New Years

As promised, I had a very low-key New Year's Eve. I watched the first episode of Da Ali G show, which I'd never seen before and had on my Netflix queue forever. I laughed a few times but was struck by the sameness of Cohen's shtick--Ali G, Borat and Bruno are all the same character--cocky, stupid foreigner passing off offensiveness as the result of coming from a different culture. It's not a bad idea or anything, but only Borat really made me laugh much.

I then watched Miami Vice, which is entertaining up to a point. I guess I've lost some respect for Michael Mann as I've gotten older. Even the first time I saw Heat in a theater, I liked some of it a lot but felt the characters were flat, and that hasn't improved over the years. I guess I kind of wonder what the guy's about. I mean, much is made of his constant rewriting on the set and all his preparation and certainly a movie like this represents at least a couple years of the guy's life, and for what? It's just a moderately coherent action film. The Gong Li/Farrell relationship is ridiculous and thin, and Farrell and Foxx have zero chemistry--they hardly relate to each other at all. In most scenes they sit or stand next to each other and talk to somebody else. Mann fits in lines here and there to sketch in their dynamic as friends and partners, but there's not much there. They've apparently been together long enough that Foxx knows he can trust Farrell, when in actuality, he can't. Not completely, anyway. Farrell decides to let the girl--who is an adult and responsible for her part in the drug trade--go, merely because he really liked fucking her and they both had something in common--they both had parents who weren't around much. Mann is reliably good at the big shootout near the end, and the settings are pretty cool, but I think the movie is overrated, or should I say it did about as much business as it deserved.

I also finally watched Hostel, which is a really good horror thriller from Eli Roth. I never saw his debut, Cabin Fever, but what had kept me from renting Hostel was that I was just expecting something like Saw, just nonstop depraved torture (I never saw Saw, either, so I admit I could have the wrong read on that one as well, but the point is I want a story to go with gore). I used to really be into gore as a teenager, but it has to have some story content now, just like I'm not really turned on by sex scenes if there's no buildup and characterization. Anyway, Roth does a great job on his budget of drawing the viewer and his characters into a terrifying world. There are a lot of surprises and Roth really finds the right note in each scene--sometimes it's sexy, sometimes it's very grim, and sometimes it's more action-oriented, such as when the film turns into more of a chase/revenge type of picture. Jay Hernandez isn't an amazing talent, but he does what is called for very efficiently, and all in all the film was really well cast with local or at least European talent, and Roth gets the most out of his Prague sets and his makeup/FX team. Very satisfying conclusion as well. One of the commentaries features Roth with exec producers Quentin Tarantino, Boaz Yakin and Scott Spiegel, and credit to Roth for not letting QT dominate the proceedings too much, though I always like hearing Tarantino wax about movies. They discussed some alternate endings for the film which didn't turn up on this dvd, so who knows? Maybe there will be an expanded edition coming. From the sounds of it, the ending chosen was the right way to go.

Reading some of the TCJ Library Harvey Kurtzman book today and taking down Xmas decorations. Both college football games I sampled were very boring. Yesterday I bought myself a vibrating office chair, which I'm enjoying right now.