MAKIN' A MARTINI and Sean Gill live at the PIT, December 19th

As a part of Amie Amis and Zahra Hashemian's Le Petit Autobus, I will be presenting my celebrated short film Makin' a Martini and doing a live, "twisted astrological reading" on December 19th at 7:00 p.m. at the People's Improv Theater (123 E. 24th Street between Park and Lexington Avenues).

Tickets are only $5 and are available here!

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Coming in January 2014: 10 Years of Junta Juleil Productions

Most of my longtime readers will know that Junta Juleil's Culture Shock is not my only creative outlet. Though this blog celebrated its five-year anniversary this fall, my film and theater production company– Junta Juleil Productions– has been around for quite a bit longer, and this January it will be celebrating its ten-year anniversary.  In honor of the occasion, I'll be hosting a celebration at the Wild Project (195 E. 3rd St between Avenues A & B) in Manhattan on Friday, January 17th at 8:00 p.m.  Tickets will be $15 and are available here for pre-sale.  The evening will include screenings of short films, excerpts from features, live theatrical performances, crazed readings, and rare, never-before-seen material from the musty, dusty archives of Junta Juleil!

So if you're interested in seeing what I'm up to when I'm not writing about Charles Bronson, break-dancing, Van Dammage, or Carpy-mania (as a side note, the Poor Man's Carpy series ain't over yet!), then you should come out and see the show– or at least watch this 10 Year Anniversary video I've put together:

Junta Juleil's 10 Year Anniversary from Sean Gill on Vimeo.

Thanks to you all for your support through the years!

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Only now does it occur to me... KING OF NEW YORK

Only now does it occur to me... in the wake of similar salutes to Ed Harris, James Remar, and Jean-Claude Van Damme– my tribute to Christopher Walken dance mania!

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Only now does it occur to me... MERCURY RISING

Only now does it occur to me...  well, a few things.

From the writers of Burton's PLANET OF THE APES and Cannon's SUPERMAN IV comes an inspiring tale in the slick/big budget/all-star cast/conspiracy thriller-mode that was quite in vogue in the late 90s (ABSOLUTE POWER, CONSPIRACY THEORY, ARLINGTON ROAD, ENEMY OF THE STATE, ERASER, EXTREME MEASURES, THE FIRM, THE GAME, MURDER AT 1600, THE PELICAN BRIEF, SHADOW CONSPIRACY).  Occasionally laughable but usually enjoyable, it's also secretly (er– actually, openly) a message picture about autism.


 A few quick observations:

#1. Miko Hughes (KINDERGARTEN COP, PET SEMETARY, APOLLO 13, WES CRAVEN'S NEW NIGHTMARE, FULL HOUSE, John Hughes' son) is put in vehicular harm's way

even more often than in PET SEMATARY, a movie whose most notable feature (besides the Ramones song) is Miko Hughes being run over by a truck.

#2.  Also, I'm wondering if– differing color corrections aside– Willis is wearing the same (or basically the same) brown jacket and jeans as he wears in PULP FICTION.  Maybe he wanted elements from PULP FICTION around in his other 90s work as a good luck charm, like Buscemi in ARMAGEDDON or Sam Jackson in DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE or Mexican standoffs in LAST MAN STANDING.


#3.  The versatile actor John Carrol Lynch– playing a character named Lynch– has a prominent role in two of the most notable contemporary films about ciphers and code-breaking:  MERCURY RISING and ZODIAC.
 
Perhaps only John Carrol Lynch can truly solve... THE DA VINCI CODE.  (I would actually watch that movie.)

#4.  The brilliant character-actor Peter Stormare (FARGO, MINORITY REPORT, ARMAGEDDON, etc., etc.) is completely wasted as a grunt-uttering henchman with about two minutes of screentime.

 Peter Stormare:  he deserves better.

 #5.  For fans of TV's 30 ROCK, Alec Baldwin's villainous "Kudrow" in MERCURY RISING will come across as a carbon-copy, albeit "serious" version of Jack Donaghy– complete with pompous board-room persona, laughably right-wing sentiments, deep-voice affectation and all.  This is especially fantastic in a wine cellar showdown whereupon Baldwin unsuccessfully instructs Willis not to handle his wine twice
 
  

 

 

which prompts Willis to make the power play of destroying an entire vintage-packed wine rack

 
causing Frasier Crane, somewhere in Seattle, to wince terribly without even knowing why. 
I must applaud this, ecstatically.

–Sean Gill

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Film Review: MOONRAKER (1979, Lewis Gilbert)

Stars: 4 of 5.
Running Time: 126 minutes.
Tag-line: "From the most exotic locations on Earth, MOONRAKER will take you out of this world!"
Notable Cast or Crew: Roger Moore (THE QUEST, LIVE AND LET DIE), Michael Lonsdale (MUNICH, THE NAME OF THE ROSE), Lois Chiles (THE WAY WE WERE, BROADCAST NEWS), Richard Kiel (EEGAH, THE SPY WHO LOVED ME), Corinne Clery (YOR, THE HUNTER FROM THE FUTURE, THE STORY OF O), Bernard Lee (DR. NO, THE THIRD MAN), Geoffrey Keen (THE LIVING DAYLIGHTS, FOR YOUR EYES ONLY), Desmond Llewelyn (THUNDERBALL, GOLDENEYE), and Lois Maxwell (LOLITA, GOLDFINGER).
Best One-liner:  "Take a giant step back for mankind."

 A few James Bond films (like, say, FROM RUSSIA WITH LOVE or SKYFALL) attempt a stern and serious atmosphere, a kind of no-nonsense-thriller vibe striving for a degree of class that's slightly more "John le Carré" than "Ian Fleming."  MOONRAKER is not one of these films.

It shares more in common with the delightfully insane DIAMONDS ARE FOREVER or the funhouse loopiness of THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN GUN than your typical higher-tier Bond film.  And that is why I love it.
So, without further ado– my six favorite head-scratching, spit-take worthy moments in MOONRAKER: they're what make life worth living.

#6.  Bond hurls a henchman through a priceless clock-tower window, whereupon the unfortunate lackey plummets to his doom...

 and completely penetrates a grand piano

 
 in a live-action Looney Tunes tableau that achieves near-Joe Dante levels of comic grotesqueness.

 Go ahead, James.  Care to lay the cherry atop this sundae of slapstick savagery?  I know you've got something good up your sleeve.

There you go!  A-plus!


#5.  Spielberg ouroboros.
In addition to having a returning character named "Jaws," MOONRAKER uses the famous, five-note theme from CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND as the electronic combination to a door in a high-security area.  Little did the makers of MOONRAKER know that Spielberg would soon begin his own James Bond-ian series (INDIANA JONES) which would eventually include in its third installment a Venice speedboat chase sequence, just like in MOONRAKER!  The mind reels.


#4.  Lasers, Lasers, Lasers!
 
I mean, the movie is called MOONRAKER.  Obviously, you wouldn't rake the moon with anything less than a laser.  What else are you supposed to use... a rake?  

Now here are some pictures of an undercover MI6 agent dressed as a monk zapping the hell out of a goopy dummy, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK-melting-Nazis-style:

Carry on, then.

#3.  Roger Moore as Clint Eastwood.

Set to the raucous strains of Elmer Bernstein's MAGNIFICENT SEVEN soundtrack, Moore makes an entrance while dressed in a near-facsimile Man With No Name costume.  This feels like a gag better suited for THE PIRATE MOVIE or a NATIONAL LAMPOON'S flick, but I'm more than okay with it.


#2.  Jaws' Love Interest.

Fan-favorite, metal-mouthed behemoth Jaws (Richard Kiel) returns from THE SPY WHO LOVED ME with appropriate grandeur and succeeds in stealing a second James Bond movie away from James Bond himself.  In a mind-blowing setpiece scored by the love theme from Tchaikovsky's ROMEO AND JULIET, Jaws is swept up off his feet by the Heidi-esque "Dolly," a super-strong woman with pigtails.  I'm going to stop you right there, tell you to lower your arched eyebrow, and ask you to just go with it.

This culminates in a crowd-pleasing plot-line of Jaws becoming something of a good guy, which leads to Jaws tossin' Mr. Bond a hearty outer space thumbs-up

and celebrating his new life choices by gnawing the cork off of a bottle of champagne and enjoying it with his lady friend.

Clearly, I wish that Jaws could be in every James Bond movie.  Alas.

#1.  I have to give the number one spot to the moment that inspired an actual, non-theoretical spit-take:

James Bond blasts his motorized gondola out of the Venetian canals and onto a main thoroughfare, rapidly inflating a bottom panel that transforms the vessel into a hovercraft.

He then gallivants about the streets of Venice, wearing a "I say, what are you looking at, good sir?" expression upon his smug face.

 
 This prompts a pigeon to do a show-stopping double-take, achieved through a forward-reverse-forward motion effect.
 
This is one of the ballsiest, most wonderfully inane gags to appear in any movie, James Bond or otherwise.  Its sheer lameness is such that it goes through the rabbit hole and back again, trampling your logic centers until you have no choice but to admit its brilliance. 

Four stars.

–Sean Gill

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Film Review: THE SANDPIPER (1965, Vincent Minnelli)

Stars:  2 of 5.
Running Time:  117 minutes.
Tag-line: "She gave men a taste of life that made them hunger for more!"
Notable Cast or Crew:  Elizabeth Taylor, Richard Burton, Eva Marie Saint, Charles Bronson.  Written by Martin Ransohoff (producer of THE FEARLESS VAMPIRE KILLERS, CATCH-22), Irene Kamp (THE BEGUILED), Louis Kamp (MR. QUILP), Michael Wilson (PLANET OF THE APES, THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI), and Dalton Trumbo (SPARTACUS, JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN).
Best One-liner:  "What would you do, in my shoes?"  –"Wear them!"

THE SANDPIPER is a mostly torpid romantic drama featuring star-crossed dipsomaniacs Liz Taylor and Richard Burton being directed by the legendary Technicolor dream-master Vincent Minnelli.  It's got some nice nature photography, but then again, so does ROBOT MONSTER.  So, here's a list of my favorite things that Charles Bronson does in it:

#1.  Bronson is real hip to your jive, daddy-o.  That's right:  Charles Bronson is playing a beatnik.  A loud-mouthed Bohemian-by-way-of-Big-Sur liberated artsy know-it-all.

And check it out, there– he's totally doing the arm motion from the "It's MY car!" scene in DEATH WISH 3!

It's MY car!

Talk about goin' through the rabbit hole:  Bronson's playing the sort of hilariously stereotyped youth-subculture ne'er-do-well that he'd later spend large chunks of the 1970s and 80s gunning down in the street!

#2.  Bronson the sculptor.  So Beatnik Bronson's artistic discipline happens to be sculpture.  And sculpt he does:  specifically, he sculpts a nude wooden Liz Taylor while Richard Burton (playing a lovestruck Reverend) paces around uncomfortably.

Given the context I'm used to seeing Bronson in, this is fairly bizarre and absolutely welcome.  Though it's worth noting that even Bronson's "sensitive artist" is a brawny guy who spends most of the film tangling with and harassing outsiders.

#3.  Bronson, the drug addict.  Being a bongo-n-beret-luvin' Beatnik with loose morals and declining character and grumble, grumble would you believe kids these days grumble, grumble:  Bronson naturally acts like a total dick to the Reverend Richard Burton and starting talking about heroin ("H", to use Bronson's parlance) like it's no big deal and

wondering if God lives inside his hypodermic.  Again, it's amazing in context– twenty years later, he'd be flinging a bag of crack in a dealer's face and saying "How many children have you killed with this shhhhhitttt!" while unleashing a hail of bullets.

#4.  Bronson, Liz Taylor smoocher.   As the film develops, Bronson briefly becomes a sort of romantic rival to Richard Burton, and even sneaks a smooch.

Later, they duke it out and Burton proceeds to kick Bronson's ass

but then Bronson gets back up to have the last word and knocks Burton out.

So there's your schoolyard hypothetical "what would happen if Bronson and Burton had a fistfight?" played out on screen.

#5.  Bronson, the man who leans on things.  If there's anything around to lean on, anything at all, Bronson makes the acting choice... to lean on it.

He is simply a man who leans on things.  I would like to believe that he wasn't just feeling lazy, and that in fact this was a conscious acting choice–  hell, maybe it's Bronson's take on the Beatnik generation:  too namby-pamby to stand up straight on their own, or something.  I don't know.  

Anyway, even all this Bronson greatness (in what amounts to three brief scenes in a nearly two hour movie) can't come close to savin' this weird-n'-jazzy, pre–"Summer of Love" snoozer.  Two stars.

–Sean Gill

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Only now does it occur to me... BULLET TO THE HEAD

Only now does it occur to me...  that I would ever witness the following tableau:  A drugged-out, minor henchman played by Christian Slater (in a fox mask), partying at a low-rent version of EYES WIDE SHUT's creepy ball 

is stalked into the bathroom by a sheet-music-mask-wearing, revenge-seeking Stallone

and abducted at knifepoint whilst mid-whiz

as Stallone uses the one-liner:  "Grip it and zip it, party boy!"

As to the film: though it's a mean, semi-lean action picture by the legendary Walter Hill, it's not quite as good as I wanted it to be, despite the meaty acting stylings of Mr. Stallone and the extended-cameo-appearance by The Slater Factor.  Carry on.

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