Cinematic Distractions

My Year of Dicks (2022):
I love rotoscope animation, and I came of age during the '90s. I was a sitting demographic duck for this Best Animated Short Film Academy Award nominee. I found it more relatable than anything out of Hollywood that was targeted at teens back then.

Cemetery of Splendor (Rak ti Khon Kaen - 2015):
The pacing is such that you will close your eyes and meditate to the soft melodic voices and the sounds of cicadas, crickets, and trees rustled by the breeze, or you will go right to sleep. Either way, it is nice to bask in serenity once in a while. There are things in this movie that only a Thai person can truly understand. It is full of mysteries and dreams sprung from history and legend. I didn't need to understand everything to appreciate its tranquil, meditative beauty.
Somnolent soldiers, divine incarnations, strange color-changing tubular lights, war memorials and ancient ruins, water wheels, herbal medicine, mind reading, lucid dreaming, and a giant paramecium in the sky are brought to us by Apichatpong Weerasethakul, who also directed Uncle Boonmee Who Can Recall His Past Lives (Loong Boonmee raleuk chat - 2010). Jenjira Pongpas is a terrific natural actress, and I enjoyed her performances in both films. I really like this bit of dialogue in reference to her marriages:
"But I'd prefer a European husband. Americans are too poor. Europeans are living the American dream."

The Outlaw (1943):
This is the Howard Hughes produced horse that Jane Russell rode in on. I received a disc which contained both the black and white original and colorized versions of the film, and no extras. Both were a little rough, but not so poor as to ruin my enjoyment. I have read that there is a beautifully restored version available. The one I received was certainly not it.
To briefly and crudely sum it up: Funny bits and enormous tits.
It pays no heed to history. It is a dramatic comedy with a romantic subplot dressed as a western. The story is basically one long comedy bit in which Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel) and Doc Holliday (Walter Huston) amiably bicker and tussle over a horse, a pouch of tobacco, and eventually, a woman. All three of the aforementioned rightfully belong to Doc although how he came by the horse is questionable. All three have a funny way of ending up attached to Billy. The woman in this quadrangle is Rio McDonald (Jane Russell). She smokes every scene in which she appears, and it has nothing to do with tobacco.
Jack Buetel is eye candy in his own right. The two of them together on screen along with a few too many lingering close-ups of Jane Russell's generous attributes got the film nixed by the censors. Even after some judicious editing, the studio still would not release it. Facing a catastrophic financial loss, Howard Hughes ginned up a fake controversy and succeeded in socially engineering the movie-going masses into clamoring for the release of the lewd picture that the censors wanted no one to see.
Thomas Mitchell plays sheriff Pat Garrett, and he really shows his range here. His character has had a longstanding friendship with Doc going back to when they were kids, then Billy comes between them. Mitchell is probably best known for playing Gerald O'Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). Mimi Aguglia plays Guadalupe, Rio's watchful aunt.
The Outlaw is by no means a great movie, but it is a darn entertaining one.

I Am Groot (2022):
These shorts are all adorably cute and absurdly violent, and the animation is high quality.

Romance on the High Seas (1948):
I got more than I bargained for on this excursion. Here we have the big screen debut of Doris Day. Although I had seen her in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), this was my first easy, breezy, happy-go-lucky Doris Day musical.
I generally avoid this sort of entertainment. The mores and ideals of the late 1940s through the 1950s are contrary to my disposition. I'm reminded of what Hunter S. Thompson said about the Circus-Circus casino in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas:
"The Circus-Circus is what the whole hep world would be doing Saturday night if the Nazis had won the war. This is the sixth Reich. The ground floor is full of gambling tables, like all the other casinos... but the place is about four stories high, in the style of a circus tent, and all manner of strange County-Fair/Polish Carnival madness is going on up in this space."
In this case, replace the four-story casino with a cruise ship bound for South America.
The rigid adherence to cishet gender roles, the implication that anyone who disagrees or deviates from the ideals depicted on screen should be shunned by society, and the heavy reliance on contrived screwball shenanigans really jars my ass. Romance on the High Seas is a particularly ridiculous example of all the gripes above, yet it is somehow wonderful. Silly and mindless but wonderful.
So...
Why did I rent it?
Avon Long.
I went a long way for one song and dance number featuring Avon Long. What I didn't know until the opening credits rolled was that the choreographer was none other than Busby Berkeley, which was a nice bonus. There are only a few dance numbers, and they are quite simple compared to what Berkeley did in the Gold Diggers films of the 1930s.
Doris Day had intended a career as a dancer, but she had to retrain as a singer following a bad car accident. No matter one's opinion of her, she had a hell of a singing voice. The best example here is the song I'm in Love. Minus a few lines at the beginning, the song title is the lyrics. She sings that one line as many ways as it can be sung, and it's amazing. That song serves as the introduction to her character, nightclub performer Georgia Garrett. Shortly after that performance comes this cheeky line: "Hey, Georgia, a couple of income tax evaders want you to have a drink with them."
One of those income tax evaders is Janis Paige in the role of Elvira Kent. Elvira is looking to hire a pretty face to help her spy on her husband. Her husband (Don DeFore) is looking to hire a square-shouldered private investigator (Jack Carson) to spy on his wife. Georgia's manager ends up spying on everyone simply by tagging along.
Travel to Cuba was legal when this was made as is evidenced by the gorgeous travel posters in the background of the travel agency scene. Both the opening and closing credits are rendered in the style of travel posters.
This is a wonderful movie for fashions, sparkly dresses, satin gloves, impractical capes trimmed with rhinestones, and ridiculous, formidable hats so sculptural that they belong in a museum. Janis Page gets all the best hats. Doris Day wears the most impractical, rhinestone-trimmed cape while she utters this line:
"Anything above the third rib I consider formal."
I don't know where to begin with Oscar Levant, and if I did, I'm afraid I wouldn't finish. Even if you have never heard of him, you have likely heard from him. He more or less plays himself as Oscar Farrar, manager, song writer, piano player, and aspiring love interest to Miss Georgia Garrett. I thought he was just an interesting character actor with a talent for music. He was a gifted composer whose compositions are still finding a place in modern works. He was also quite the comedian though most of his jokes were at his own expense. One particularly funny but heartbreaking line from this movie: "I wonder what ever became of me." Look Oscar up. You might lose yourself. I did, and so did he.
Character actor and bit part highlights include a drink stealing drunk played by John Burkes, and a prurient hotel clerk played by Franklin Pangborn. There is a brief scene involving a bank of pay phones in a hotel lobby. Listen closely to hear an actress speak her best Spanjibberish. She comes within a syllable of saying, "Bada bing!"
In addition to Avon Long, there are a number of specialty players including The Samba Kings, The Page Cavanaugh Trio, and Sir Lancelot who performs a calypso song with a mighty white and amusingly stiff Jack Carson.
One final note about the cast: Unless her IMDb profile is in need of an update, Janis Paige is still alive, and she will celebrate her 101st birthday this September.
Among the DVD extras were the Tweety and Sylvester cartoon I Taw a Putty Tat (1948) and Memories from Melody Lane: Let's Sing a Song from the Movies with the Melody Makers featuring:
Am I Blue? sung by Ethel Waters, and all the white folks in the chorus sing, "Lawdy!"
By a Waterfall from Footlight Parade (1933)
Some Sunday Morning sung by Alexis Smith in a very sparkly dress accompanied by some slickly designed lyrics slates.
A Gal in Calico sung by Dennis Morgan and Jack Carson along with several fringy stretch pants clad, camel-toed, cowgirl dancers. Yee-haw!

Late Autumn (Akibiyori - 1960):
Watching an Ozu film is like watching a pretty painting dry. Some are more vibrant than others. There is almost always a train in them somewhere. His discreet domestic dramas are not for everyone, and this one was a bit of a miss for me.
A widowed mother worries that her daughter, who is still happily single despite being in her late twenties, may never marry. Three close friends of her late husband decide to play matchmaker. The three older gentlemen are charming and amusing, but also paternalistic and a tad salacious, which I found off-putting. The daughter's best friend, Yuriko (Mariko Okada), is the only one with a pulse and any common sense.
My most recent foray into Ozu's films prior to this was the irreverent comedy Good Morning (Ohayō - 1959), which I absolutely loved! I realize now that Ozu was poking fun at himself in that one. That would explain why I found few laughs in this dry comedy of manners and polite misunderstandings.

The Mermaid (Mei ren yu - 2016):
It's greedy commercial real estate developers versus mermaids in this wacky romantic comedy from Stephen Chow. I had this one in queue for a while. I moved it to the top at the urging of a friend. It arrived just in time to be our New Year's Eve drunken movie. We watched it with the English dubbing. While ripped on Prosecco, it was laugh until out of breath hilarious.
The next day, I gave it a sober viewing in Chinese with English subtitles, and I laughed only once. Depending on how much you enjoy physical comedy and sight gags, you may or may not like this. The lower your bar for comedy is the better. I recommend hitting a bar or something else before watching it.
The jetpack scene got the only sober laugh out of me. A message about protecting the environment underlies all the silliness. Tsui Hark appears in a minor role as Uncle Rich.

The Demon (Kichiku - 1978):
CW: Horrific child abuse from start to finish.
No one should subject themselves to this pit of violence and despair. It is pure nightmare fuel. It is not worth it, not even for the trains. When justice is served, it is too little too late. The news is full of atrocious stories like this. I didn't need to rent a movie about it.
The trailer was misleading. It made it out to be an intense family drama about a married couple having to suddenly care for the husband's three illegitimate children with an emphasis on the father's bond with his eldest son. Don't fall for it. There are a number of attempts to humanize and garner sympathy for the dad, but they all backfire miserably. I despised him well before the end.
I had seen another movie directed by Yoshitarō Nomura. I saw Zero Focus (Zero no shōten - 1961) about eleven years ago. I barely remember it apart from how good it looked. That is presumably why The Demon was recommended to me. I regret this choice. Parts of it are going to haunt me. Avoid my fate.
The stepmother from Hell is played by Shima Iwashita. She also has a bit part in Late Autumn above. The poor excuse for a father is played by Ken Ogata, whom I recognized from his starring role in The Ballad of Narayama (Narayama bushikō - 1983). Eimei Esumi is the print shop employee who witnesses the abuse but does little to stop it. I have seen him in several Seijun Suzuki films and also Akira Kurosawa's Dodes'ka-den (Dodesukaden - 1968).