A Little TLC(w): The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993)

Today, I’m staying home for all the doctors, nurses, and other healthcare workers who are risking their health to hold us all together.

I’ve had this Tony Leung Chiu-wai movie on my radar for a while, chiefly for its cast – it contains basically the entire cast of Ashes of Time (evidently, Wong Kar-wai produced this film dudring a hiatus from shooting Ashes of Time as a way of bolstering the budget for Ashes,) and in the time it’s taken me to find it, I’ve become familiar with a few other actors in it as well.

A total wuxia parody, The Eagle Shooting Heroes kicks off with a pair of villainous cousins/lovers(?) trying to take over the kingdom, attempting to get their hands on some all-important McGuffin by secretly feeding everyone poisonous centipedes(?) and threatening to kill them all by using drum beats to control the centipedes in their stomachs (I’m totally serious here.)  Standing in their way is the Third Princess, who seeks the counsel of her martial arts master and then heads for the mountains, where there’s a different all-important McGuffin that can stop the cousins.  Along the way, we meet a man looking for true love as the key to immortality, a suicidal bandit looking for someone to kill him, and a number of people who may or may not be related and also may or may not be in love with each other (the words “brother,” “sister,” and “cousin” get thrown around a lot, and I’m not entirely sure if it’s meant to be literal – it kind of seems like it is, but I know that a lot of gangsters in Triad movies refer to one another as “older/younger brother,” and “auntie/uncle” is an honorific for older people in China, so it might be cultural.  It could also just be some subtitle wonkiness on the part of my copy.  If not, though, there’s a lot of incestual love in this movie.)

It’s just so bonkers, decidedly cheesy and not what you’d call a “good” movie by any means, but at the same time, it’s so audacious that it just about gets away with it.  I’m reminded a little of Chinese Odyssey 2002, in that it reminds me a lot of a Shakespeare comedy set in ancient China.  There are all sorts of love polygons, outrageous misunderstandings, ludicrous “drama,” and cross-dressing (although, in this case, it appears that the character isn’t a woman masquerading as a man but instead a man who happens to be portrayed by a woman.)  And, as I thought with Chinese Odyssey 2002, it’s kind of neat that certain types of humor bridges such different cultures and time periods.

I’ll admit that I haven’t enjoyed some of Leung’s shlocky comedies as much as I’ve enjoyed this one, and it largely goes back to the cast.  Everyone is obviously having a blast, and the contrast between all these actors appearing together in the beautifully-restrained Ashes of Time and then taking giant mouthfuls out of the scenery in this movie is just fun.  We have Brigitte Lin as the Third Princess, Jacky Cheung as the suicidal bandit, Carina Lau in the aforementioned cross-gender casting, Tony Leung Ka-fai as the guy trying to achieve immortality, Maggie Cheung as a prophetess, and Leslie Cheung as a guy who’s possibly in love with his sister.  We also get Veronica Yip, who was in Hero Beyond the Boundary of Time, and Joey Wang, who was in Butterfly Sword.

And of course, there’s Tony Leung Chiu-wai.  He plays Ou-yang Feng, one of the villainous cousins, and when I say villainous, I mean villainous.  If they had railroad tracks in ancient China, he would’ve been tying damsels up on them.  The character (along with Leung’s performance) is that level of mustache-twirly, revel-in-my-own-evilness villainy.  By the same token, though, he’s also super incompetent; he has the misfortune to run into Jacky Cheung’s characters and, in a series of increasingly-doomed attempts to kill him, manages to put himself through the ringer but good.

The performance Leung gives here is patently absurd, but that makes it kind of fun.  You know how, when acclaimed “serious” actors go on SNL, there are some instances where they do the really dumb/silly skits and it feels embarrassing, but there are others times when they commit so thoroughly to it that it weirdly works?  That’s kind of what’s going with Leung here, and with the majority of the cast.  It’s just so blame ridiculous, but nobody blinks – everyone is all in.  In Leung’s case, he’s particularly entertaining playing off of Veronica Yip (playing his equally-evil cousin) and Jacky Cheung.

Recommend?

In General – As you as you know the sort of thing you’re getting into, I would. It’s a movie that kind of has to be seen to be believed, almost too outrageous for reality.

Tony Leung Chiu-wai – Again, if you know what you’re in for, I think this might be too fun to pass up. Delightful, cheesy fun.

Warnings

Violence, sexual references, some gross-out humor, smoking/drinking, and some gay jokes that get a little uncomfortable.

The Book of Rannells: Black Monday: Season 2, Episode 2 – “So Antoine” (2020)

Today, I'm staying home for Stephen Sondheim.
 
Spoilers for the end of episode 1.

The second half of Black Monday’s new season premiere, while not as strong as the first half in my opinion, is still pretty entertaining. We continue to reset the board after everything got shuffled at the end of season 1, and we’re also getting more of a look at how the fallout from Black Monday is continuing to affect people.

Dawn has just discovered where Mo is – in a motel in Miami, anonymously hiding out with the newly-out Keith – and she’s not sure what to do with that information. She’s struggling to land all the deals she wants when Mo’s name is still attached to the firm, but he’s a wanted man, and exposing his whereabouts could bring a mountain of trouble down on his head. Elsewhere, Blair and Tiff look for new digs.

The Mo plot is good. I like seeing a Mo who’s trying to live simpler and cleaner (going back to his roots a bit?), and I enjoy his responses to those who can’t fathom the notion of him not being on step two of a multipronged plan designed to screw over his enemies and get himself back on top. In keeping with the ideas set up in the first half with both Dawn and Blair, Mo is trying to present himself as a new man – almost literally in his case, given his assumed identity – but how deep does this new self really go? Is the old Mo gone or just waiting to be reawakened?

Speaking of character transformations, Keith is out there living his best gay life in Miami, rocking his natural bald head, a Freddie Mercury mustache, and a new livelihood as a roller-skating coke dealer. It’s a delight, but as you can imagine, a chilled-out Keith who’s not screwing anything up is a scenario that can only be sustained so long.

We get more on Mo and Dawn’s relationship. They’re two people with a tremendous capacity to hurt each other – they’re similar to and different from one another in almost equal measure, and it seems that they have both best and worst qualities in common. It’s what can make them spark so well together, nigh unstoppable when they focus their drive and engenuity on a common goal, but it’s also what can make things implode royally when their goals either diverge or become too similar (i.e., they both want the the same thing but only one can get it.)

Slightly less Blair and Blair-Tiff in this half, but there’s still some good stuff here. I love their scenes with the “grim realtor,” a realtor who anticipates all the best properties opening up because her sister is a hospice nurse for wealthy patients. There’s also a delightfully-bizarre bit involving a stuffed horse made entirely of scraps of Georgina Jeans (Tiff’s family empire.)

As much as Blair continues to be cowed and steamrolled by Tiff, he’s also developing a bit more of a backbone of his own. Here, we see him caught between Tiff and her feuding parents, handling the situation his (underhanded) way rather than how either side would have him do it.

Other Doctor Lives: Wired: Episode 1 (2008)

Side note: while we’re social distancing, I thought I’d take a page from Kevin Bacon and include a daily line about the different people #IStayHomeFor. Today, I’m staying home for my grandparents.

Now that Doctor Who is over for the season (and now that we’re all spending so much time at home,) I’ve decided to resume my enjoyable practice of watching other works from actors who’ve played the Doctor, a la my Capaldi Fall and Countdown to Thirteen series. Rather than go all in on any one actor with a particular feature dedicated to them, I’m putting everything (reviews involving either Jodie Whittaker, Peter Capaldi, Matt Smith, David Tennant, Christopher Eccleston, or an earlier Doctor) under the header Other Doctor Lives. Today, we’re kicking off a three-part miniseries starring Jodie Whittaker (premise spoilers.)

Louise is excited when she gets an important promotion at the bank where she works, but she soon learns that the step up comes with major strings attached. It was orchestrated by Phillip, her friend/coworker’s shady new beau, and he views his hand in Louise’s promotion as an expectation that she’ll assist him in some dodgy dealings he has planned, high-tech theft from one of the bank’s wealthiest clients. Working in concert with Phillip is Manesh, whose cousin, like Louise, is similarly situated at a major bank and serves as the lynchpin of the operation. Meanwhile, Crawford, a dogged detective, has been pursuing rumblings of major bank fraud in the works, and his investigation leads him to cross paths with Louise.

I’d say the miniseries gets off to a slow start, even if I’m not sure if that’s entirely the right description. However, it’s how it feels to me. Although the different parts of the plot are all interconnected, they start off very separately, and the episode jumps back and forth between them a lot early on. It’s a little hard to get much of a foothold on any of them that way. It’s not until things start coming together more – when Louise, Phillip, and Crawford all converge as Phillip’s club – that the pace really picks up.

Once it does, though, it’s pretty enjoyable. “Bank fraud thriller” isn’t a genre I naturally gravitate toward, the sort of premise that generally only catches my interest if someone I like is in it. That said, the episode does well to keep a lot of its focus on the characters rather than the intricacies of what’s going on. Louise, as the protagonist, naturally gets fleshed out a lot, and she see how she’s struggling financially, how past indiscretions make her a target for someone like Phillip, and how, as much as she might want to go to the police, she’s also afraid – of what both Phillip and the police might do in response. I’m also interested in Manesh and his cousin Ben. Even though Ben is the one with the intel and the knowhow, Manesh is the one pushing their involvement, using his cousin’s value to his own advantage.

Strong cast all around, which was a definite motivator for me in watching it. In addition to Whittaker, we have Toby Stephens (who played Mr. Rochester in a miniseries of Jane Eyre) as Crawford, the always-good Riz Ahmed as Manesh, and Whittaker’s recent Who costar Sacha Dhawan as Ben. There’s also an appearance from Gary Lewis – I knew I recognized him, and although I’d thought it was from something more recent (Game of Thrones? A oneshot role on Doctor Who?), it turns out he was the dad in Billy Elliot.

Whittaker does a fine job as Louise. She’s a character with multiple sides to her, someone with a slightly checkered past who’s tried to clean up her act since then (especially for the sake of her young daughter.) She’s very quickly in over her head with some dangerous people, but at the same time, she’s not incapable. She proves herself to be quick-thinking and resourceful, and she’s brave while simultaneously trying to do what she can to mitigate risk.

So far, Louise is what has me most sold on Wired, which I appreciate. Back during Countdown to Thirteen, I observed that it seemed like so many of Whittaker’s past roles are unremarkable and undemanding, punching below her weight class as an actress. I think she’s been doing a bang-up job as the Doctor, so it’s nice to see more projects in her filmography that recognize her talents.

Accent Watch

London.

Recommend?

In General – Maybe. Again, despite not really being my cup of tea, it’s fairly interesting, and the cast is great. I’ll reassess when I get to the end.

Jodie Whittaker – So far, yes. I’m really liking this character, and I’m interested to see where Whittaker takes her from here.

Warnings

Violence, language, sexual references, drinking, and thematic elements (including suicide.)