An open letter to Vin Diesel

If you like surreal Leone, try Once Upon a Time in the West with Henry Fonda, Charles Bronson, and Jason Robards. There might be four lines of dialogue in the first twenty minutes.The thing I really like about Leone is he draws out the tension for so long and then BANG BANG BANG! The violence is over in two seconds. 180 degrees from our current action films with 9000 rounds shot and nobody with anything worse than a fleshwound.

I guess if you didn't like Raise the Red Lantern (aka DHDLGGG... did you really know that?) then you may not like his films in general. But I say give him a couple more shots.Ju Dou was a particularly beautiful piece. I found out his latest film is called House of Flying Daggers which I think is pretty cool. For some reason though their is an English retitle on it somewhere called Lovers? House of Flying Daggers = Lovers?Gong Li is a cutie whether that makes me a racist or not. Actually I was waiting for Contra to explain the white guy-asian girl fixation (which comes from both sides) and the asian guy-white girl fixation. I suppose he'll bring up Chinese laborers in the Wild West or something, though that doesn't explain the asian guy-white girl thing. I think I've mentioned this before in another thread. I think the top two horror films of all time (or lets say since the sixties) are The Thing and Alien. Many come close (including other Carpenter films) but they seem to stand as icons to me.Let me also say I realize there is no objectivity to the statement above, it is regarding my own aesthetic feelings. Ahem I... uh... I own a John Carpenter CD. I really like Halloween and Assault on Precinct 13 and The Thing (but go figure that was Morricone riffing on Carpenter). Yeah, though I fact-checked and its Miike. Well the guy is prolific so get what you can. The opening ten minutes from Dead or Alive alone is worth getting that.Okay, now I'm gonna stick it to ya. I actually met Michelle Yeoh (of CTHD fame). This was back when she was still Michelle Kahn, it was at a giant catered dinner before a premier screening of one of her movies and she was wearing this totally hot outfit that looked kind of like a sexy superhero outfit (not that it was just that it was cut pretty wild). Not only did she touch my arm, but later on she actually ignored some people to talk to me and called ME by name (so it wasn't just hi/bi who the hell was that?).Okay yeah she probably doesn't know me from anyone at this point, but it's the closest shot I ever got! Other than perhaps Jackie Chan's manager who seemed to be very uhm... friendly... to me.

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)

Once Upon a Time in the West IS my favorite Leone flick, especially for Fonda's portrayal of a cold blooded killer. I think Argento's scripting went a long way in making the plot stand out among other Leone films as well.I don't want to ruin anything, but whoever came up with the line Fonda delivers about people who wear suspenders and a belt made my day. Which beats the hell out of the lines we get from tough guys these days like "make my day" (forgive me Clint).And of course a Morricone soundtrack... well, what else did they need?

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holmes
"...what a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.."(D. Bros)