Risselada Blog

Under discussion:

Tulsa  (1949)

Tulsa

My girlfriend rode with one of he friends who was moving from New York to Santa Fe.  She got picked up in Chicago, and along the way they stayed overnight in a hotel in Tulsa.  I guess it was a pretty boring place.  One of my best friends actually grew up around there so my girlfriend called me when I was there to call him and ask him if there was anything to do.  Well the answer was, not much.  Although I did direct them towards this strange kind of architectural village and the famous praying hands statue which is kind of creepy and is also the largest bronze sculpture in the world.

My girlfriend and her friends also like to give each other goofy gifts, and shortly after this trip her friend sent her a DVD of this movie she found called simply Tulsa.

So we decided to watch it, and after getting it started I realized it was a lot bigger budget movie than I had expected.  I'm not sure why, maybe because it sounded a little bit sensationalist in a B movie way on the DVD cover presentation.  And actually if I had known more about the distributor, I would have really assumed it was a B movie.  One of the best things about this DVD is the GIGANTIC library of DVD covers you can browse through that are also distributed by Alpha Video.  Now after doing some research I found out that Alpha Video specializes in distributing public domain movies on DVD.  Check it out for lots of Boris Karloff, Bela Lugosi, and Roy Rogers.  And a bunch of shit staring a group of kids I'd never heard of before called the "East Side Kids".  Apparently there were endless amounts of these series of movies staring different groups of young kids such as The Bowery Boys, The Dead End Kids, and Little Tough guys.  Of course they all end up getting mixed up together and with Bela Lugosi and Gorillas and other spooks.  Man things got pretty inbred back then.

None of that has anything to do with the movie Tulsa, but it was one of the most interesting discoveries from watching the DVD.  As for Tulsa itself, it seemed like some kind of old advertisement for "responsible oil companies" kind of like the energy companies today that are talking about things like "clean coal" (does it really exist??).  Its kind of addressing the horrible toal oil drilling can take on the environment, but also saying "hey this country was built on oil, and it's a great thing if we use it correctly".  Maybe that's true, but the movie kind of says it in a trite and corny way.

It's not a bad movie to have going on in the background if you are interested in movies of the era, but I wouldn't recommend going out of your way to see it.

Rating: 5/10

Under discussion:

Woman in the Dunes  (1964)

This blog entry is part of my "movie year countdown round #2".  Read more about that here.

Suna no onna (Woman in the Dunes)

This movie was not what I expected it to be.  And I actually expected it to be extremely strange.  Luckily it wasn't as strange as I thought, although certainly nothing ordinary.  I say luckily because I wouldn't want this movie to be anything other than what it is.

The film perfectly pulls your around as you experience the confusion and frustrations of the character.  Sometimes you can see things coming before he does.  Sometimes you think you know what's coming.  Your hopes are often dashed, until the shocking ending.  Until you consider it all and realize the shock makes total sense.

It's an amazing film about the relativity of our situations in life.  Put in a different context your entire outlook and even goals can change.  I think it's an important movie for being able to look into the lives of other people who we cannot seem to comprehend how they could live and believe certain things.  It's the whole genes vs. environment thing.  Yes there are certain things about our personality that would never change, but it's amazing at how much we can adapt to any situation that we never thought we could if necessary.

I thought about this movie a lot after I saw it.  And I've been thinking a lot about it again as I wanted to make this little blog entry.  The more I think about it, the more amazing it becomes.  I'm rating this movie a 9, but I have the feeling that after another viewing it could go up to a 10.

Rating: 9/10

Under discussion:

Grizzly Man  (2005)

The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters  (2007)

The King of Kong

I had high hopes for this film and it did not disappoint!  Although I don't see relatively too many new releases, I think it's still a lot to say that I consider this one of the most enjoyable movies to come out in the last couple years.  And I think it's my favorite documentary to come out since Grizzly Man in 2005 and I've seen a couple others that are also really great.

Supposedly the filmmaker is now going to be making a dramatized version of this story in a new film.  I've very skeptical about how that will play out, at least I wonder how well it will play with anyone who has already seen the actual documentary.  How can you find someone to play Billy better than the real Billy?  The filmmakers claim they have a lot worse footage of Billy they didn't show because it wasn’t really relevant and they didn't want to make him seem any worse.  Are they going to dramatize that kind of thing in the movie?  Why not show the real footage!  I don't know.  The best thing about this movie is that it's real.  OK, of course we know with any documentary (especially one with such a traditional little guy vs. the big guy story line like this one) that there is a lot of selective editing to fit the real story into a narrative the filmmakers think will work to pull at your emotions.  But knowing this is pretty much real is what really gets you involved!

And there are so many interesting secondary characters that come in and out of the movie besides Billy and Steve who are compelling enough on their own to make several movies.  Walter Day, Robert Mruczek, Steve Sanders, Brian Kuh, Mark Alpiger, Doris Self, Mike Thompson, and of course Roy "Mr. Awsome" Shildt who should have his own movie!  The special features have lots of additional footage of these fascinating people.  As well as some people who had only a very little amount of time in the film or none at all.  Check out Bryan Wagner discussing Burger Time strategy in a hilarious scene with his little crony sitting next to him repeating what he says.  It's so geeky it's great.  And then on the special features you will also discover one of the most interesting people who never made it into the film.  Joel Hedge, the Xybots champion must have his own movie!  Is it out there already!  Someone must make it.

Basically there are infinite interesting aspects of this film.  The filmmakers were actually filming several different potential story lines in the world of this classic video game competitions and you can see a few of them creep in as their stories come into contact with this one.

I took so much joy in watching all of the special features on this DVD.  And there are plenty of them!  But I just can't get enough.  Now that I think about it, I would totally eat up a dramatization of this movie just to see more of it, in any way I could!  Bring it on!

Rating: 10/10