The Image Of Bruce Lee (aka Meng nan da zei yan zhi hu/Storming Attacks) (1978)

I sometimes feel bad for Bruce Li. A perfectly capable martial artist with a passing resemblance to Bruce Lee, he was re-branded and thrust into stardom in a series of Bruceploitation features meant to take advantage of the popularity of the late star following his death. Not that he resisted starring in these films, but he certainly had the charisma and ability to have done quite well for himself outside of these often shaky features. The Image of Bruce Lee actually has very little at all to do with Bruce Lee, and is instead a retitled contemporary action crime film with a few minor references to the dragon's films- most notably the opening sequence where Li is dressed very similarly to Lee in Game of Death, as well as a character briefly mentioning his resemblance. The film, which resembles a cop show from the 70s with plenty of kung fu and nudity thrown in, is actually quite entertaining, and it's unfortunate that it's lumped into the often exploitive sub-genre.

Bruce Li stars as Special Squad Leader Dragon, though is never actually referred to by that name. After a brief miscommunication (which leads to a scuffle), he's teamed up with Inspector 'Moustache' Wang, and the two are tasked with bringing in a crew of counterfeiters who have been distributing false U.S. currency into Hong Kong. The baddies are led by Han Tin Lung (Ying-Chieh Han) and his son Steven (John Cheung), who have operations reaching into London and Tokyo. The Tokyo branch is led by Kimura (Enter The Dragon's Bolo Yeung), while the printing paper is being brought to Hong Kong from London by Donna (Dana), the daughter of an associate. Soon, kung-fu is breaking out all over as Dragon tangles with Han's men, Kimura, Steven, more of Han's men, and eventually Han himself. Meanwhile, Donna gets naked and Inspector Wang spends most of the movie following her around. I won't spoil the twist, but the final scene is eye-rollingly goofy.

Actually much more entertaining than its title might imply, The Image of Bruce Lee fits wall to wall action into its rather standard counterfeit plot, making sure to throw in some decently choreographed fight scenes every five minutes or so. Li is quite impressive during these scenes, throwing some great kicks and generally looking like he could kick the ass of anyone within a ten mile radius. He's only ever challenged when totally outnumbered, or when faced with the martial artist's kryptonite: a gun. As for the baddies, John Cheung (who apparently is somewhere in Enter The 36th Chamber of Shaolin) shows off some impressive fighting skills, and Bolo is his usual Chinese Hercules self. The fights tend to run together, but there's a fun altercation in a dojo which leads to Li taking on a dozen guys by himself, and the final rumble - which begins among some dilapidated buildings and ends on the beach - feels appropriately climactic.

Director Chuan Yang, who fronted dozens of films of various genres, tackles the action perfectly fine, showing off his stars and tossing in a few impressive slow motion shots. While lacking in style, the frenetic pace and copious amounts of action and nudity keep things from ever getting bogged down. The plot is generic, but is handled competently. The music feels just like the soundtracks to American cop shows of the era, with plenty of wah-wah pedal and funky bass.

As per usual, the dubbing here is pretty wretched. Kung-fu fans will probably recognize a number of the usual (British and Australian) voices here, but the sound is often rather muffled which makes some of the dialogue difficult to hear. Visuals are soft but thankfully the image is letterboxed to 1.85:1 (though the IMDB says that the original shooting ratio was 2.35:1), and except for some early dark scenes which are difficult to watch the image quality is quite reasonable.

Part of the Millcreek Public Domain 50 Kung-Fu film collection, The Image of Bruce Lee features no extras besides the usual four chapter stops.

An entertaining and action-packed film that is unfortunately usually lumped in with more exploitive bruceploitation efforts, Image of Bruce Lee shows off Bruce Li's considerable talents while filling in the plot with requisite amounts of nudity and gunplay. Fast paced and featuring some impressive kung-fu, it trumps most of its public domain brethren and is deserving of time for those looking for cheap thrills.

Capsule Review: Rope (1948)

While mostly regarded as a technical exercise – Alfred Hitchcock shot the film in long takes, with edits covered to make it appear to be one long take – Rope still holds some thrills with its tale of casual murder by two upper class (possibly) homosexual intellectuals. It’s necessarily theatrical, but fascinating nonetheless with Jimmy Stewart giving a terrific performance as the boy’s suspicious professor. Based loosely on the real life Leopold and Loeb murders, Rope doesn’t really rank with Hitch’s best, but it has enough moments of genuine suspense to make a viewing worthwhile beyond witnessing a unique film experiment.

Capsule Review: Sherlock Jr. (1924)

Running only 45 minutes, Sherlock Jr. hardly qualifies as a feature, but Buster Keaton packs his tale of a lonely, daydreaming projectionist who yearns to be a detective with a constant stream of inventive gags. Featuring a long fantasy sequence with Buster as the titular hero – interesting to see him as a more competent and confident character – the film has many wonderful moments, particularly the scene where a sleeping Buster leaves his projection booth and enters the film, but gets tripped up by a constantly changing background. Buster actually broke his neck making this film, the dangers of performing such a physical style of slapstick, but he was rarely in better form than here.

Capsule Review: Our Hospitality (1923)

Our Hospitality begins with an extended prologue setting up the age old feud between the southern McKays and Canfields (obviously based on the Hatfields and McCoys) that is played almost totally straight, and is wonderfully staged, before we move right into the story of the naïve Willy McKay (Buster Keaton) returning to his hometown blissfully unaware of the feud. It’s when he finally understands (and falls for the youngest Canfield daughter) that things get interesting, as Southern hospitality keeps the bitter Canfields from murdering Buster as long as he’s a guest in their house. This leads to various scenes of Buster desperately trying to remain an inhabitant, going to extremes while the family tries in vain to get him to leave. While not as continually satisfying as The General, or as inventive as Sherlock Jr., Our Hospitality remains one of Buster’s best – and the waterfall climax is certainly one of his greatest moments.

MICHAEL JACKSON'S THIS IS IT (2009)

A few hours ago I was walking by a Redbox DVD rental machine and happened to overhear two women loudly discussing the fact that MICHAEL JACKSON'S THIS IS IT was released today, and neither could find a copy to rent anywhere. This made me think back on when I watched it with my wife a couple of months ago.

I had managed to avoid it while it was out in theaters. My wife had mentioned she wanted to see it, but it seemed to me to be too much of a hassle. Coworkers would come into work, discussing that they had seen it the night before. They described packed screening rooms, hysterical women crying during the movie...just not my scene. Also, I was never what anyone would call a big fan of MJ, and I didn't see the need to drop $10 to see this. When a screener copy fell into my lap, I didn't have a reason to put it off any longer.

I also must admit that the back story to the release didn't interest me at all. Rehearsals filmed for MJ's first new tour in years, the "making of" DVD was already planned for a small Christmas release but the promoters decided for a huge push after Jackson's untimely death. Random behind the scenes footage bunched together from a couple of months of filming reeked of exploiting the dead.

To my surprise, this documentary actually shows how great a tour this would have been. Michael appears to be in pretty solid shape. He wasn't at all the fragile, frail individual he'd been made out to be. He looked strong. He looked sharp. He was really into coordinating all aspects of the concert.

There's not much to say about the actual film. It basically boils down to a Greatest Hits CD performed live, with the title song being the only new song performed. Watching the film, however, there is no doubt how talented a musician, dancer, and performer Jackson was.

With the DVD release of THIS IS IT, I have to wonder when the Tupac-ing of Jackson's unreleased material will begin. A decent amount of fans will wonder "what could have been" of one of the most iconic figures in our culture, and that is when the milking of Jackson's catalogue will begin. It has been rumored that there is more than enough material already produced for quite a few new albums. My guess, it will not be a long wait.

The War of the Stars: A New Hope Grindhoused (1977/2009)

I know i'm hardly the only one who was irritated by the revamped Star Wars films of the late 1990s (Han shot first!), but one of the main reasons I disliked them is that it – along with the re-releases of E.T., Apocalypse Now, etc – makes it difficult to determine which version of the film truly represents the director's vision. Even when it's the original creator spearheading things, there is obviously a large difference between the George Lucas of 1977 and the Lucas of 1997 (demonstrated rather clearly by the quality of the Star Wars prequels). However, this could just as easily represent my own inability to accept a film as being a fluid and evolving thing that can be manipulated into an unlimited number of forms. Perhaps my wish to categorize a certain version of a film as being the 'true' version comes out of my own need to critique and compare.

Which brings me to the fairly recent practice of unauthorized re-editing of films, made possible by the preponderance of video editing software and an organized community of, well, geeks. I recall first hearing rumblings of this practice after the initial DVD release of The Phantom Menace, where a group of fans re-edited the film to remove all traces of the annoying Jar Jar Binks and bring it closer to what they believed a 'true' Star Wars prequel should be. This Phantom Edit got quite a bit of press at the time, and communities started to pop up to try their own hands at “improving” their favorite films. Now, I doubt that any of these fan efforts could replace the originals in the eyes of anyone but the most devoted dork, but the practice does bring some interesting questions to the forefront. These re-edited films are made with comparatively small amounts of resources, but with plenty of passion for the material and (generally) with a respectable amount of care. Which in turn opens the door for a certain amount of experimentation. Enter The War of the Stars.

The War of the Stars is a re-edit of Star Wars: A New Hope which uses outtakes, new musical cues, judicious editing – as well as a surprising amount of added special effects – to create a film more in line with the Grindhouse exploitation films of the 1970s. It's an often interesting and fun exercise, and one certainly not designed to replace the original film in any way, but instead to show the potential artistic possibilities of re-editing. George Lucas might not agree with adding judicious splashes of gore to scenes of Stormtroopers being blasted by lasers, and if a fan were to consider such changes sacrilege i'm not sure I could disagree – but for someone wanting to view the original film in a slightly different light the result can be fascinating.

Beginning with an appropriately decrepit widescreen print of A New Hope – with added grain and damage for good measure – the changes come fast and furious from the opening frames. The famous opening story crawl has been changed (and significantly simplified) and runs over a desert scene instead of the traditional starscape. Soon we're being introduced to C-3P0 and R2-D2 (now with subtitles!), and the evil Darth Vader – whose dialogue has sometimes been altered with quotes from other James Earl Jones films, and whose eyes now helpfully glow red every time he uses the force. We also get an opening credits sequence (“Alec Guinness in..”), as well as the inclusion of quite a bit of outtake footage of Luke Skywalker's friendship with Biggs Darklighter. And this is just in the first ten minutes.

Many of the changes are played for laughs, particularly in the Cantina (featuring Neil Young onstage, as well as brief snippets from the Star Wars Holiday Special) and in a brief inserted clip from the Star Wars fan film TROOPS, but they are integrated fairly smoothly. In one of my favorite sections, when Luke returns to home to find his aunt and uncle dead a Judas Priest song plays in the background as he imagines the faces of his dead relatives in the planet's two suns. The quality of the inserted footage does vary wildly, and plenty of exposition has been cut out – total run time is only 97 minutes – but I would imagine most of the people likely to watch this would already be plenty familiar with the original film.

It doesn't all work – the opening credits look pretty cheaply done, and the choice to occasionally switch to black and white to help match up footage is needlessly distracting – and it sometimes gets a little silly, but in some ways that's the point. The War of the Stars isn't meant to be taken seriously, and while it doesn't really feel like a grindhouse film (even with the now trademark burning film reel skip) it does feel very different and when it comes to material this familiar that is definitely a good thing.

Complaining about the image quality would be sort of redundant, since half the point is that the film is supposed to be gritty looking, and the editor here (The Man Behind The Mask) has a text special feature describing the compilation of this 16mm print that has been used and altered for the project. The audio is a mono mix from a Swedish print of the film, and when music has been added it's been done quite skillfully.

The creator has been good enough to include a few special features. First is a music video for "Bob Dylan's Prequels Homesick Blues". Basically a song parody (by The Great Luke Ski) of Dylan's famous Subterranean Homesick Blues edited to a combination of footage from a Bob Dylan concert and footage from the Star Wars prequels. Entertaining enough, though it wears a bit thin. Next is “Laisse Tomber Les Filles” which pairs the famous french song (the english version, “Chick Habit” of which is used by Quentin Tarantino for the closing credits of Death Proof) with footage of Carrie Fisher on Saturday Night Live. Odd, but a fun diversion. Finally, there's a reel of all of the effects that have been added to the film. As suggested on the DVD, watching this reel is better left until after seeing the film.

More a fun exercise than a serious attempt to improve upon the original, The War of the Stars still represents a rather incredible amount of effort to create something (relatively) original out of familiar material. Your appreciation of the result would likely be tied to your ability to see something you theoretically love sliced and diced, but as a bit of ridiculous fun at the expense of a movie that is embedded in our collective consciousnesses it definitely is worth checking out.

Capsule Review: Brazil (1985)

Often overshadowed by the difficulties of its release (which included a rather ridiculous and unnecessary re-edit), Brazil really marks a maturation of Terry Gilliam as filmmaker (first glimpsed in his entertaining Time Bandits), as well as a rejection of the more manic and broad humor in his Monty Python work. Still darkly funny with large chunks of Orwell’s 1984 and social satire thrown in for good measure, this weighty material is paired with astounding visuals and production design. Still the best thing Gilliam has produced, and a fine example of how greatness can come from chaos.