Having recently become a cat owner, I decided to revisit this psychosexual spankfest by Paul Schrader, better known for writing
Taxi Driver and directing arthouse faves like
Affliction and
Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. What compelled him to remake the creepy Val Lewton horror classic
Cat People as a bizarre mythical tale of kitties and titties is beyond me, but IMDb trivia says he admits that one day he was so high he refused to get out of his trailer and direct. By the end of the movie, you'll believe it.
Nastassja burned into my 12 year old retinasThe original was delightfully creepy and dreamlike, where a young girl's fears become a frightening reality. This one just seems tawdry and serious, because it's about people who fuck leopards. Schrader and his production designer, Ferdinando Scarfiotti, craft a beautiful mythical past that seems to exist in a timeless corner of our brains, peopled with Jungian archetypes. Rather like another psychosexual fairy tale of the '80s,
The Company of Wolves, this is much darker and erotic, and while it is sometimes silly and overlong, it is unique and engaging. Unlike another "animal people" movie of the period,
Wolfen, it manages to draw us in, and is probably best compared to another stylish, sexy horror film-
The Hunger.
The dreamlike quality of the mythical scenes
It begins in a desert village at the dawn of human history, where an animist tribe appeases the hungry leopards by sacrificing a virgin to them; we see a beautiful young woman tied to a enormous tree, and at night the leopard comes. He doesn't eat her, so she is brought to his cave, which is curiously marked with a drawing of a cat with human hands. From here we move to modern-day New Orleans, that most lurid of American cities, always a hotbed of sexual violence, whether it be from vampires, voodoo queens, or cat people. Paul Gallier (the always creepy Malcolm McDowell) picks up his sister Irene (Nastassja Kinski) at the airport, after a long time apart. Kinski plays the virginal naif perfectly, and her sensuous body belies her behavior.
Malcolm McMeowell
Her brother is quite the opposite, and immediately gets caught in panther form when he frequents a brothel. They coop him up in the zoo, where Irene goes to visit and meets Oliver, the friendly zookeeper (John Heard). Yeah, really... see where this is going? Ed Begley, Jr. plays a rather careless curator, and Panther-Paul yanks his arm off for his troubles... and then he somehow escapes. As Irene finds herself falling for Oliver, her brother makes his own advances on her- since she is the only sexual partner who won't be torn to shreds in the climax. She rebuffs him and he goes back to hunting hookers, which eventually leads police to his basement.
He doesn't mind eating her after sex
Her hubby Michael McKean is one lucky bastard.
Unfortunately we are pretty sure people turn into cats in this one; our first introduction is a leopard under the bed in a whorehouse, where the prostitute has just left her john. It doesn't take a genius, and it's a mistake to remove any suspense about the nature of the creatures. The film does work very well as an erotic dream piece, partly through generous application of breasts, including the bountiful Annette O'Toole, and the lithe Nastassja Kinski. Malcolm McDowell's Paul is not a remorseless sociopath, but a slave to his urges; while he cuddles with a woman he knows he will tear apart, he says he feesl bad because he likes her. It doesn't stop him from nibbling a bit of her skin left on his belly when he wakes back up in human form, though.
Big cats are dangerous...
The brother and sister have a feline grace to their movements, but occasionally it gets a bit silly, such as when Irene washes her cheeks like a cat; it happens after a formative, primal moment, after she sleeps with Oliver and loses her virginity, and I suppose it is meant to signify her transformation. It doesn't work; something more subtle was in order. The screenplay is a bit of a mess, and breaks its own rules a few times. The new ending is terrific, and bookends the story perfectly, but the way there is long and meandering. While it was certainly enjoyable seeing Ms. Kinski cavort in the nude, as stories go I prefer the original version.
...but a little pussy never hurt anyone.
Beers Required to Enjoy: 1
Could it be remade today? Underworld 3: Lycan Sex Party
Quotability Rating: Zero
Cheese Factor: Mild
High Points: Dreamy visuals and a litter boxful of nudity
Low Point: Script written on cocaine binge
Gratuitous Boobies: More titty than kitty
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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.
Ray's looks like your typical New York streetfront pizza parlor; it has a few stools and some benches outside. Many different slices are on display for reheating. It reminds me of a place around the corner from me called Frank's- nothing special, but dependable for a slice on the go. It's next to the A&P in Bloomfield, so there's easy parking. That's about all that places like Frank's and Ray's have going for them. They're reliably mediocre. But how bad can pizza be that the people who run the place order out?
Chinese delivery at Famous Ray's in Verona
I found out when I stopped in this Sunday. They ordered Chinese, and I snapped a photo. I dunno how Ray got famous, maybe for letting his pizzas dry out in the display case? My crust was crumbling apart. As for taste, it was decent chow. Not much to differentiate it from a Sbarro's or Villa Pizza, really. That's the problem in New York- there are a billion pizzerias, so for every Lombardi's or Grimaldi's, there are three dozen corner cockroach casas slinging pie. And they're so convenient. So "New York style pizza" in New Jersey usually means this kind of place.
They're good for something- when you get outstanding pie from a dough-slinging pizza craftsman, you not only know it, but you're thankful. While Bloomfield Ave in Montclair is a nice restaurant row showcasing everything from excellent sushi, good BBQ, tasty Cuban, soul, fish fry, deli, Turkish, breakfast and much more, it does not have a pizzeria of note. A grave shortcoming in a spot where a nice stroll could be in order. It would be nice to order a slice of Napoletano style, like from Queen Margerita or Michael's in Nutley, or even a standard Jersey thin slice like from Three Guy's in Belleville.
So if you go into a Chinese takeout place and see them getting pizza delivered, you might want to go someplace else.
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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.
I dunno if you heard, but
they found Bigfoot. (
He was cruising in Elvis's UFO). Apparently some dudes down in Georgia found a body of a large hairy beast in the swamps known to harbor
Skunk Ape, the stinky sasquatch of the South. Unfortunately when they thawed out the freezer with the body, it turned out to be a rubber suit. Big surprise there. Despite finding possum and human DNA in the samples they gave for testing. It looks like someone decided to stuff roadkill in a suit and pull a hoax, but they made a big splash, and who doesn't love a good hoax? I sure do.
Frozen rubber suit and some roadkill = media bonanzaGrowing up in the '70s, there was a huge Sasquatch vibe. Bigfoot captured the perfect combination of budding environmentalism and mystery needed to soothe the malaise borne of enormous collars and paisley prints, and the creeping realization that our country was becoming a garbage-covered shithole. The idea of an angry ape in the woods, pissed off at us throwing Chunky bar wrappers and empty cans of Tab on his turf, was a tempting one. Maybe he would beat up Richard Nixon, stomp a Japanese car, and throttle an oil sheik, and we'd be number one again.
Six Million Dollar Man and his lover
There were a lot of Pissed Off Nature movies in the '70s- grizzlies, piranhas, sharks, ants, spiders, whales, frogs, worms, snakes, alligators, and even killer bunny rabbits were all out to get us. Why not sasquatch? In 1973 a quasi-documentary called The Legend of Boggy Creek was made as a low-budget labor of love by Charles Pierce and Earle Smith, who also gave us the eerie docudrama The Town That Dreaded Sundown, about a Zodiac-esque killer who haunted Texarkana in the '40s. This came first, and was perfect drive-in fare; it became a huge hit, making $20 million when movies cost 50 cents. The Godfather only made $134 million! It even inspired The Blair Witch Project with its shaky camera style.
The story told by the narrator is of when he was a child in the '40s, of the Fouke Monster- an apelike creature sighted in "the Bottoms" swampland where Arkansas, Louisiana and Texas meet. It's a haunting area, memorably depicted in Joe R. Lansdale's novel The Bottoms, which isn't about Skunk Ape but you can imagine the beast of Boggy Creek lurking in this area. The movie is more of a nostalgic documentary on rural swamp town life with occasional appearances by a huge hairy beast in the woods that's probably a bear. While it never approaches the documentarian mastery of Louisiana Story or the like, it has a down home charm to it, because many of the people who claim to have seen the creature play themselves re-enacting the sighting, or daily life.
A simpler time, when Indians didn't cry by the river.
Folk songs written for the film, such as "The Ballad of Travis Crabtree," about a young swamp hunter who'll remind you of Huckleberry Finn, give it a "Grizzly Adams" vibe. My favorite is "Where the Creature Goes," where we hear the singer pine for the creature's "lonely cries ringing out over his watery domain."
The Boss-Man and I watched it one night, and it is definitely a window back to the early '70s. Nowadays the closest you'll get to this is stuff like "Ghost Hunters" on television, where someone recounts a spooky tale while the camera creeps around with night-vision on, and some low-budget effect recreates what they claim they saw right before they pooped their pants. The beast may be a guy in a suit, but they keep him shrouded in the dark woods where only his silhouette can be seen, and the first-time actors do a fine job of being themselves and then shitting bricks. One fellow says he took aim but wasn't sure if it was an animal or a man, and didn't want it on his conscience.
I don't have any beef jerky, dude!
So why are there still bigfoot hunters out there, even though the hoaxer who created the famous "walking ape" footage admitted it on his deathbed? It's something we'd like to believe in. I know I wish we had wild man-apes cavorting in the woods. Or something undiscovered. Cryptozoologists like to remind us that the okapi was "undiscovered" until 1902, despite natives insisting that it was out there, but that was in Africa, a much wilder place.
The sequels to The Legend of Boggy Creek were Mystery Science Theatre 3000 material, but the original has a sort of hokey, low-budget charm to it. Can you imagine an era when something like this would gross 25% as much as something like The Godfather? Well, I guess it still works; The Blair Witch Project made a bundle, was shot on a shoestring and based on vague folktales. I only saw it years later because the Discovery channel ad campaign rubbed me the wrong way. But nowadays when you hike in the woods, you'll joke more about the witch than the sasquatch. Or maybe manbearpig.
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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.
In a little unassuming storefront in Hell's Kitchen, you can get some of the best burgers in the city slathered with homemade sauces and dozens of toppings, a delicious shake and some huge-ass cookies. Just don't ask for fries. They don't serve any. Why the ixnay on the izefray? There isn't enough room for a fryer. Once you squeeze into the shop's narrow seating area, you can see why. It's still comfy for 4 at a table, as the slinky waitresses sidle behind you with huge platters of chicken churascos, and if you're lucky you won't have to wait for one of the 5 or 6 tables. But if you have to, it is worth the wait. And you can get a huge baked potato covered in toppings instead.
We didn't try a potato. The burgers are enormous, and they have Dirty Chips- aka Zapp's Chips in the South- available in BBQ, Sour cream & Onion, plain kettle, and Jalapeno. I had mine with jalapeno, which gives a nice palate-cleansing tang between bites of burger. And you'll be taking a lot of bites. Island Burger is known for toppings, and their
huge menu lists dozens of variations that you can have either as a burger or a churasco.
Fork? How about a forklift...
I decided on the Frog (boursin cheese, bacon, and fried onions), Firecracker had the Tijuana (bacon, jack, guacamole, onion), Jokerboy the Purist had a bacon and cheese, and Beast had Will's (bacon, cheddar, sour cream, onion, scallion, sourdough). We all had bacon. Bacon is the great equalizer. About the only thing on a pig that's better is perhaps the Crispy Pig's Ear at The Spotted Pig, which must be eaten in moderation. But it's so good that our two friends violated kosher to try it. The bacon here is nothing special- not thick or seasoned. The burger and the sauces made up for it.
About an entire grove of avocados.
The burger patties are half a pound- fat and juicy. They will serve them to you rare- none of that nanny state bullshit. I had mine medium, so it was pink and juicy in the center. The patty resembles a huge charred meat donut without a hole. It's fat and round like a cartoon hamburger, but well-formed so it's a bit loose inside, and doesn't feel like eating the huge chunk of meat that it is. The problem is keeping a thick burger and its generous toppings on the bun. Ours were all either on Pullman sourdough- a thick, spongy square slice of bread- or the sesame seed bun. I daresay that these may not be up to the task of holding the burger together. The ciabatta roll we saw a slab of chicken churasco riding was more like half a loaf of bread and seemed much more capable. The next time I go, I will definitely build on a ciabatta.
Even a relatively "plain jane" bacon-cheese was unwieldy.
The flavors were excellent, despite our troubles eating the messy burger. The boursin cheese was rich and creamy with lots of herbs, and the bacon seemed like an afterthough. Very few of the caramelized onion petals remained on the burger, so I couldn't tell how everything worked together. The guacamole was tangy and creamy, and I might pair that with something hot next time. I didn't see many spicy sauces, to my dismay. I like a little fire in my burger.
Ryan working on Shake #1.
Cookie Monster would be sated.
The burgers are not cheap- they cost as much as a burger & fries at a chain. But this tastes like a real homemade burger. It shocked me that I hadn't had an honest-to-Wimpy juicy hamburger at a restaurant in so long. Greasy, yes. But at Island Burgers, when you ask for medium, you get it. They don't cook them all until they are gray inside, like at Red Robin, or any number of burger chains. This is the real deal, and worth hunting down. As far as BIG burgers go, this is up there with Miss Ann's Ghetto Burgers, and the monstrous bleu cheese burger at The Spotted Pig for pairing size and flavor. Check them out. You won't regret it.
Just don't ask for fries. Besides, you can go downtown to Pomme Frites where they serve fries and no burgers.
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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.
What if Terence Malick decided to make a stoner action comedy? Well, that didn't happen. But David Gordon Green, a director heavily influenced by him, who made the excellent and acclaimed
George Washington, has done so. Under the auspices of producer Judd Apatow, the film still has the frenetic buddy comedy framework of
The 40-Year Old Virgin and
Knocked Up, but has the unique look of David Gordon Green's movies, and the loving setting of depressed urban backdrops behind the hilarious character-based comedy dealt out by Seth Rogan, James Franco, and Danny McBride.
The plot is simple- Seth Rogan plays Dale, a process server who's also a hardcore pothead, who drives around down serving subpoenas and toking all day (
And thankfully, this Judd Apatow movie has subpoenas and no gratuitous "poenas"). After he picks up some new Hawaiian weed from his dealer Saul, he goes to serve a subpoena on someone and sees a murder, and ends up running from the killers for the rest of the movie. It's that simple. Of course he heads back to Saul's place to hide and the buddy movie begins, with Rogan playing a slightly more jumpy version of his usual film persona and James Franco giving the best slurring stoner with hilarious epiphanies since Brad Pitt sat on the couch with a honey bear bong in
True Romance. He manages to craft a character I hadn't seen him play before, but I'm told is not a far cry from work he did with Rogan in "Freaks & Geeks." They have great chemistry together and that is what makes the film- against the backdrop of cinematographer Tim Orr's visuals- rise above the pack.
The rest of the cast include familiar faces like the creepy guy and the violent guy from the party in Superbad, the doorman from Knocked Up, and Danny McBride in one of his funniest roles as a middleman dealer named Red. McBride has been in both Apatow flicks (Drillbit Taylor) and David Gordon Green (All the Real Girls), and his own film which didn't get great distribution, The Foot Fist Way (it comes to DVD at the end of September). Plus we have Lumberg from Office Space as the bad guy, Rosie Perez as a crooked cop, and Ed Begley Jr. in his best role in years as Dale's girlfriend's Dad.
Drug movies can be hit or miss; while Saul and Dale are high out of their minds for much of the film, their bumbling stupidity while sober keeps the comic energy flowing. The infamous car chase, definitely funnier than Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny's, rivals those of the Arkin-Falk classic The In-laws. Once again, Seth Rogan crafts a hilarious screenplay that feels like a late-'70s/early '80s romp updated. The third act, which follows the buddy cop formula so closely that it reminded me of the first Lethal Weapon, and definitely knows it- there's a shot where someone gets caught in a ju-jitsu triangle choke just like how Riggs kills the torturer.
Pineapple Express keeps the humor full on even as people get shot left and right while dodging through hydroponic pot gardens, and never gets serious even when we think it will. I enjoyed that more than the typical comedy script that turns dramatic to pull heartstrings; we have emotion invested in Dale, Red and Saul by the end of the movie and we don't need a tearful interlude to force it. Rogan's script and Green's direction are smart enough to know this and veer away from formula in this regard. For a film geek, it was great seeing Green's Malick-esque shots of the boys cavorting in the woods, or seeing iconic neighborhood people in the corners as they talk on grimy payphones. I didn't think it was as funny as Superbad or as thrilling as Lethal Weapon, but it was engaging as hell to see the stoner buddy comedy get tossed with the buddy action film plot in a way we haven't seen since the Cheech & Chong movies, and done so much better.
3.5 tokes out of 4, and don't Bogart it, dude.
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Begone, foul words of the devil! Shrink it back.
Having recently become a cat owner, I decided to revisit this psychosexual spankfest by Paul Schrader, better known for writing Taxi Driver and directing arthouse faves like Affliction and Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters. What compelled him to remake the creepy Val Lewton horror classic Cat People as a bizarre mythical tale of kitties and titties is beyond me, but IMDb trivia says he admits that one day he was so high he refused to get out of his trailer and direct. By the end of the movie, you'll believe it.
Nastassja burned into my 12 year old retinas
The dreamlike quality of the mythical scenes
Malcolm McMeowell
He doesn't mind eating her after sex
Her hubby Michael McKean is one lucky bastard.
Big cats are dangerous...
...but a little pussy never hurt anyone.
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