Deadwood & Fireworks

[ellen_datlow]

I watched the first four episodes of the third season and am starting to get worried about the coming withdrawal with only three discs to go (presumably 6 episodes). I'm delighted to see the wonderful Brian Cox enter the series for the most recent two episodes.

And I watched the Japanese crime movie Fireworks Directed by and starring Takeshi "Beat" Kitano. It's good, although it took me about halfway through the movie to figure out what was going on with some of the characters. Apparently it won a lot of international awards when it came out in 1998 and damned if I can figure out why. It just isn't that good, and in fact one major plot point really bugged me. It's not much of a spoiler to say that one of the main cops in the movie lost his young child (cancer I think) and that his wife is currently dying --what of? I haven't a clue. Physically she seems fine but throughout the movie she seems feeble minded--I'm not at all convinced it's intentional. So...cops are killed, gangsters are killed, more cops are killed or wounded, and more gangsters are killed. It's ok but I really don't feel it's anything special.

Comments

Re: Fireworks

[(Anonymous)]

...I don't really recommend Dolls...but the others are great. (I am a completist, or try to be, so I with dutifully watch every Kitano movie I can find on DVD or via torrent.) For more straightforward thrillers, Violent Cop and Boiling Point are both good. And his first movie, A Scene by the Sea, is a great little film about a deaf surfer. As an added bonus, a lot of his movies are scored by Joe Hisaishi, who works with Miyazaki a lot. Kikujiro has an especially great score. Hope you like them. Brother is also very good, although it shows a slightly unsure hand in some of its American scenes.