The Informant!, Death Proof and Yojimbo

To say that The Informant! is Steven Soderbergh's most accessible movie is not saying much. This is a director who,lately, at least, Seems to pride himself on inaccessible movie-like Che, with it's running time of over three hours and the notice that patrons would not be allowed in after the movie had started and no intermission, or The Girlfriend Experience (which I liked). starring the porn star, Sasha Grey, or even Full Frontal, which I found infuriating. So when you hear the Matt Damon gained 30lbs to play a government informer, it seems Soderbergh has returned to days of Traffic and Erin Brockovich, two well-made and extremely popular movies.

The thing, The Informant is subversive. It looks like a comedy, but it isn't, not really. It may be the story of a corporate guy turned informant to the FBI, but that is not really the story either. And you would think that with Matt Damon as the star, he would be a hero, but he is not-and that's the most subversive thing about the whole movie, that the man who is narrating the movie turns out to be extremely unreliable-and we don't find this out until close the end of the show.

Is it humorous? Let's say it has a comic sensibility-although there were many times I laughed out loud. Everyone acquits themselves honorably-even in the small roles. And the clothes are perfect (of course I noticed). Matt Damon was a dead ringer for every early 90's corporate middle-America guy and his ties matched his position in society.

Just don't think this is a comedy by Steven Soderbergh.

The problem is that not long after I watched this movie, I watched Death Proof, directed by Quentin Tarantino. Whereas Soderbergh is careful, Tarantino is loose. Where Soderbergh is subversive, Tarantino gives it all to you up front. And where The Informant is slyly clever, Death Proof is outrageous in its humor and in what happens during the movie. It's clever all right, but there's nothing sly about it.

However, it is outrageously entertaining. The dialogue, the violence, the music, all Tarantino trademarks, are all there. I caught myself thinking at one point, is that a leg going through the windshield of a car? It's Tarantino, OF COURSE it's a leg going through the windshield.

So, Kurt Russell, plays Stuntman Mike, a serial killer always on the hunt for new victims (read:pretty girls). He finds some new victims in the beginning of the movie and runs into the wrongs ones in the second half. This crew, played by Tracie Thoms, Mary-Elizabeth Winstead, Rosario Dawson and the stuntman Zoe Bell, are awesome. How much fun did they have making this movie? They play crew and one actress working on a movie when they run into Stuntman Mike, who ends up wishing he had never messed with these girls. This movie was FUN.

Yes, I've seen Kurosawa before but I'd never really seen the movies that made his early reputation-Rashomon, Yojimbo, the Seven Samurai-so I'm finally getting around to it.

I loved Yojimbo. A wild western, set in ancient Japan, it's easy to see how this movie influenced practically every western that came after it-when Toshiro Mifune is standing in the middle of a town square with the wind whistling by him and dust blowing, I expected to hear the theme to The Good, The Bad and The Ugly.

So, Mifune, a samurai without a master (and no real name) shows up in a town where two clans are warring-and destroying the town as they do it. I can't say he cleans up the town, but he does set them against each other to a point where the only people left in town are the innocent villagers-everyone else is dead. Is he the good guy? If the ends justifies the means, absolutely.

But again, this movie is a lot of fun. The evil gangs fighting each other, the cranky innkeeper and Mifune eating through the whole movie-it's all very entertaining.

Special Shoe Edition

Ladies, please. Those shoes that make your feet look like horses hooves are NOT COOL. They are fugly. I hope they're comfy because they are hideous.

Eliot Patison

Okay, here's the thing. All of Eliot Patison's books have the same theme-that the Chinese are doing their absolute best to destroy Tibet-in ways large and small. They do everything from re-education camps to destroying the precious statues of gods and goddesses to throwing as many Tibetans as the can in work camps or coal mines. Something awful always happens in his books-someone always gets killed in front of someone else, something precious is stolen or destroyed, someone disappears and no one knows where they are. And it always takes me forever to read his books because because they are emotionally difficult to take, except in small doses. And yet...there is something about the story of the exiled Chinese Inspector Shan, who has spent four years in the Chinese gulag and instead of destroying him, it has made him a different person. Maybe it's the fact that in every book, someone always undergoes a change. It maybe for the worse, but it's usually for the better. For all that these books are filled with despair and anger, they still hold out hope and redemption. Yes, you can learn a lot about Tibet and its struggles against the Chinese but if that's all you see, you really aren't looking deeply enough to see the real message of these books, which is that hope and change are possible for everyone.

I just finished Beautiful Ghosts and it was fantastic. Shan meets his long-lost son, who not only hates him but is a criminal as well. People die, precious things are alternately destroyed and stolen and many hateful things happen. And yet, it's about redemption, hope, change and continuity. For all the awful things that happen, life still goes on and rituals are still handed down to the next generation.

I expect the next book will take me just as long to finish (and I'll probably have to read a book or two in the middle to help me take a breather) but this series just gets better. Patison's books aren't for the faint of heart but they are worth it.