WEEKLY ROUNDUP: Beijing Review! DECODED! GOIN' SOUTH! Don Hertzfeldt! And more!!
All that CAPS LOCK is a bit much, but...
It’s not The Truman Show, it’s SUCCESSOR.
Summer’s winding down, so my writing/movie-watching schedule remains a bit more all over the place than I’d like. Things will hopefully even out soon. While I’m here, I wanted to let you kind folks know about a couple of noteworthy items from this past week.
For starters, I was interviewed and quoted in Jiawei Peng’s new Beijing Review article about Successor, the recent Chinese comedy smash. I saw Successor about two weeks ago and was pleasantly surprised to be asked for my thoughts on the movie (I haven’t written about it beyond a brief tweet/skeet). I love Successor's high-concept premise, about a rich married couple (Moon Man duo Shen Teng and Ma Li) who go to great lengths to raise their child “poor,” just to build his character. Successor also notably falls apart at the end, as do a few other recent Chinese comedies (Johnny Keep Walking! and Post-Truth both come to mind). Still, while it’s no Pegasus 2—one of my favorite Chinese movies of the year, alongside Art College 1994 and The Storm—Successor is inventive enough to keep you guessing. Jiawei’s article is also pretty interesting, so give it a look, if you haven’t already (I posted a link earlier this week on Twitter).
“You wouldn’t happen to have a vape pen I can borrow, would ya?”
Speaking of China, I reviewed the mainland spy drama Decoded for Roger Ebert dot com, which re-teams the star (not Wang Baoqiang, but rather Liu Haoran) and the director of the uber-popular Detective Chinatown comedies. It’s been a moment since these guys have made a feature-length drama, so I was curious as to what that might look like after the runaway success of the Detective Chinatown movies. Decoded was adapted from Ma Jia’s popular source novel and also co-stars John Cusack as a squirrelly Polish math guy, in case you were wondering where Lloyd Dobler got off to. The movie’s a misfire, sadly, but it’s the kind of unusual dud that stands out for a number of reasons. For example, the normally soft-spoken Liu plays a John Nash-type mathematician who cracks complex encryption codes for his country (his last words in the movie: “My country. So beautiful…”). There’s also a ton of stillborn, computer-animation heavy dream sequences, since Liu’s character uses dream interpretation to solve his problems. Some of those dream sequences involve the least convincing Beatles stand-ins that you’re likely to see in a mainland Chinese movie this year, as well as a truly unfortunate (but funny) translation error. Read on!
Jack Nicholson is—The Gyro Captain.
Beyond that, I wanted to repost Mondo Digital’s recent article about Cinematographe’s well-stocked blu-ray of Goin’ South, Jack Nicholson’s second directorial effort following Drive, He Said. I provided the audio commentary for that blu-ray and am happy to see people are still enjoying and writing about the movie, which is both a western comedy and a marriage farce co-starring Nicholson and a young Mary Steenburgen. It’s an unusual movie, so I talked a little about Nicholson’s inspirations and ambitions for the movie. Glad to see that Mondo Digital’s reviewer seems to have enjoyed the blu-ray (and my commentary).
“Boy, this guy sure does go on…”
I was also recently interviewed for an upcoming Folha de Sao Paolo article, all about new Indian cinema. Not sure when that’s being published, but I’ll let you know when I know. In the meantime, if you’re in New York City this upcoming week, you might want to check out the Paris theater’s Don Hertzfeldt program, “Light and Noise.” I’ll be moderating the post-screening Q&A following Friday August 30th’s screening of Me, Don’s new short, and It’s Such a Beautiful Day, his amazing 2012 feature. I reviewed It’s Such a Beautiful Day for the Village Voice and also briefly wrote about Me for Roger Ebert dot com when it screened earlier this year at the Overlook Film Festival. Hopefully see you some of you on Friday!
“Fire…good!”
As for the future of this Substack—I have an idea for the first paid-subscriber’s-only post. I was thinking I’d write about The Caped Crusader, now that I’ve seen five of the first season’s ten episodes. I have mixed feelings, honestly, though I can already tell that the piece I have planned will be more about my reservations than what I like about the show. I’m thinking of writing about either the Firebug or the Harley Quinn episode. Or maybe a piece that mentions both episodes! Let’s see. I plan on rewatching and taking notes later today, so hopefully I’ll have something for you shortly…