but can't name. If you ask somebody what they wanted in a movie, they'd probably say something like a good story or interesting characters, but what they really want is to watch a snake fight a monkey. Snake vs. Monkey might be the second best scene of all time behind the scene where DJ Qualls writes the backing track for "Whoop that Trick" in under two minutes. I really can't describe to you how amazing a scene it was to watch. Quentin's print is the only known copy of the entire sequence. Bootlegs and foreign DVD releases have very, very, very, very little of the scene (I have no idea why they would cut that out).

After watching that scene I really felt that I could do anything. Anything at all. I can stop a speeding train - I've seen a Monkey fight a snake.

What a movie.
11:14:31 PM    comment []  trackback []

Van Sant

Double bill today. Busy day. But a good one.

I'd been preparing for Gus Van Sant to come into the Master Class for some time. I'd even managed to watch every one of his features (watching Drugstore Cowboy today) except for the Psycho remake. I was even able to manage to watch Mala Noche on a copy that was taped off of TV. So, I was a lot more versed on the material than when Eric Edwards came into the class.

Part of going through Gus' IMDB profile to get some sort of "completion" on his work is that his best titles are reserved for his shorts. Put "5 Ways to Kill Yourself" on a marquee and I'm there. "Four Boys in a Volvo" sounds like it's some sort of Bujalskian road trip movie. So, it was a great treat to have him show his segment of Paris, je t'aime, and a short he'd made years ago called Junior, where his cat would attack a reflection of light (It's pretty funny, except that I remembered seeing something years ago that said that when cats do that sort of thing it's because of a brain disorder).

Gus is an interesting guy. He's mellow, calm, but puts a lot of thought into his words. Interestingly enough, sometimes you can't say the same about his films. Gus allows his actors to explore and to try to discover things on their own - often because it'll actually keep them more in line. Sometimes it doesn't. River Phoenix rewrote a scene of Idaho, actors were improvising the home movie scenes in Drugstore Cowboy. By letting go of control, Gus often has more control. Interesting lesson there.

There was a lot of talk of the most recent three films of his, Gerry, Elephant and Last Days, all three of which I have a profound love for. All three started out as normal, every day scripts with dialogue, scenes and every day movie things. Then things happened (he was kinda vague about this) to where he decided that it just wasn't the way to go. That they could be made without having the standards in place. The script for Gerry was eventually burned for warmth as Van Sant and Matt Damon were developing scenes in the new structure.

Discussion of the hyper-independents by Gus brought up the polar opposite in Gus' work - the super-Hollywood pictures - Good Will Hunting and Finding Forrester. Gus explained that these were works that he wanted to emphasize the script and make them for the people. The people responded to this and the film became a hugely capitalist movie after it's execution.

Psycho is largely on those lines. This was great to hear Gus talk about. Basically, from what he said, it all started out as a joke. Universal introduced Gus to the guy who handles remakes and Gus through Psycho out there because it was the biggest, most classic movie he could name that Universal owned. He came up with an Anti-Remake concept basically saying that since people only see movies for the actors, just change the actors. Whenever he'd meet with Universal he'd ask for it. When Good Will Hunting became nominated for 7 Oscars, all the studios went Van Zant crazy, so, when Universal called, Gus asked for it again. He got it.

If it succeeded, Gus argues that it would've been like infecting a computer with a virus. The studios would see that they could make money that way and start remaking their old films again ad infinitum while the independents could keep on making interesting movies. It didn't work, but it would've been interesting if it did.

Matt Dentler was there and he took a photo (I'm the half-figure in the front row).

Gus is a cool guy.
10:47:18 PM    comment []  trackback []