Yeah Yeah Yeah...Do The Kung Fu Hustle

After a truly horrendous weekend, Cal is actually sort of...happy today. Difficult to deal with in terms of the screeching, crawling and constantly trying to kill himself, yes, but back to normal otherwise. THANK GOD.

In other news, I've been working on the next section of "The Hot Country", and I've almost gotten to the actual smut. Keep in mind, this is 2,641 words in--those guys talk a lot, in between literally/figuratively hammering at each other. Part of the fetish, I guess.;)

With Mom's help, however, Steve and I were able to see Kung Fu Hustle last night, and it does indeed rock. I laughed more during the first few scenes than I have in a long time, even while watching ostensible "comedies". I was particularly amused by the structure, which moon_custafer had already outlined for me: A big bad-ass is introduced, committing bad-assery; we all go "Man, that [person] is bad-ass!"; another bad-ass comes and kills the first bad-ass, in an even more bad-ass manner; we all go "Shit, that [person] is even MORE bad-ass!"; repeat ad infinitum. The mere fact alone that opium-addled, hustle-doing, way-too-fly Brother Sum of the Axe Gang becomes somebody you end up feeling sort of sad for because, in the final analysis, he's just a normal human being...man, that's pretty choice. I'll have to check out some other Stephen Chow films now, and see how they stand up by comparison.

So yeah--I had terrible dreams all night, my sticky lat/shoulderblade is worse than ever, I seem to have ground my teeth so hard in my sleep that I strained a muscle in my eye-socket (which now twinges like a needle every time I blink), and I still haven't worked out, showered or dressed to go out yet. Highly unlikely I will be able to make it to the doctor's to inquire about whether or not Cal's constantly flow of dense orange earwax is something to worry over. But the Kung Fu Hustle aura seems to be operatinga bit like a hangover, which means I don't care. I'm happy.

Back later, perhaps, to talk about agincourtgirl's Least Wanted Movie Festival idea and The Glass Key, which I watched again this morning and was startled to realize may well be one of the most enjoyable films in my collection; I sort of recalled thinking that when I first saw it, but baby, it's true. Afternoon, all.

I Am The Sty In Your Eye

...because yes, that's what the twinge actually is. And I can't remember what I did to get the sty to go away, the last time I had this. Obviously, a trip to the doctor is in order, and not just for Cal's earwax.

So, meanwhile: The Glass Key. This is a classic Noir, probably best-known (if you know it at all) as the source material for the Coen Brothers' Miller's Crossing. Like M.C., it involves a slap-happy thug-turned-politician whose best friend/fixer is a far smarter, ridiculously loyal guy; thug politico guy gets involved with the wrong dame, and it all goes south. But you know, much as I like people like Gabriel Byrne and Albert Finney (and John Tuturro as the world's least P.C. homosexual Jew, yelling: "Look in ya heaaaaaaart!"), I far prefer the original--it's whackier and sexier, funnier, more startling and a lot more human. And it has a glorious turn by William Bendix as the character who inspired "The Dane", who is--no, seriously--far more scary as a repressed S/M gay guy who gets increasingly bewildered by how turned on batting Alan Ladd around is making him. There's a scene in which Ladd deliberately gets him beyond drunk and tries to flirt information he needs out of him that is genuinely frightening; Ladd's character is smart and tough in ways we rarely see onscreen anymore, especially since his main superpowers seem to be taking a beating and catching people in lies. (He also only ever holds a gun once in the entire film, and it's not even his--he grabs it off Bendix while Bendix is strangling somebody, then refuses to give it back to him. "You're a HEEL," Bendix tells him, like he expects him to care.)

People often accuse The Glass Key of having an un-followable plot, but it's not really about the details so much as it is about how Ladd can keep on liking and respecting his thug friend--who throws a guy through a set of glass doors halfway through the second scene just because he disagrees with him, and only starts liking Veronica Lake after she smacks him in the kisser--just because "he's straight-up...you should try it sometime" (ie, too dumb to lie), yet also become enmeshed in Lake's schemes even though he can see everything she throws at him coming from a mile away. "I don't think you're better than Paul (his friend), and I don't think you're better than me," he keeps telling her--pretty big words, considering she's a high-class chick with breeding and education, and he's a guy who consistently says "ain't" even though he seems to know different. But in the final analysis, it's also about how he doesn't think HE's better than her, either. It's weirdly democratic, and it ends much more happily than you think it will, particularly for its genre.

And now, I'm going to post the first part of "The Hot Country V: Anaamchara", mainly because it's turning out to be so insanely long that doing it in two parts seems inevitable. Besides, this will assure that I can/will get to the smut by Wednesday, which I'm sure will make at least some people happy.;)

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Hookay, off to bed, with visions of...stuff dancing in my head. Later.