Artifice, emotion, and truth
Strangely enough, the genre description “deliberately artificial romantic melodrama slash Thai western” don’t do justice to Wisit Sasanatieng’s 2000 film Tears of the Black Tiger. The film is a postmodern pastiche of the most shallow and wonderful kind: ambitious, energetic, and entertaining, combining disparate clichés, both narrative and visual, to form something new and unique. … Continue reading
What fresh hell is this?
The Proposition begins with a shootout and it is the last one you’ll see. This is not your typical western and there are greater brutalities than gunplay here. When the shooting stops we are left with Captain Stanley (The great Ray Winstone, who also happens to appear in Sexy Beast, mentioned in my previous post) seated at a table across from Charlie Burns (Guy Pierce) and his little brother Mikey, both of whom are members of a notorious Irish gang lead by their eldest brother, Arthur. The gang has been charged with the rape and murder of a young woman named Eliza Hopkins along with her entire family. Captain Stanley informs the brothers that Mrs. Hopkins was with child at the time.
It is Stanley’s belief that Arthur Burns was the real catalyst for this atrocity and so he offers Charlie a deal: Charlie must find and kill Arthur before Christmas Day or they will hang his little brother and then come after him. For Charlie, there is no choice.
Red Dead Resolution
I bought Rockstar Games’ Red Dead Redemption the day it came out, May 18, 2010, and I just finished it this past weekend. Of course, I say that I finished the game. The game itself seems to think that I’m only 85.4% done. Red Dead Redemption doesn’t end when the credits roll. You can just keep going if you want, playing poker, hunting, gathering rare herbs, helping or assaulting people as your wont may be. I will admit to having done a little of all of these things.
