Category: movies

Read the credits after you watch a movie. Aren’t you amazed at how many people were paid to contribute to creating it? These are good times indeed.

Chandni Chowk to China (2009)

For me, buying this movie was a bit like buying a German-Spanish dictionary, in that it made me a consumer of the product of two cultures, neither of them mine.

Lest you think that’s just an analogy, I hereby present my German-Spanish dictionary.

Chandni Chowk to China is a Hindi musical martial arts comedy.

Just let that sink in for a moment.

The main character is a superstitious Indian guy named Sidhu who works as a lowly vegetable cutter in a place called Chandni Chowk in Delhi. He has a lot of self-pity but not a lot of motivation to improve his station in life. (One day while cutting potatoes, he finds one that looks like the elephant-headed god Ganesha, and uses the coincidence as an excuse to neglect his duties, which earns him a kick in the pants from his foster father.)

His life changes when two Chinese guys somehow decide he’s a Chinese hero reincarnated and a Chinese fortune-teller friend convinces him to go to China. It’s wacky but kinda fun.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/chandni-chowk-to-china-2008/id312058686

See below for more about the movie, including SPOILERS.

Continue reading Chandni Chowk to China (2009)

The Gumball Rally (1976)

Okay, so I watched this AFTER I watched The Cannonball Run, which isn’t fair. This is the original coast-to-coast comedy road-race movie.

What was different about this first race was that it was more secret and people were eliminated more definitively.

“55 miles-an-hour is unsafe!”
“It’s boring.”
“THAT’S why it’s unsafe!”
“It’s fast enough to kill ya, but slow enough to make you THINK you’re safe.”

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/the-gumball-rally/id316802188

Cannonball Run 2 (1984)

The premise of this awkward sequel to The Cannonball Run is that the father of the rich Arab who lost the Cannonball Run wanted his son to win, so he encourages his son to fund another race, putting up a prize of 1 million (which he expects the son to win back). Both father and son wish to bring glory to their family name, which is Falafel (groan).

The way the Japanese team join the race is pretty awesome. Because the team wanted to avoid a two-day customs quarantine of the computerized car, the car is released from the back of a plane that lands on a road near the airport, deploying and then releasing a parachute to slow it down. The driver ignites the car’s rocket, plunges the car into a lake, and calmly drives the car like a submarine.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/cannonball-run-ii/id606620435

The Cannonball Run (1981)

“The most distinguished group of highway scofflaws and degenerates ever gathered together in one place” meet at a bar in Connecticut to kick off an illegal cross-country road race. They then proceed in their various vehicles, overcoming various difficulties, to traverse the continent.

Jackie Chan plays a Japanese character, apparently because someone thought all East Asians look the same. They must also have thought that all East Asian languages sound the same, because Jackie mostly speaks Cantonese in the movie.

Death Race 2 (2010)

As fun as Death Race, for all the same reasons. Yay, poetic justice!

Plus, since this is a prequel, we get to find out more about some of the characters from Death Race, like how Lists got his nickname, and how Death Race got started in the first place: it was better than what the prison was broadcasting before, which was a man-to-man fight called Death Match.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/death-race-2/id409429870

Death Race (2008)

Death Race is a cross between The Fast and the Furious and The Hunger Games. Ish. Some of the jolty filming was not to my taste, but I liked the premise, morbid though it is: Private prisons run popular, televised and very deadly auto racing competitions on site. Winning first place in five races theoretically earns a release from prison.

Usually I have a low tolerance for stuff breaking, but this movie broke stuff rather joyfully, and somehow I didn’t mind. I wonder where they shot the film and how much they spent. Luckily, the bonus features explained a bit about that.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/death-race/id291147060

Death Race 2 (2010) is a prequel.

Death Race 3: Inferno (2013) is a sequel.

Death Race is a kind of remake or prequel of Death Race 2000 (1975).

See also Deathsport (1978).

Ghost in the Shell (1995)

I am reminded vaguely of:

  • Blade Runner, because the cyborg was contemplating its identity.
  • Firefly, because it was set in Hong Kong in the future, where there was both English and Chinese.
  • X-Men, because it had a theme of mutation and change as necessary for progress.
  • Childhood’s End, because evolution made a huge leap to something transcendental.
  • RahXephon, because it had weird music.
  • The Matrix, because of the green numbers and the neck plugs.

IMO, the exposition was too heavy-handed for the whole thing to come off as subtle and beautiful and deep.

I didn’t like the American voice actors’ performance, which seemed flat or dull, perfunctory. Also, the English subtitles were completely different from the English spoken track.

The source material is Japanese, but the setting really is Hong Kong… In one scene there’s even a jet coming in for a landing at Kai Tak Airport right over the city.

The special features on the disc showcased the beginning of the use of CGI and digital editing; the movie was a combination of hand-drawn and computer techniques.

https://itunes.apple.com/us/movie/ghost-in-the-shell-25th-anniversary-edition/id1219320615