A Reason to Crack Open a Can of Iced Coffee

I had a whole bunch of stuff I wanted to write about on here, but it's been so long now that I only remember Tommy Lee Jones and some stuff about kosher meals on my flight. We all know that Hollywood stars come to Japan to film endorsements that never get seen back in the States. A very famous example is Sean Connery's ads for Suntory whiskey, and another is Cameron Diaz' multimedia campaign for a cell phone company. You pretty much see cutouts of her in every mall you might visit. I'll bet you didn't know this, or perhaps Tommy Lee Jones doesn't want you to know but in his spare time he is a champion race horse trainer and relaxes after every win with a can(!) of Boss' Rainbow Mountain Blend iced coffee. There's no better way to celebrate for Tommy - at least that's what the commercials want you to think. I liked that commercial because at least the ad tried to tell a story. Others are just straight plugs.

I have now seen the complete filmography of Wes Anderson and I hope to see The Darjeeling Limited with Jason Schwartzman and Adrien Brody when it finally comes out. I saw The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou starring Bill Murray, Owen Wilson, Anjelica Huston, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe, Jeff Goldblum and Michael Gambon of Layer Cake. Also very briefly Seymour Cassels. For kicks, I asked my wife to check the video store for Bottle Rocket, but in her typical style she guessed what the clerk would say and told me they don't have it. This is the biggest problem I have with Ali - if I ask her to do something, she'll come up with a reason not to do it, or sometimes no reason at all. This is of course a small problem in the grand scheme so I don't let it bother me. too much. So we spent forty-five minutes in the place looking for Bottle Rocket because they sort it by genre. Well, what if the renter has never seen the fucking movie, dumbass? Or what if it spans several genres? How do you catalogue it then, Dewey? After some prompting at the counter, the clerk told us that Bottle Rocket wasn't in their system. I asked for Wes Anderson and she listed off everything she had. One I had never heard of before, so I asked her to get it for me. She brought back Andy's Happy Motel aka Bottle Rocket. See? We wasted forty minutes all because Ali didn't want to ask a question. We also rented Enquete Corse because it looked interesting and had Jean Reno on the cover.

I first watched The Life Aquatic which is about a whacky marine biologist whose time is torn between searching the ocean for the shark that killed his best friend and self-promotion. He makes films to show his colleagues and benefactors, and gives interviews for a cover story, and has a press agent to handle all this stuff, and runs a fan club. I found that part of the movie very intriguing. What I really liked about the film was Anderson's make believe. I don't know the actual term for it, suspension of disbelief or something, but he exaggerated the backstory to make it believable, but improbable. It wasn't a total fiction, but everything was pushed to the limit to appear as though it could have been true somewhere, but it wasn't. For example, it is possible to have a steam room designed by a scientist from the Chinese space program, but it is improbable that anyone actually does. Anderson does this in all of his movies, though not as much in his first film. Rushmore had it, The Royal Tennenbaums had a pantload of it.

In The Life Aquatic, Steve Zissou is also approached by a man who claims to be his son. Throughout most of the film, the pair spend time together and work to discover if Ned, played by Wilson is his son. Both claim that they don't know, but both do know and they know that the other knows. Neither wants to call the other a liar, so they carry on the innocent bit. Zissou tries to have an affair with an already pregnant journalist (Blanchett) who is really interested in Ned, while trying to mend things up with his wife, played by Huston. There is also a bit of a rivalry between Ned and Klaus, played by Dafoe, the first mate on the ship who has always looked up to Steve like a father.

While hunting for the shark, the boat is hijacked by pirates and an underwriter is kidnapped from the ship. Zissou searches high and low for the underwriter, whom he doesn't really like anyway, and finally finds him at a deserted resort, held captive alongside Zissou's rival and fellow researcher played by Goldblum. Klaus dynamites the hotel, finally stepping up and becoming his own man. I don't remember exactly why, but Steve and Ned, a pilot by profession, decide to take up the rickety helicopter that accompanies the Belafonte. The engine fails and the chopper crashes into the ocean. Ned bleeds out and Steve is rescued. Steve finds the shark, and does not kill it as per his contract, and manages to get another movie completed.

Before I forget, I want to mention the cutaway of the Belafonte. Apparently, this was a massive undertaking, but just by watching the film, you can already see that. There are two scenes in which the cutaway is used, the first and most artistic in my opinion is the part where Steve describes his boat. It's very well done in Anderson's way, with stage displays and music like a little vignette. Anyway, there's a reason you don't see this in a lot of Hollywood movies, and that is that it takes time and effort to put something like this together. I'm glad Anderson did it.

Although the closing credits thank but deny any association to Jacques Cousteau, it is obvious that the whole movie is heavily based on him. I guess that's part of the reason why I was drawn to this film in the first place. Being the son of a whacky marine biologist, and being well, I won't say forced... allowed to watch Cousteau's material on the telly when I was little probably helped create a personal interest in this film.

Alright, next up is Enquete Corse, or the somewhat more promising title The Corsican File starring Jean Reno, Christian Clavier, and Caterina Murino who also appeared in Casino Royale which starred Daniel Craig from a great movie called Layer Cake. Ahem, anyway I nearly shut this one off because of the cheesy music at the opening. It was clear that this was not a cloak and dagger type film as the box cover photo had insinuated. That's all I had to go on. Everything was written in Japanese. So the opening credits mentioned that the film was based on a comic book. As I reached for the eject button on the remote, I remembered that actually some of my preferred films are based on comic books. For instance, Ichii the Killer. I'd give Jean Reno another chance. The movie was essentially a live action retelling of the comic book, and though I applaud the fact that they stayed true to the original I also feel that this was their Achilles' heel. The movie was basically flat, telling the story of a private detective (Clavier) who is sent to deliver a letter to someone in Corsica. The private detective believes that the person he is looking for has inherited some money, but eventually discovers that his target is a fugitive and that he has been sent to Corsica to flush out the criminal.

So like I said, the movie is flat and fairly predictable if you are familiar with stereotypical French humour. They spend about half the movie playing cat and mouse, about twenty minutes cracking jokes about the differences between Islanders and Continentals, and the rest of the movie trying to sort the whole mess out - which it is, in the end. There's not much else worth mentioning about this film except that there was a character named Figoli, played by a dude named Pido. He bears a strong resemblance attitudinally to Bruno Lucia who played a character named Wayne Lovett in an Australian television show called All Together Now.

And now we come to Andy's Happy Motel, Wes Anderson's first film which was later made into a feature length film starring co-writer Owen Wilson, his brothers Luke and Andrew Wilson, James Caan, Robert Musgrave and Lumi Cavazos. So why is it called Andy's Happy Motel? Because Andy (Luke Wilson) meets Inez (Cavazos) at the motel and falls in love with her. Andy has just been "busted out" of a mental hospital by his friend Dignan, played by Owen Wilson who has also planned a crime spree to impress his former employer Mr. Henry (Caan). It appears that Dignan is a failure so far in his young life, and hopes to turn things around with this new venture. They recruit their friend Bob (Musgrave) as the wheelman and convince Mr. Henry to let them do a job. Mr. Henry is more than happy to let them handle a heist at a refrigerated warehouse, and very soon it is understood why. Bob comes from a wealthy family, and any reason to get Bob and his friends out of the house is a good reason because while Dignan and Bob and Andy are trying to rob the refrigerated warehouse, Mr. Henry is robbing Bob. Simple. Of course, Dignan loses control of the robbery at the warehouse and one of his crew is shot. While the rest of the crew scatter, Dignan goes back into the warehouse to get Applejack, played by Jim Ponds. He believes he won't get caught because he is "fuckin' innocent". He gets caught and serves twenty-four months in jail, while everyone else gets away with it. Dignan has a fascination with bottle rockets, and I guess that's why the film is called Bottle Rocket, but it could also be used as a metaphor for Dignan's life. Quick, fast, brilliant and then suddenly, nothing. He serves time in jail believing that he will be able to continue this criminal enterprise upon release and shows that he doesn't quite learn from his mistakes. We never really find out because the movie ends right there. I liked this movie, but it was easy to see why the initial cut received poor ratings from the focus groups. The story is hardly original, but it is told in a very simple way and it is clear why Wes Anderson has become a much sought-after Hollywood director.