Film
Reviews
MARTIAL ARTS DREADNAUGHT (15) 91 min
(Hong Kong Legends DVD rental/retail)
One of the less well- known entries in the career of acclaimed Chinese director and action chOreographer Yuen Woo-ping. Dreadnaught is a comedy caper With a rather grisly line in action. Already one of the men who helped put Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung on the map by the time this film was made in the early eighties. Yuen w0u|d later go on to work With Jet Li. and to choreograph the action sequences of Hollywood films like The Matrix, Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Kill Bill.
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With such a pedigree. it follows that the fistfights are probably the main reason to watch this film. While the mowe's main adversaries White Tiger (a VICIOUS and hilariously gurning criminal, played by Yuen Shun-lee) and Mousey (Yuen Biao. the dim but eager young man training to defeat him) are rather one-key foes. the action is a Technicolor rampage of acrobatic set pieces. which can't fail to please kung-fu aficionados. (DaVid Pollock)
Extorminatin
(A Loud
0 Clear
DRAMA ADDRESS UNKNOWN (18) 115mins Tiartan DVD retail; O”.
Kooks}: u o
A rather bleak but certainly affecting look at US foreign poIiCy from the other end of the telescope. Kim Ki- duk's film follows generations of Koreans who have been affected by the
incurSion of American
soldiers into their land. LiVing beyond the
i impassable gates of a long-standing US
military base. few have been untouched by the US occupiers. Their
countrymen and women treat a middle- aged woman and her
adult son — the child of an affair with a GI — as outcasts. which leads
them to hatred and Violence towards both
Sides as well as each
other. Meanwhile, another young Korean
girl is in an unsavoury affair with an American soldier. It's a measured and occasionally harrowmg slice of life drama. yet one which Western audiences — with their implicit misunderstanding of
many cultures alien to
their own — really should see. Extras include director's interview and trailers. (David Pollock)
SUHH:.~- :AEi EXTERMINATING ANGEL
(15) 95min
I‘A'TD-‘v’ DVD 'eta” 0000.
Luis Bunuer's ozar'e 796‘ ailegor, about a group of high society friends who. after an evening at the opera in MeXico City. meet for a sophisticated party at a house. only to find they cannot walk out the deer at the end of the evening ffOr reasons unexplained, is one of Bunuel's most perverse and enioyable films. Shot in austere
black and white by the great MeXican Cinematographer Gabriel Figueroa. and orchestrated by Bunuel With all the glee of a naughty over-educated Child. Exterminating Angel is a wonderful surreal satire of the baseness of the institutions we unWiser choose to invest in. As the bourgeOISies guests turn into lions and other animals. the rules acquired by money. class and stupidity dissolve into anarchy. Exterminating Angel encapsulates many of the strange themes of “discreet charm' that Bunuel would return to again and again in his remarkable discography. Minimal extras.
(Paul Dale)
TV
Revie
’
FAMILY DRAMA THE SOPRANOS E4, Thu 31 Aug, 10pm 00000
All good things come to those who wait. And boy, have those shadowy forces behind The Sopranos loved to keep us hanging on. In the normal run of American TV things - where a show kicks off a new season like clockwork every year - we should now be entering the eighth series of the mob drama; but pay cable channel HBO and creator David Chase don‘t work like that. Or, to look at it another way, as we are now entering the sixth and final series, The Sopranos would have finished in 2005 and that would have been too awful to contemplate. To those who eat, drink and sweat the New Jersey drama (AKA The Best TV Show Ever Made), not even the continued rumours of a movie somewhere down the line or the official announcement that a Sopranos P82 game (The Road to Respect) will be out in November, are enough to ease the pain that Tony and his crew will soon be six feet under.
But if some fans might be worried that the hiatus which has existed since New York boss Johnny Sacrimoni was nabbed by the FBI while Tony shuffled and slipped stage left through the Jersey snow might have wound up in a lacklustre final series, they can rest assured; the opening 50 minutes alone has two jaw-dropping moments for anyone still left in doubt. What seems clear from this season is that the loyalty which Tony could previously count on from his crew is no longer set in stone. Whether they want to flee the coop simply for a fresh start or to hide from a secret, it can only mean Tony's authority and status being further called into question. But surely he can count on his other family, the one he is linked to by blood? That question is answered at the opening episode’s taut finale.
Once this set of 12 episodes ends, we’ll have another period of cool reflection until the swansong of eight more shows (they’re calling it an extended sixth season rather than a seventh, the enigmatic sods) due to be on screen in the States in March. With the actors returning to Satriale's Pork Store and the Bada Bing! meat factory in early September for the final filming schedule, we can only speculate on what exactly Chase has in mind for his totemic creation. In therapy, Tony once stated to Dr Melfi that there were only ‘two endings for a high-profile guy like me: dead or in the can.‘
Considering the stately pace of the show and the off-kilter way the last three series’ have ended, it seems unlikely that the tasteful Chase would ever plump for such a rounded finale. More likely is that Tony will be shambling down his drive to pick up the paper or smoking a stogie on his yacht or shovelling ice cream down his neck while watching his beloved History Channel. Whatever Tony’s fate, this is one show that will not sleep with the fishes without a fight. (Brian Donaldson)
ALL DVDS WERE REVIEWED ON A SYSTEM SUPPUED AND INSTALLED BY LOUD 8: CLEAR
28 1115 LIST 24 Aug—7 Sep 2006