In answer to the question that has plagued me since the founding of And You Call Yourself A Scientist! – namely, “Don’t you ever watch anything else?” – we present a new site section: Et Al. – short reviews of the other films I watch. They’re the reviews I write when I’m not writing a review!
(To access Et Al. from the front page, click on Etc., Etc., Etc…., which is where I’m putting all the stuff I don’t know what to do with. I know, I know: it’s all very technical.)
#1 by Blake Matthews on September 22, 2007 - 11:38 am
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Excellent stuff. I miss the days when Scott at Stomp Tokyo did these things several times per week. hehehe I’m a movie review addict.
#2 by Nathan Shumate on September 22, 2007 - 4:14 pm
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Lyz — You have time to watch other things? Bizarre.
(By the way, I moved this to the “Hoopla” category.)
#3 by lyzard on September 22, 2007 - 5:15 pm
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Yes, that’s more appropriate – thanks. Uh, yeah: it’s not so much a matter of having time to watch other things as being compelled to do so whether I feel like it or not! You might say that my “other” job is as entertainment director for my father, who’s essentially housebound these days. I spend most of my evenings sorting out films for him and watching them with him. So, I watch TCM stuff, a hell of a lot of westerns, Asian cinema (we’re working our way through the Shaw Bros. at the moment) and in particular Stupid Action Movies – like The Complete Works Of Steven Seagal and Chuck Norris. (We’re just starting on Michael Dudikoff.) And when I get the chance, I slip in some of “my” movies. Fortunately, he’s reasonably tolerant of those. I’m also making him watch the original Star Trek, which he’s enjoying to a degree that’s a surprise to both of us.
#4 by El Santo on September 24, 2007 - 7:07 pm
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Huh. Fantaghiro sounds an awful lot like your usual territory to me. Why relegate it to the site’s B-unit?
#5 by lyzard on September 24, 2007 - 7:27 pm
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Because I watched it only because I was tape-to-disc transferring it, and I have no immediate plans to review. I imagine that a bunch of these short pieces will get the full treatment later on.
#6 by JessicaR. on September 24, 2007 - 11:25 pm
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I found a “My Forgotten Man” clip on YouTube. Wow it must have been a suckerpunch to see that after all the fun and games, and it’s become achingly timely.
#7 by lyzard on September 25, 2007 - 12:10 am
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Yes, it’s strangely done. The producer who hires Dick Powell does initially go on about making a real tale for the times, then the idea is immediately dropped and instead we spend an hour awash in a sea of Busby Berkeley froth, and then all of a sudden – BLAMMO!
#8 by Ken Begg on September 27, 2007 - 1:11 pm
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One of the Wongs has a scene where he meets with a bunch of other Chinese guys arrayed around a table, and they’re all played by authentically Asian actors (not sure if all were actually Chinese). And in comes Boris, an Englishman in that make-up, and you just wonder what the other actors were thinking in that moment.
Probably “Good to have a job today,” actually, since it wouldn’t have struck them as weird as it strikes us now, but yes, the cringe muscles do get a workout.
#9 by lyzard on September 27, 2007 - 4:15 pm
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My favourite Wong moment (can’t remember which film) is when someone makes a racial jibe, and Boris snaps back in his perfectly English English: “That’s right – I’m the Chinese copper!”
I find it helps to think that James Lee grew up in Hong Kong….