I’m still feeling a little under the weather so I decided to pick a music video for today that pretty much speaks for itself. As you can probably guess from just watching, this video for Tomoyasu Hotei’s Battle Without Honor or Humanity was released to coincide with the release of the Kill Bill soundtrack.
Though most listeners immediately associate this song with Kill Bill, it was actually originally written for and used in another film, 2000’s New Battles Without Honor or Humanity. As any quick perusal of YouTube will show you, this is not only one of Hotei’s most popular songs but also one that exists in several different version. The video above last for 3 and a half minutes. The version of the song on the Kill Bill soundtrack is a minute shorter. I’ve come across versions on YouTube that last anywhere from 6 to 15 minutes. Regardless which version you use, Battle Without Honor or Humanity is a good stripper song. Just saying.
This is also a song that’s fun to listen to while you’re driving, unless of course you live in a city with really bad traffic and are prone to road rage. If that’s the case, you might want to listen to something a little bit more calming.
Anyway, regardless of how good or bad your morning commute may be, enjoy!
Years ago, during my senior year of high school, my AP History teacher taught us about Vietnam by bringing in a movie. He explained that the movie featured some “adult language” and was not always easy to watch. He also said that it was the most realistic portrayal of basic training ever put on film. Seeing as how he was a former Marine himself, we took his word for it.
That movie, of course, was Full Metal Jacket. The class loved the movie, though not in the way that our teacher was hoping. He was hoping that we would pick up on the film’s anti-war theme but instead we were all obsessed with Gunnery Sergeant Hartmann, the tough-as-nails drill sergeant played by R. Lee Ermey. It didn’t matter that Hartmann probably wouldn’t have welcome any of us into his beloved corp. (The majority of the class may have had Private Joker’s wit but they also had Private Pyle’s physisque.) From the minute that Hartmann started yelling at the recruits, the class thought he was the coolest and toughest sonuvabitch of all time. We were supposed to be learning that war was Hell and dehumanizing but we just wanted to listen to Hatmann yell about Mary Jane Rottencrotch and her pink panties.
Looking back, I feel bad for my teacher. He wanted to show us the horrors of Vietnam and instead, he ended up with a bunch of students who wouldn’t stop chanting, “I don’t know but I’ve been told/Eskimo pussy is mighty cold!” Every class debate, there was always a chance that someone would respond to an opposing argument by saying, “You wouldn’t even have the common courtesy to give him a reach around!”
I won’t even get into the number of times that, for the rest of the year, the term “skull fuck” was used in class discussions.
Full Metal Jacket is an anti-war film. The first half may be dominated by Sgt. Hartmann turning the recruits into “perfect” killing machines but the second half features those machines being picked off, one-by-one, by an unseen sniper in a bombed-out building. All of Hartmann’s words about the brotherhood of duty are meant to ring hollow as we watch one teenage girl gun down Marine after Marine. Perhaps they would have if Hartmann had been played by anyone other than R. Lee Ermey.
One reason why Ermey was so believable as Hartmann was because he actually had been a drill instructor. In 1961, R. Lee Ermey was 17 years old and had two arrests for criminal mischief on his record when a judge told him that he could either go to jail or he could join the military. Ermey chose to enlist. He served in the Marines for 11 years, getting a medical discharge in 1972.
He began his film career as a technical advisor to Francis Ford Coppola during the shooting of Apocalypse Now. This led to him playing Sgt. Loyce, a drill instructor in The Boys of Company C.
(The shooting of Apocalypse Now was so drawn out that The Boys of Company C actually ended up getting released a year before Coppola’s epic.)
Originally, Ermey was only hired to serve as a technical advisor on Full Metal Jacket. It wasn’t until Ermey put together an instructional video for Tom Colceri, the actor who had previously been cast as Sgt. Hartmann. When Full Metal Jacket‘s director, Stanley Kubrick, saw the tape, he replaced Colceri with Ermey. (Colceri still appears in the film. He plays the helicopter door gunner who brags about shooting 50 water buffalo.)
Kubrick not only gave Ermey his most famous role but he also allowed Ermey to improvise much of his dialogue, something that was practically unheard of on a Kubrick set. Kubrick also said that it usually only took 2 or 3 takes for Ermey to give him what he was looking for. That was a high compliment from Stanley Kubrick, the man who, during the filming of The Shining, made Scatman Crothers do over a hundred takes of one scene.
Ermey’s performance as Hartmann was so iconic and so quotable that it has become the standard by which all other film drill instructors are judged. It also made Ermey a much-in-demand character actor. Many of the roles that Ermey played were designed to capitalize on his fame as Hartmann. He played the a ghost of a drill instructor in The Frighteners. He was the voice of Sarge in three Toy Story films.
In a few films, R. Lee Ermey got a chance to show that he was capable of more than just playing variations on Sgt. Hartmann. In Prefontaine, he played the legendary coach and Nike co-founder Bill Bowerman. He was a police captain in Se7en and the father of a murdered girl in Dead Man Walking. In the two remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, he was Leatherface’s equally depraved uncle.
R. Lee Ermey died yesterday at the age of 74 but his performances will live on forever.
Here in Massachusetts, every third Monday in April is designated Patriots’ Day, a state holiday commemorating the 1775 Battles of Lexington and Concord which gave birth to the American Revolutionary War. The annual Boston Marathon is run on this day, as well as an 11:00AM Boston Red Sox game, so it’s a pretty big deal in this neck of the woods. Those of you in other parts of the country can celebrate by watching JOHNNY TREMAIN, Walt Disney’s film about a young boy living in those Colonial times that led up to the birth of “a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal”.
Based on the 1943 Newbery Award-winning YA novel by Esther Forbes, the film tells the story of the Revolution through the eyes of young Johnny Tremain (Hal Stalmaster), a teen apprenticed to silversmith Mr. Lapham (crusty Will Wright
Sorry, everyone. As I sit here writing this latest music video of the day post, I’m suddenly feeling a bit ill. I’m not sure if it’s just allergies or if I’m legitimately getting sick. It’s probably a combination of the two. It’s been a very windy day, which is always bad for allergies. It’s also been an unusually cold day, which is strange for Texas in April.
So, anyway, I’m just going to offer up this video of Dada Life performing at Tommorowland in 2010 and I’m going to invite you to …. enjoy!
Remember how last week I said I was going to get caught up with everything? Well, it didn’t happen. I got busy last week so I guess I’ll have to get caught up during this upcoming week. Along with everything else, I’m also planning on watching and reviewing a lot of Italian thrillers and horror films so keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck!
Anyway, I hope everyone had a good holiday weekend and here’s what I got accomplished last week!
(Oh, Friday the 13th is totally a holiday! Why do you think they made so many movies about it?)
Stop Making Sense (1984) — Jeff and I saw great concert film at the Alamo Drafthouse on Monday night. I’ve been listening to the Talking Heads nonstop ever since!
I thoroughly enjoyed this film!! Why? Because it’s a Dwayne Johnson movie. He’s an actor, a brand, and you know what you’re going to get. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME. Did it have a couple of slow moments? Yep. Were the characters, especially the villains, one dimensional or 8-Bit? Sure. But, so what? Rampage is fun and sometimes it’s great to take a bath in nostalgia and see some shit blow up.
A Dwayne Johnson movie is really a sub-genre all its very own. I won’t compare it to other movies. His movies are also fun because we just like Dwayne Johnson so much as a Man that we feel like he’s a friend. It becomes reflexive that we hear Dwayne Johnson has a movie out, it’s as if one of our friends just made one. I told a guy at work that I was going to see a Dwayne Johnson movie, he knew exactly what I meant, and he referred to Dwayne Johnson as a National Treasure. Yes, we’re now getting married in the fall and are registered at Pottery Barn.
I played Rampage when I was a wee bairn. In fact, with the help of my friend Robbie, we stayed up all night and destroyed the whole country. Congratulations! I, like every boy in the Y-Generation, was excited for this film. Sidenote: sorry everyone, Millenials are no more, you’ve been folded into Y, but take heart – “Even children get older, I’m gettin older …too.”
An Evil Corporation, run ostensibly by Ivanka Trump and her Generic Trump brother, create a virus that mutate ordinary animals into genetically spliced super-creatures that run amok. That’s it- that’s the plot- and like the video game upon which it was based, Rampage the Film is beautifully Wabi Sabi.
The film begins with The Rock who is closed off from people because after seeing their terrible acts in war and poaching, he just can’t let them in. *sniff* The Rock’s best friend is George- an albino gorilla- who can sign. Soon, the Trump family look alikes’ experiment accidentally infects George, a wolf, a crocodile, and a partridge in a pear tree. The Partridge Monster doesn’t actually destroy anything, but he blatantly re-gifts Christmas presents; therefore, he’s the worst monster of all because he destroys your self-esteem.
George, the wolf, and crocodile get BIGGER, the government – embodied by Jeffrey Dean Morgan- try to stop the monsters, but can’t. Jeffrey becomes an ally of The Rock, helping him along the way with helicopter keys, air strikes, and lending him his edger so The Rock can really make his lawn POP for barbecue season. The Trumps put out a signal to draw the monsters to Chicago, hoping they’ll kill each other off. The Trumps hope that they’ll be able to take a sample of the monster flesh, replicate it, and sell it to whomever. It doesn’t go well. The monsters go nuts. I’m not going to spoil anything. Needless to say, the last 40 minutes of the film are amazingly satisfying.
Congratulations! Dwayne you’ve done it! The Video Game Curse is Broken.
Three first issues and a seven hundredth? Yeah, this oughtta be an interesting column —
Crude #1 kicks off a new Skybound/Image six-parter from the creative team of Steve Orlando and Garry Brown revolving around a mix of family drama and Russian oil business shady dealings, with some sort of vague-at-this-point mystery thrown into the mix to — sorry — muddy the waters. Orlando has always been an up-and-down writer in my estimation, but he seems to be more “up” here, serving us a script that’s heavy on the characterization and stage-setting. This may just turn out to be yet another revenge yarn, but those are fun if they kick enough ass, and all indications are that this one’ll do just that — and Brown’s murky, expressionistic art is more than well-suited to the proceedings. At $3.99 a pop for singles this might be one to “trade-wait,” but since I’m…
The world’s ending. How are you going to deal with it?
Are you going to cry? Are you going to rage at the random whims of fate? Are you going to scream about being powerless? Or are you going to get together with your friends? Are you going to have a good time? Are you going to listen to a great song? Are you going to dance around the fire?
Myself, I’d probably get on twitter and try to score a few last retweets before the world ended. I’d probably also take the time to report everyone that I don’t like to Twitter Support. If I could get a few account suspended before the moon crashes into the Pacific Ocean, it would all have been worth it.
Actually, I’d probably just try to watch my favorite movies one last time. I’ve actually given a lot of thought to what movie I would watch if I knew it was going to be the last one that I would ever get to see. I know most people probably expect me to say that I would rewatch Suspiria but, to be honest, I’d probably rewatch something from the Marx Brothers. Maybe Duck Soup.
Anyway, the people in this video go for the dancing around the fire approach to the end of the world and bless them for it!
(Have you noticed how obsessed people seem to be with the end of the world nowadays? There have been so many recent films about people dealing with the end of life on Earth. I guess people are just naturally pessimistic nowadays. I’ve always been pretty confident that the world won’t end as long as I’ve got things to do. Check out Melancholia if you want to see a good movie about the apocalypse. I would suggest avoiding Seeking A Friend For The End Of The World and Abel Ferrara’s tedious 4:44 Last Day On Earth. If you want to laugh while watching the world end, check out the delightful End of the World. Be sure to order the DVD of that one because I’m quoted on the back of the case!)
Through the Shattered Lens 