Jack Yan on Vox

Quantum of Solace trailer released

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 22:35:13 +1200

This is looking very, very good. Then again, fast editing made the Pierce Brosnan Bonds look good, too. But I think Daniel Craig will pull this off very well.

Quantum of Solace 1st Trailer

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Ooh, You Are Awful: Mandy on ﬁlm

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 08 Jun 2008 17:30:37 +1200

Ooh! You are awful! Dick Emery as Mandy!

I wasn’t a huge fan of Dick Emery but I have £9 left over from an Amazon UK coupon and have been considering buying his 1972 film, Ooh, You Are Awful (a.k.a. Get Charlie Tully). It is a trivial, film-buff interest: the movie formed the basis of the Hong Kong movie series, 最佳拍檔 (Aces Go Places), and even some of the gags are repeated. The above one, where Dick is in his Mandy character, isn’t in the Chinese film, though others are (almost line for line, in some cases)—and the overall storyline (the location of loot is tattooed on a series of female posteriors) comes straight from here.
Unless I can find some Alarm für Cobra 11 DVDs through the UK service (the coupon can’t be used at other Amazons), the credit may go on Emery—especially as it expires on June 11. Suggestions on how to waste £9 are welcome (remember, shipping will be £3 to New Zealand).

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Chinese-made in New Zealand

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 21:11:41 +1200

Before The Lord of the Rings, before Bad Taste even, Hong Kong film-makers on the crew of 最佳拍檔千里救差婆 (Aces Go Places IV) came to New Zealand to film their action–comedy.
   Watch as we go all from New Plymouth to Auckland to Wellington: by the miracle of film you can exit the Auckland Harbour Bridge and wind up on Willis Street, Wellington!
   Fly over the Cable Car tracks from the Clifton Terrace car park and wind up at … the Clifton Terrace car park going the opposite way!
   Fly off the Lombard car park and wind up on a Hong Kong sound stage, your Holden Torana turned into a Ford Taunus!
   You know this is old because the traffic on the Bridge is moving.
   You also know this is fiction because the drivers on the Bridge are letting other motorists through.
   Kiwi TV fans from the 1980s: look out for Credit Card hostess Gayle-Anne Jones as a henchwoman—yes, there were beautiful blonde TV hostesses before Hilary Timmins.
   And, Indiana Jones fans, that is Ronald Lacey there as the baddie in the Rolls-Royce.

aces go places iv p5

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Goodbye, Harvey Korman

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sat, 31 May 2008 00:50:09 +1200

Another great actor passes on: Harvey Korman from The Carol Burnett Show, Blazing Saddles and History of the World Part One. (He regarded these as his best credits.) ‘Korman reportedly suffered complications related to the rupture of an abdominal aortic aneurysm he experienced four months ago,’ according to IMDB News. Two clips follow—I’m afraid I haven’t found any of ‘Count de Money! Count de Money!’

Dentist Sketch - The Carol Burnett Show

Pledge to Hedley Lamarr

Mr Korman gave a wonderful series of interviews from earlier this year, which are quite enjoyable.

Harvey Korman - Archive Interview Part 1 of 3

Harvey Korman - Archive Interview Part 2 of 3

Harvey Korman - Archive Interview Part 3 of 3

You will be missed, Harvey.

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Entertainment QotW: movie music

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Fri, 23 May 2008 15:19:49 +1200

Share a scene from a movie that uses music perfectly.
Submitted by nohablo.

This is a great scene for movie music, but the movie itself was Sir Lew Grade’s star-studded mega-turkey of 1980, Raise the Titanic. I do not like this movie but this following scene with a musical score is well done.
   Composer John Barry’s lyrical composition works well with and without the picture and unlike his many modern counterparts, he knows when to stop the music.
   The central part of this clip has no music, but wait till the Titanic bubbles up toward the end after 5.59 (music at 6.57). It is, sadly, cut badly toward the end.
   I knew this really conveyed the nautical sense when I drove around Oriental Bay one day and saw one of the Interislanders go out. Even though that ferry is not very large, this music suited the idea of a ship on the seas.

RAISE THE TITANIC:RAISEING THE TITANIC

A second clip has the opening theme as well as the raising.

RAISE THE TITANIC!

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Capt Kirk gets off a speeding ticket

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 11 May 2008 12:14:58 +1200

Just as I finished writing about Philip Glenister getting his driver off a ticket by acting as Gene Hunt, I surfed over to an article about Canadian actor William Shatner linked from the Daily Mail page I cited earlier:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/femail/article.html?in_article_id=565380&in_page_id=1879

In the 1960s, Shatner wore his Capt Kirk uniform rushing to work and was also stopped. He writes:

I got out of my car, dressed in my uniform. The police officer looked me up and down, frowned and asked: “So where are you going so fast at this time in the morning?”
I told him the truth: “To my spaceship.”
He sighed. “OK, go ahead,” he said, before adding the Vulcan blessing: “Live long and prosper.”

Nothing new under the sun.
The story is quite good, told in the first person. Shatner recounts his lows and the death of his third wife (after what seems to be the final paragraph talking about the price of his autobiography).

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Gandhi II (not)

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Sun, 11 May 2008 01:20:45 +1200

I saw this movie, Sexy Beast, years ago and again last year when staying with my friends Amanda and Paul in Christchurch. It stars Ray Winstone and Ben Kingsley. If you are used to Ben Kingsley playing rather dignified roles, this will be a surprise. He plays a psychotic East End hood.
I was trying to find his ‘No no no no no no no’ line only, but this is the closest YouTube has. Excessive swearing: be warned, and don’t play this around your kids (if you have any).

Not This Time NO

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Marketing Arabesque

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Wed, 07 May 2008 18:30:05 +1200

ARABESQUE [TRAILER]

The trailer to one of my favourite films—but it’s very 1960s. A modern audience won’t exactly get excited over this. That’s ironic though: if you see the film, there are plenty of scenes which could be edited in a modern fashion to create a very impactful trailer. But since it was the 1960s, this was perfectly acceptable and there’s just enough of Sophia Loren in a state of undress to get her fans along. And plenty of Christian Dior dresses and shoes (oh, the shoes—they were in Loren’s contract and written in to the script as a fetish of Alan Badel’s character). Gregory Peck, meanwhile, is still one of the top stars of the time—doing a role originally written for Archie Leach (Cary Grant to the rest of us). Note the prominence of Henry Mancini’s name, too.
As a movie it holds up remarkably well, far better than the trailer.

Un pub pour le film Arabesque, de Stanley Donen, avec Gregory Peck et Sophia Loren.

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Top 10 ﬁlms—in constant dollars

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:26:55 +1200

I was at Charlie’s Vox blog where he lists the top opening weekend grosses of Hollywood films but I wondered how it might look in constant 2008 dollars.
I didn’t find that on Google, but one blogger did work out the top 10 films based on revenue in constant 2005 dollars. The conclusion: the best films are the oldies, but in the early days we didn’t have TV and, later, video–DVD sales.

Rank in Const $	Title	Const 2005$ Revenues
1	Gone with the Wind	$2,759,101,083
2	Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs	$2,498,993,041
3	Star Wars	$1,472,637,907
4	Bambi	$1,223,775,595
5	The Sound of Music	$1,001,314,638
6	One Hundred and One Dalmatians	$987,096,774.2
7	Jaws	$935,251,798.6
8	The Exorcist	$889,413,043.5
9	E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial	$871,642,202.4
10	The Jungle Book	$819,905,271.7

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It’s reached the Olympics—Edison Chen scandal fallout continues

nobody@vox.com(Jack Yan) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:24:32 +1300

If you thought the story of Amir Massoud Tofangsazan was embarrassing, what if something similar happened to a celebrity?
   Over the last few weeks, the Edison Chen scandal has rocked Hong Kong and even affected the Beijing Olympics.
   Chen, a Canadian-born actor about to make a big US début—already he’s a Pepsi spokesman in Hong Kong—took in his laptop for repair but forgot to take down his home-made porn, which includes 12 female celebrities.
   Just as with Laptop Guy (Thomas Sawyer) in the UK with Amir’s photos in 2006, someone at the computer shop decided they would post the 1,200-plus images and videos on to the ’net.
   If we think the Britney Spears Machine is bad, Hong Kong tabloids make that look like a old world gentlemen’s club.
   PC World offers this analogy: ‘Imagine photos of, say, Matthew McConaughey popping up on the Internet, showing him in various states of undress and sexual acts with, say, Alicia Keys, Kelly Clarkson and Kirsten Dunst.’
   One of the celebs implicated is Gillian Chung, who was supposedly going to perform at the Olympics. Not any more. Prior to this month she had a wholesome image—now she may be more associated with performing and receiving oral sex. (The logical thing now would be to revamp her image as Madonna does regularly, but whether that will go down well in the innocent Cantopop world is another matter.)
   Batgwa summarizes the other celebs:

The biggest female stars implicated were Gillian Chung (鍾欣桐) and Cecilia Cheung (張栢芝).
Other less well known female celebrities were implicated too, including Bobo Chan (陳文媛), Rachel Ngan (顏穎思), Mandy Chen (陳育嬬), Candice Chan (陳思慧) and Edison’s current girlfriend Vincy Yeung (楊永晴).

   Chen has basically announced, at 27, his retirement from the Hong Kong scene. He might have to: some of the celebs may have Triad connections (there is some gang involvement in Hong Kong moviemaking) and he’s received death threats.
   Cops have arrested nine people so far in connection with the unlawful distribution of the images.
   While Chen is no saint, he deserved his privacy. The poster has essentially brought down the careers of several people. I suppose this is a reminder that when you are in the public eye, you need to take precautions. Putting your own porn on to a disc or a flash drive would be an idea—or simply be a role model and being less promiscuous in relationships and never fear these leaks.
   We may criticize Chen for his behaviour and we certainly should criticize the breach of trust from the shop, but the problem is wider. We need to ask ourselves just where our values are—and the way the Chinese people have reacted shows that they have not fled the free and occupied parts of China.

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