VITA TRANSPLANTARE Vol 2 Number 4 Whole Number 13 A journal of opinion, reviews and diatribes as pertaining to the thought process of John Nielsen Hall Produced in November of the plague year of 2020 Our first missive this ish is from Gary Mattingley, Dublin CA. Hmm, I felt the urge. With respect to, I guess, prior issues and LoCs. I liked WATCHMEN TV series and I liked SNOWPIERCER movie. I must admit not being that taken by WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS TV series but I did like the movie. I wasn't enthralled by THE BOYS series. I will have a bit more to say about THE BOYS later. I haven't watched BRAVE NEW WORLD, ROADKILL, COLLATERAL, THE HOURS nor THE UNDOING. I haven't listened to SEEKING THRILLS.HIS DARK MATERIALS TV series returns this coming Monday. I enjoyed the previous season. I also read the books. Well, that was quick. HIS DARK MATERIALS series 2 is to the same excellent standard as series 1 What I've been watching? STAR TREK: DISCOVERY season 1 and started into season 2. I like it okay although not so much that I'd buy the DVD's or anything like. Watched and greatly enjoyed THE QUEENS GAMBIT. There has been a great deal of buzz around THE QUEENS GAMBIT, which I haven't seen, probably because it's on Netflix, which I don't have. I will have to see what I can do about that. Probably after I catch up on ST: DISCOVERY I'll watch season two of THE MANDALORIAN. Over here at least, THE MANDALORIAN is on Disney Plus, another channel I don't have. And lets face it, MANDALORIAN is quite possibly the only show on that channel I would want to watch. You're not on Facebook so I can tell you stuff I put there, like the following posts on films, since you seem to have been talking about such things. I won't repost all of my post. I've been watching a few films from the article, "Asian cinema cherishes female action heroes" on IMDB. I've already seen CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON which I enjoyed. DEAF MUTE HEROINE only seems to be available on YouTube. The print itself is pretty bad and so is the movie. I decided it wasn't worth my time to watch the whole thing. CHOCOLATE directed by Prachya Pinkaew. This is a film from Thailand and featured some amazing fight scenes, The main character is Zen, a young female with autism. I don't know what her age was supposed to be in the film but I'm assuming young teens. The actress, JeeJa Yanin, was fairly amazing and I believe she was in her early 20's while the film was being made. In the film she wipes out huge numbers of adult men and a few women. I thought the movie was pretty amazing actually. It wasn't a great cinematic classic but as an action fight film I thought it was pretty good. FURIE directed by Le-Van Kiet. This was an entertaining fight film, mother going after kidnapped daughter with lots of fight scenes. Only the mother really has any character development and that is pretty limited, just historical flashbacks more than anything. The scenery is lovely when she's not fighting. So, entertaining but doubtful it will become or be known as a "classic" film except for people who make lists of these types of fight films. Veronica Ngo was the lead actress and I thought she did a relatively good job. HAPKIDO directed by Feng Huang. It was alright, but it was dubbed which I didn't really like and was not very good as an actual movie. It had lots of fight scenes and those were okay but the sneering and boisterous laughing, etc., was a bit too much for me. It seemed to be a lot of posing and the very bad guys against the very good people. It isn't something that I would ever watch again. Supposedly Jackie Chan was in this movie in a very minor non-speaking part but I'm afraid I didn't notice him. He was in two fight scenes, or so I have read. Another recent film was STRANGER THAN PARADISE directed by Jim Jarmusch. I liked it. It was odd. Also he divided everything into these little segments. There's a short take, there's a cut, there's a fadeout and blackness and then there's fade in and the next short take. Not much happens. The characters don't do a whole lot. It is in black and white. It is sort of funny in an odd way. Definitely odd and unexpected ending. I like this movie. It is Jarmusch's second feature length film. I found it more or less incomprehensible, and I didn't laugh once. A GHOST STORY was directed by David Lowery. It is a rather strange movie. It is mostly sort of sad, with a few comic moments, and a lot of time passing with no dialogue or dialogue that you don't really hear. It certainly is a fun movie if you think about death very much but, of course, has absolutely no answers whatsoever, just some thoughts. I found it entertaining although admittedly a little slow here and there. The story, what there is of it, is, overall, interesting to me with respect to the passing of time, of changes, of abstraction and odd moments in sad ghost to ghost communications. It all seems to relate to the meaningless of existence, sounds like my frequent state of mind. The pointlessness of life. The pointlessness of anything and everything. In a listing of credits "random guy" is Will Oldham, known as "Prognosticator" in the cast listing. Will Oldham - "He has had a major recording career under numerous names: Palace, Palace Music, Palace Brothers, Palace Songs, Bonnie Prince Billy, and others. He is also known for strange, detached concert performances." I just thought that was an interesting choice in casting. It was, to me, an interesting movie, enjoyable to a certain extent, thoughtful, sad, sort of an appropriate movie for Halloween in a different way. I enjoyed the music/soundtrack. I haven't seen that, but you make it sound like I might want to cut my throat if I did. Will Oldham I know all about, and generally I wouldn't stir out of doors to see or hear him. I think the bloke is a profound idiot. One of the collections I recently watched was FROM AMERICA LOST AND FOUND :THE BBS STORY. BBS is BBS Productions formed by Bob Rafelson, Bert Schneider, and Steve Blauner. "Fuelled by money from their invention of the superstar TV pop group the Monkees, they set off on a film-industry journey that would lead them to form BBS Productions, a company that was also a community. The innovative films produced by this team between 1968 and 1972 are collected in this box set—works that now range from the iconic (EASY RIDER, FIVE EASY PIECES, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW) to the acclaimed (THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS) to the obscure (HEAD; DRIVE HE SAID; A SAFE PLACE), all created within the studio system but lifted right out of the countercultural id." HEAD was directed by Bob Rafelson. The primary writers were Rafelson and Jack Nicholson. It featured the Monkees and lots of guest appearances. It was okay. I may have seen it once in the past. It was very disjointed, shifting from this scene to that scene and maybe back to some scene and walking into another scene, funny effects, psychedelic effects, lots of young women, footage from documentaries, other movies, commercials, cartoons, etc. I can't say that there was a lot of coherency, any particular story line, etc. I suppose you could say it was sort of like some of the Monkees episodes but not as good as I remember them being. It had some songs. It had some interesting or almost interesting moments. It was all right but certainly not great. I've never been sure. It could have been a masterpiece, but somehow wasn't. It was certainly of its time. DRIVE, HE SAID was directed by Jack Nicholson. Vincent Canby of The New York Times declared, "It is not a great film, but it is an often intelligent one, and it is so much better than all of the rest of the campus junk Hollywood has manufactured that it can be indulged in its sentimental conventions." I would certainly agree with that. No, it is not a great film. I think it is certainly a film of its time and very reflective of those times but also, I guess, of college life, although not really one I personally encountered. A SAFE PLACE directed by Henry Jaglom. It starred Tuesday Weld, Jack Nicholson, Orson Welles and Phil Proctor. It was not, in my opinion, very good. It is a strange movie centering upon one young woman whose mind drifts, as does the film, and not particularly in a good way. It just really doesn't work too well. It is interesting and odd and depressing but it just doesn't work too well. This is also Jaglom's directorial debut. The notes on the reception in the Wikipedia article pretty much sum up my feelings about this movie. "Jaglom's directorial debut was a "critical and box- office disaster". Time magazine called the film "pretentious and confusing", a film that "suggests that the rumors of his expertise were greatly exaggerated, or at least that it does not extend to directing." FIVE EASY PIECES directed by Bob Rafelson with Jack Nicholson, Karen Black, Billy Green Bush, Fannie Flagg, Sally Struthers and others in interesting roles.