Fractured flickers
..on
the street. Nevertheless, the lunch and the chat were great fun; the world’s
problems with Intellectual Property and Copyright were discussed at length and
the house pinot proved quite acceptable to boot, so I charged off back
to the Casino car park full of bonhomie and anticipation.
Perhaps I was cutting it a bit fine, but reasonably heavy traffic on the way
to Carlton caused me to ring punctual Dick, already waiting impatiently in the
foyer as I knew he would be, and advise him to go into the theatre without me
as I was running a little late.
When I took my seat beside Dick I’d missed only the first few minutes
– and the first hara kiri, as Dick later told me. I was actually
quite taken with the opening part of the movie, despite my misgivings about
the confronting acts of sadism and brutality by the villain, Naritsugu, an aspiring
Japanese version of Caligula (Carigura?) and almost the only (potentially) interesting
character on the screen as it turned out.
In fact, if you’ve seen Seven Samurai it’s all very familiar
stuff, but with none of the virtues of that movie, i.e. character development,
and with one glaringly CRAPPY MOMENT that I can’t believe David failed
to mention; namely the Angry Angus CGI moment, where three or four raging bulls
with their backs on fire charge through the enemy ranks wreaking CGI havoc.
Why this was left in the movie I cannot fathom. It could possibly be that money
was spent and it had to be up there on the screen to satisfy the backers. And
why David allowed it to pass through to the keeper is equally unfathomable.
Maybe he was writing some notes or sexting his girlfriend.
Anyway, even without this aberrant moment, the film was/is ineffably silly.
Dick and I retired to the University Café and both had the spaghetti
vongole (clams are not really worth the price of admission are they?) and
a really crappy Marlborough pinot noir (!) and consoled ourselves with
the fact that, having been duped into seeing this dog, it was now our duty to
warn off fellow gentlemen thrill seekers.
As I walked back to the car park in the cool night air I realised that all this
hot and cold business had laid me open to catching a chill and, sure enough,
by the time I’d got home my nose was running. I guess you were right,
David. All in all, definitely a four star afternoon..