New to WATCH NOW is a slew of required viewing that you should really check out, say… on your laptop with your sweetie on a love seat. That is, if he/she rolls with ‘60s Euro fare or Eastern cinema of the extreme kind.

The Machine Girl:
Vengeful Japanese schoolgirl loses half an arm, only to be replaced by a behemoth Gatling-looking gun. It’s a stylized, hyper-violent collage of exploding body parts, and it’s a gas.

La Chinoise:
Recent reissue by the French New Wave master, Jean-Luc Godard. (No, not the Star Trek captain.) If you aren’t familiar with his work, get ready for something completely, completely different. Fashionable late-sixties hipsters loaf about a mod-colored apartment and ramble on about Communism. There’s also a super catchy song titled, “Mao, Mao.”

Five Deadly Venoms:
Seminal HK Actioner featuring five dudes with mad fighting skills, each representing the prowess of a particular animal: centipede, snake, scorpion, lizard and toad. I used to watch this one on TV with my older brothers growing up back in the day. The four of us could almost rock the entire Poison Clan. Dad, however, would have none of it.

Repulsion:
Roman Polanski’s classic black-and-white art/horror film stars a young (and easy-on-the-eyes) Catherine Deneuve. The first entry in his so-called apartment trilogy (Rosemary’s Baby, The Tenant being the others), it’s strangely rewarding to see a wide-eyed blonde descend into quiet, tripped-out madness. Time to get a big ole house in the country, eh?

Enjoy.

Who in carnation doesn’t go bozo over monster movies? Especially when it’s a beyond-mammoth, skyscraper-tall titan taking out some metropolis. Whether it’s Godzilla ripping apart a miniature Tokyo, King Kong working New York City, or even an Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman, it’s a sight to behold. Reminds me of a five-year-old me and my LEGOs.

Cloverfield is the latest. And once again, NYC gets the brunt. (Replicating 9/11 catastrophe is a good hook, I reckon.)

I dug this J.J. Abrams event. Really did. Whatever it was that the viral campaign promised, the movie pretty much delivered. It offered some vintage Tippett Studios creature design and the whole conceit works just fine: a Blair Witch Project type of video cassette, discovered in what was “formerly known as Central Park.” When we witness this beast of unknown origin going apeshit — captured through the lens of a rather dim, killable fellow named Hud (of all things), I must admit, it tapped into some of my repressed childhood nightmares. For me, it illustrated the awe and helplessness of being at the mercy of such a terrifying dream. (Not to get too armchair Jung, of course.)

One thing that’s curious; I’ve been trying to find images of the monster online, but no dice. However, the toy is available. It’s a strange way to study what the heck this thing is. Or, I guess, you need to buy the movie and bust the freeze-frame like no tomorrow.

So I was just informed by my co-worker that January 24th is considered the worst, most downer day of the year. Apparently, some “scientist” figured it out. The bliss of Christmas is now in the rear-view, credit card bills for your holiday largess have arrived, it’s colder than Hoth, and those resolutions will never be resolved. A cure for the 24th? (Which is today, mind you.) Make yourself a Sake Manhattan, slip into something more comfortable and take in one of our favorite Watch Now movies, The House By The Cemetery. It’s classic Italian horror by the late, great Lucio Fulci, AKA “The Godfather Of Gore.” Life is beautiful.

Christmas comes but once a year. (Or should I say “the holidays?”) Anyway, ’tis the season to be jolly… And the time for much mirth-making and holiday parties, regardless of who or what you are celebrating. When your humble writer lived in that big Southern California town that consumes most of Northern California’s water, a musician/journalist friend would hold his annual holiday party. Besides being a somewhat in-demand multi-instrumentalist, our host was a music columnist for the L.A. Weekly, then later a TV columnist for the L.A. Times. As a result, he’s picked up some notable acquaintances. So at the annual festivities, along with his nobody friends, there would be a smattering of celebrity. No bigtime movie stars, really, just folks that a fairly intellectual, thirty-something journalist/musician would meet living and working in L.A.

And among the ranks of the non-famous was yours truly, who given the right circumstances (and blood alcohol level) can be truly embarrassing. Case in point, a late arrival to one annual soiree is a white-haired gentleman in a matching suit and his lovely lady. This writer having reached the requisite reading on the obnoxious meter, says in a too-loud voice, “Hey, who’s DAD is THAT?”

“Dude, that’s Van Dyke Parks.”

Needless to say, my size 9 1/2 cowboy boot did not taste so good and was hard to extract due to my new under two foot tall stature.

Van Dyke Parks — a grand sounding name… And perhaps one of the coolest people to walk the face of this earth. A child actor, boy genius, composer, music producer, Van Dyke Parks entered the hallowed ground of pop culture as lyricist for the Beach Boys on their mega-legendary, unreleased SMILE album recorded in 1967 in the lysergic haze after The Boys’ surfing teen-idol peak. That alone is enough to pin the cool meter for lifetime, but Mr. Parks then went on to be something of a house producer for Warner/Reprise Records in the ’70s working with Little Feat, Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt, Randy Newman, and as a keyboard sideman for Ringo Starr, Carly Simon, Harry Nilsson, and many, many others — not to mention scoring a score (or more) of feature films.

But I digress. Sorry. What I really should be writing about here is The Simpsons Movie. Jeez, the boss will have my ‘nads… How do I make the segue?

Well, as our luck would have it, two other frequenters of this Hancock Park holiday hang were a DJ with a semi-popular show on L.A.’s NPR station and a local cartoonist. Said cartoonist did a long running strip called Life In Hell that lampooned life in L.A. via a rabbit named Binky and a fez-wearing gay couple called Akbar and Jeff.

Turns out the producer of the Tracy Ullman Show (remember that one?) James L. Brooks (known for a ton of movies including Broadcast News, Terms Of Endearment, War Of The Roses, and Bottle Rocket) caught wind of Life In Hell and wanted the cartoonist to work up an animated version to be used as “bumpers” on the Ullman show. Fortunately for us, the rights for the strip no longer belonged to the cartoonist, so he worked up a new concept featuring a dysfunctional ‘toon family. And the rest, kiddies, is mega-millions history for Matt Groening.

The other guest at that party..? The NPR DJ? That would be Harry Shearer, the bass player of Spinal Tap and now the voice of Smithers, Burns, Principal Skinner and nearly every other minor character on The Simpsons.

Just in time to add to all the holiday fun is the release of the long-awaited The Simpsons Movie. If you missed it on the big screen, here’s your chance to enjoy it on the small.

And while you’re out enjoying the holiday revelry, remember to keep a civil tongue in your mouth… Cheers!

Or maybe the title should be “I’m Only Streaming” or even “We Like To Watch”… So what on God’s big blue-green, wet, wild and spinning orb am I on about? OK pilgrim, here’s the scoop, the skinny, the inside, the hard facts, the low down (on the down low, of course): BitTorrent has launched Watch Now. Over 1000 movies and TV episodes available to watch immediately, and for FREE (why do I always feel compelled to capitalize that word?).

So if installing Facebook apps doesn’t take up all your 9-to-5 time, then catch a flick on Watch Now. Hell, do both at once. It’s called multitasking, young ‘un… And don’t let anyone try to tarnish your highly-cultivated self-esteem with any talk of “slacking” or “goofing off.” You have to keep current on what’s happening, right? (But we do advise that you minimize the screen when the boss walks by…).

Well, it looks like we’ve all made it to another Thanksgiving… or almost, as it is just shy of one week away from today.

But a big conrgradz nonetheless, my tranquil homies! A fall feast is on the horizon.

Hey, did you see Thanksgiving, the mock schlock trailer done for Grindhouse by chance? It was made by Eli Roth of Cabin Fever and Hostel II (Free Trailer) fame. It’s pretty darn dark and funny, and “controversial” apparently. It has this pale, ghoulish psycho in a V For Vendetta pilgrim costume. He crashes various Seventies classic horror movie-looking scenes and kills, kills, kills — mostly by decapitation. At one point, a roasted human is served on a platter. But the worst part, I guess, involves a stripping cheerleader on a trampoline. When she springs on down to do the splits, a big knife pokes on up through the trampoline, placed perfectly between her legs — she lands — and –

Oh gosh.

For the newsletter we have coming out this Tuesday, there’s a good “Turky” bundle cookin’. It includes the fine Uwe Boll film, Alone In The Dark, as well as From Justin To Kelly, Ballistic: Ecks Vs. Sever, Glen Or Glenda (Watch Now), and Voyage To The Planet Of Prehistoric Women (Free). But since that swell idea is already being used in The Torrent, it would redundant to try and promote those super bad films here in the blog.

Oh well.

We did try and find good, proper Thanksgiving movies. Pieces Of April seemed like a halfway decent film to wrap a bundle around. But in the end we bagged the whole notion. Was the idea of promoting Mrs. Cruise a bit too unsettling? Do we not want Tom’s sloppy seconds, even though this is still when his future wife had quasi-indie cred? The answer my friends, is as secret as our stuffing recipe.

Oh yeah.

Before we get started, we just want to say that everything we talk about here is available to download and enjoy for free.

OK, picture this… Film travels at a speed of 24 frames per second past the bulb of the projector. So that means back in the day, each and everyone of those cartoon frames had to have something hand drawn to be photographed into it. And if it was for a color toon, then each and everyone of those frames had to be handcolored. So a simple five minute cartoon required at least 7,200 individual handcrafted works of art! Even cutting corners, they could never get away from at least 12 drawings per second, with classic Disney style animation averaging about 18 drawings per second.

In the days of silent toons, the king was Felix The Cat. Hell, the first experimental TV broadcast (in 1928) was a telecast of a 13″ paper mache Felix statue! Throughout the twenties, Felix’s star power help put butts in paid theater seats. Felix toons were the first to exhibit the trippy tomfoolery that we associate with the cartoon universe.

By the early thirties with the very beginnings of animation with sound, cartoon makers were getting even more clever. One toon that pushed the envelope, technologically, artistically and culturally was Betty Boop. Born in 1930 at the end of the economically booming twenties, Betty was a scandal. Wearing a sleeveless dress that ended high above her knees, Betty was often accosted by male characters who “touched her inappropriately” and her trademark “Boop-Oop-A-Doop” seemed to have more a sexual meaning than just scat-singing nonsense. And picture this, gentle reader, the toons featured wild jazz music often performed by real life black people like Louis Armstrong and Cab Calloway. Boop’s creators, the Fleischer Brothers, pioneered the innovation of melding live action and their surreal animation so that the jazz greats actually appear in the cartoons. While the often demeaning depictions of African-Americans wouldn’t pass today’s politically correct censors, it was Betty’s blatant sexuality that made the censors come calling around 1935 after the Hayes Act, which promised to clean up the era’s licentious media, passed Congress. Although her career continued a few more years, Betty would never be the same girl again.

Also out of the inkwell of Les Frères Fleischer came the muttering seaman with the outsized forearms, Popeye The Sailor. The hot-headed spinach muncher actually made his debut in 1929 in the comic strip Thimble Theater, which starred his later girlfriend Olive Oyl (who was then dating the handsome Ham Gravy!). After the popular Popeye soon took over and the strip was renamed after him, he became a movie star in 1933 guesting in a Betty Boop cartoon. He then had his own Fleischer series, which pitted him against his nemesis Bluto and included his comic strip associates J. Wellington Wimpy, Olive Oyl, and Swee’Pea. By the ’50s, the sailorman had switched his appeal from a grown-up movie following to a children’s television audience — gone were his under-the-breath wisecracks and the frequent fisticuffs with his rival who was rechristened “Brutus.”

Another Fleischer toon worth showcasing was their 1940s Superman series. In these 17 Technicolor gems, The Man of Steel battles foes ranging from mad scientists, and defrosted T-Rexs to Japanese saboteurs, Nazi agents and The Mummy. These action shorts give the current Superman Doomsday a run for its money.

Of course the kings of ’30s and ’40s short animation were Warner Bros. with their Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies. These toon series were the birthing place of the wisecracking Bugs Bunny, the stuttering Porky Pig and other characters that continue to entertain, delight and rake in the bucks for Warners.

And while you’re at it, check out the original Tom & Jerry. Nope we’re not talking the cat and mouse here. This anthropomorphic duo are the stars of a string of seven minute buddy movies that take them around the world, their adventures unintentionally illustrating how ethnocentric the 1930s US really was.

Weird stuff happens all the time when wandering around the streets of San Francisco late at night, but on Halloween things are that much more bizarre. I was walking home from a Halloween party and the streets of the Mission district were packed with people still in costume. Picture your standard city street at night; dark dank and dirty streets with trash, tagged walls, homeless people sleeping in doorways, people scattered around staggering home, etc. Now take all those people in your image, and put them in cowboy or sexy Snow White costumes. Now add clown noses to the homeless. Oh yeah, it’s 2AM and no one’s sober, so everyone’s puking too. It’s just one giant sea-sick vertigo costume party Roman Shower with only about an 1/8 of the people enjoying themselves. Fucked up, right?

And that’s just the set up to the weird part. As I was walking down the street watching a crying ballerina pick the vomit out of her boyfriend’s fake Jack Sparrow dreadlocks and mustache, I saw a fight break out across the street. It was a stereotypical Mission street hipster (American Apparel uniform; beard; tapered jeans) being chased by five guys with bats. But these weren’t just any normal hooligans. It was the Baseball Furies from The Warriors! And they weren’t hitting him with regular baseball bats, but with WIFFLE BALL BATS! Now, for the people out there who don’t fully get the scene, think New York Yankees players in yellow KISS makeup with children’s plastic bats beating on Devendra Banhart.

So Devendra was running down the block with the Baseball Furies swinging with all their wiffle-y might when Mr. Banhart caught one of the bats in his hand and the retaliation began. His fencing classes and love of Star Wars paid off because he dodged, parried, and lunged with the fury of Zorro the last Jedi. After about five minutes of fighting, the Furies walked away, and Devendra marched off in the opposite direction. Two minutes after that, Devendra came back with his bike (a fixed gear no less) and threw it at the Furies! This was not taken kindly, and the Furies attacked with… well… fury. Devendra did all he could, but his androgyny and boner jokes (he seems to make a lot of them in real life) were no match for the KISS army. Then, when it looked like it was over for Devendra (or that he might have sustained a bruise) the cops showed up (I mean the real police, not a guy with a plastic badge). The Furies were handcuffed behind their backs and sat against a wall in a row with flashlights shining on them. As I walked over, I heard one cop turn to another and say “Dude. It’s the guys from The Warriors!”

Weird night.

Michael Clayton…

Good movie?
You bet your saline solution it is. However, I find the title to be mighty lousy, if this is an open forum to express such personal viewpoints. That’s my opinion and I’m keeping it. A friend of mine defended the choice of title, explaining, “It’s refreshing in a sense, to not have a classic throwaway high-octane thriller title.” True, but it’s still a bad title. For one, there is a football player currently in the NFL with the exact same name. That’s confusing. Two, the title is so pedestrian and un-catchy. Three, Jerry Maguire is a similar type of “name of a random dude” title and it’s unwise to be associated with that movie. Cameron Crowe needs chin surgery. His face reminds me of a freeze frame that’s 35% into a time-lapse photography sequence in which a very normal man’s head transforms into that of the sad Elephant Man-looking teenager from the movie, Mask.

George Clooney, however, is a handsome gentleman, and I don’t mean that in a gay way. He has become the Cary Grant of our age, which is impressive considering how lame we all thought he was in that Batman movie.

G.C. is today’s C.G.

Or, G.C. = C.G.

See how perfect that math is? Not unlike a crystal clear reflection (even though C.G. dropped loads of LSD in the swingin’ ’60s). The films G.C. directs are also pretty alright, I might mention.

Michael Clayton is a really smooth, smart thriller — what all those Grisham films should have been. This is classy stuff, taking its time to unravel with a sang-froid hand.

Tom Wilkinson! The actor is so damn capable. Love it. And Tilda Swinton… ditto. Sydney Pollack, I must admit, is a bit typecast in this one. It’s like his character from Eyes Wide Shut decided to take a hiatus from clandestine mansion orgies to helm a morally-questionable corporate law office. The strange authority he effortlessly emits is kind of a bummer to behold, actually. Cannot imagine audiences appreciating it. Give him props for making Tootsie, however. Ever seen his 1975 film, The Yakuza? No? Keep it that way. Oh, The White Shadow gives an effective, quiet performance in Michael Clayton, too.

OK, there it is. Recommended! There is an almost cheeseball scene regarding horses on a hill, but the film sort of redeems itself of that image because a surprising car bomb goes off just then.

So it’s time for Part Two of BitTorrent’s interview with legendary filmmaker Jack Hill, director of such gems as Coffy, Switchblade Sisters, The Swinging Cheerleaders, Spider Baby, Foxy Brown, Pit Stop, and Chamber Of Fear to name but a few. We left off just before we got into the details of Mr. Hill’s collaboration with Blaxploitation icon, Pam (watch her pull a gun out of her afro) Grier.

Here goes it:

BT: Pam Grier is an actor you had an opportunity to make a lot of movies with. Of course there’s Coffy and Foxy Brown.

JH: That’s interesting. I just this morning saw that there’s a Foxy Brown lipstick.

BT: It’s iconic! Definitely.

JH: (Laughs.) I guess so. Well, Pam… I just recognized. The first time I ever saw her I cast her in a film called The Big Tall House which was an ensemble of girls. And she just walked in like a lot of other girls for me to look at and I was just immediately struck by her presence and authority. Even though she had virtually no experience at all, I felt she could do it. And after that I got to know her personality and I wrote parts in other scripts particularly for her, emphasizing her strengths and avoiding her weaknesses, such as they were. And it all came out very well.

BT: At the time, did it seem unique to have a protagonist that was both African American and a woman? And a strong woman character at that?

JH: Well, that’s what Pam’s personality was — at least her film personality as I wrote it. When you know an actor you want to write something for them, and that’s kind of the fantasy you get in your mind and you do it. In the case of Coffy, which was her big hit that really launched her as a star, that film was an assignment from Larry Gordon, who was head of production at AIP at the time and he wanted to do a “black woman revenge movie,” and for me it was a chance to do something with Pam. They weren’t sure they really wanted Pam. There were other actresses they were thinking of, but I just insisted she was the only one who could do this. And it worked out very well, as we know.

BT: You still see some instances of strong female characters today, like The Brave One, for example. And in Quentin Tarantino’s work, which is definitely influenced by your films. Which leads to another question, what are your thoughts on Grindhouse? He certainly pays homage to the types of movies that you made in the Seventies.

JH: That was his intent.

BT: (Laughs.)

JH: That was their intent, to do that. I don’t think it came off very well because the audience didn’t — for the most part — just didn’t quite get it. You know, I think the appeal of the films was for too narrow of an audience. Film buffs who appreciate exploitation movies, it’s not a real wide audience. But for what they attempted to do, they did it really wonderfully. I thought it was just terrific.

BT: Right. And they definitely went for the action and language, the beats of the dialog. In Foxy Brown, Coffy, Switchblade Sisters, your language is amazing, as well as the energy of the action sequences. Was that a particularly creative time for you? Or was it kind of in the air? This funky Seventies sensibility?

JH: I don’t know. I don’t know. The answer to your question is, I don’t know. I just did what I felt was right. Going back to the Warner Bros movies of the Forties, if you see pictures like that, you’ll see the style.

BT: Yeah.

JH: Take a look at White Heat and those kinds of movies. Basically, you try and say as much as possible with as little dialog as possible. And in contrast to Quentin — he likes long speeches, which are great and fascinating speeches. Just couldn’t write like that myself. I like to really condense dialog, and it’s just a different way of doing it. See, I was always a big student of Strindberg, and was a big fan of his drama at that time. He said, “People use language to conceal their thoughts.” And I always tried to keep that in mind.

BT: Is copying a form of flattery for you? Like with Grindhouse, for example?

JH: Well, it’s kind of gratifying, considering that at the time the movies were big hits but nobody knew who I was. At that time, directors didn’t quite get the credit. How can I put it… like Jonathan Demme, he did an exploitation film and he got good reviews on it. The picture didn’t do very well, but he got good reviews so he was able to attract attention for himself that way and get into mainstream films. But my films were big hits, but nobody knew who I was. (Laughs.) I guess that’s all I can tell you.

BT: Right.

JH: In other words, I didn’t really get the credit for making a hit movie because I didn’t get good reviews. The reviewers were kind of outraged by my films. Let me put it that way. In the kind of reviews I got, they were so outraged by the movie – which of course encouraged more people to go see the film. So in a sense, the reviews were what they call “Money Reviews, ” not “Prestige Reviews.” So basically I just went from one assignment to another. Another thing too, with Coffy and Foxy Brown, you get identified making what they called, “Black Films.” They didn’t use the term Blaxploitation then. And I talked to other producers and said I made Coffy. “Ah, that was a black picture, that doesn’t count.” You know, that was their attitude towards it from an artistic point of view. Black film, doesn’t count. There was a lot of racism.

BT: What led you to walk away from movies for awhile?

JH: Well, the last film I had made at that particular period, Switchblade Sisters — although in screenings audiences loved it, the campaign was such that it didn’t seem to draw people in. So if you don’t get an audience on opening day, you don’t get a lot of word of mouth. And I didn’t want to do those kinds of films anymore, but I was so stereotyped as a director. By making that kind of movie, I basically couldn’t get any attention from mainstream films. And I got in spirituality at that time, and yoga. That really changed my life and became much more important to me, so I kind of got out of it for awhile. Although I did continue doing writing assignments, working on rewrites and things like that. My name was really totally unknown so I couldn’t get financing for the kind of films I wanted to do. It’s like, even today, now all of a sudden after all this time I’ve got… how can I put it, notoriety! I’m called notorious! To get financing for something I really want to do, which is a romantic comedy, for example, is not easy. But I’m working on it. We have one project right now that I’m just starting to get on the market, which is remakes of the four films I did with Boris Karloff.

BT: Cool.

JH: Remakes and updates, because the parts I directed with Boris was in Hollywood and I was supposed to go to Mexico to finish the films, but the producer didn’t tell me that the Mexican union would not allow that. So when I finished shooting with Boris he just disappeared. And I didn’t know for years later that the films had even been finished because he died of a heart attack, which was no wonder. So now I and a couple other very talented associates of mine are preparing for new versions of these scripts, hopefully with Sid Haig. It’s a packaged four films. You can look it up at www.jackhillpresents.com. And we have clips from the films. It might interest you to see that.

BT: Of course! What do you think of the horror films today? There are a lot of remakes, The Hills Have Eyes or Halloween…

JH: I don’t go to see any of them. I don’t like what they’re doing with horror films today. It’s too gruesome. I can’t think of any that really have the kind of longtime… well, I guess there are some series. Halloween, things like that. I don’t know. I have not seen any of them.

BT: What do you enjoy seeing today?

JH: What do I enjoy seeing today? I don’t know until I see it. The last one I saw was The Brave One.

BT: Oh?

JH: And I was just appalled. I thought it was just abhorrent. I don’t know why anybody would want to make a movie like that. But what can I say? Look, I’m the guy that did Coffy and Foxy Brown and I’m complaining!

BT: (Laughs.) Well, great. Thank you so much for your time. That’s most of the questions that I had.

JH: OK.

BT: It was a real pleasure talking with you. Thanks again.

JH: OK, no problem.