What I Watched This Week (w/e May 11th 2008)

DVD

Inland Empire - This gets more and more impressive each time I watch it, seeing things that I hadn't previously noticed. Laura Dern is superb and the extras disc is great for a Lynch fan - one of these weeks I'm going to go through his back catalogue. :D

Blade - This was great when it came out, but pales in comparison to the sequel. It's an impressive comic book film with tax-evader Snipes showing off his martial arts skills, but not up there with Batman Begins, Superman or Spider-Man 2. :|

Blade II - This benefits from not having to dwell on the origins of Blade and del Toro's direction. It's more violent, more imaginative and varied, with each fight scene different from the last. The extras are numerous, with 2 decent commentaries and a fine array of supplementary material on the second disc. :)

Ernest Hemingway's The Killers - The Criterion release has both versions of the film from 1946 and 1964. Robert Siodmak's outstanding noir takes the story and expands on it, creating numerous flashbacks into the Swede's life, looking for reasons why he took his murder so willingly and what he meant by "I did something once". One of the definitive noirs and Burt Lancaster's first major film, it is a towering achievement. The 1964 version uses almost nothing from the short story but is well directed by Don Siegel (who Mark Hellinger wanted to direct the '46 version), has a great performance by Lee Marvin and features Ronald Reagan in his last film where, for the only time in his career, he played a bad guy. The latter film is not as impressive as Siodmak's masterpiece but is a decent watch and the whole set is superb, containing Andrei Tarkovsky's adaptation of the story, which he made as a student. :D

Identification of a Woman - Review here.
L'Avventura - Review here.
The Abandoned - Review here.
The Backwoods - Review here.

Television

3:10 to Yuma (1957) - One of the great westerns, with a terrific performance by Glenn Ford, this is taut and gripping. :D

3:10 to Yuma (2007) - A slightly bloated version of the same story, with Russell Crowe and Christian Bale on decent form, but the pace lags in a way that it never did in the original. :)

Babel - As a big fan of Alejandro González Iñárritu's work, I was disappointed by this. His best work ( 21 Grams and Amores Perros) are tight and believable stories, but the events in Babel are so disparate that it beggars belief that they could be interwoven - there is no way that the shooting of an American tourist in Morocco would be headline news in Tokyo. The Moroccan and Mexican events are plausible but the link to Japan is just a step too far, despite being the most interesting of the three. :|

Gloucester vs. Bath - It was odd that two of the highest scoring teams in the Premiership only managed 13 points between them in an enthralling encounter that was more memorable for the other games taking place around England than what was happening on the field. It was an emotionally draining day, especially for me as a Tigers fan, seeing Leicester move down and up from 7th to 5th and back to 6th before clinching the all-important 4th place and a trip to Kingsholm with Varndell's 77th minute try.

F1 Turkish Grand Prix - This could have been extremely dull if it weren't for McLaren's issues with the tyres and Hamilton's subsequent use of a three-stop strategy. As it was, it was an entertaining race.

Junior Witter vs. Timothy Bradley - I've always wondered when Witter's hubris would come back to haunt him and it was Saturdays night when he was beaten by a man fighting for the first time out of California as a professional who caused one of the upsets of the year and blowing any chances of Witter meeting Ricky Hatton out of the water. The co-headlining fight was a bit of an anticlimax as Carl Froch took apart the unbeaten but overmatched Pole Albert Rybacki. He keeps calling out Calzaghe but that fight won't happen as the Welshman has nothing to gain from it and plenty to lose - in any case, Calzaghe has bigger fish to fry with a proposed fight with Roy Jones Jr. in the works.