Sunday 24 October 2010

Greatest movie scenes ever # 33

It's a pity that Master P's book from a few years back was a "you can make it if you try!" type affair rather than an in-depth breakdown of the central tenets of the No Limit Soldier philosophy back in the 90s because I've often found the sentiments he expressed in his music back then are so applicable in life for us caucasians too. For instance..

Master P ft. Mystikal & Silkk - Always Look A Man In The Eyes When You Kill Him



Ayo, Amy Irving - I know John Cassavetes was the one who urged Scorsese to break out from the exploitation flick cul-de-sac and make Mean Streets and that he'd just whipped up his own masterpiece in the form of The Killing Of A Chinese Book a couple of years earlier, but his evil intelligence-operative character in Brian De Palma & Frank Yablan's The Fury is a playa hater who won't let you ball with them telekinetic powers of yours so you gon' do as P says on this one, post-haste, shawdy :



(Needless to say, if you've never seen The Fury and harbour a desire to ever watch it then it's probably best not to click the play button on this.)

As far as 70s De Palma flicks go, it has to be said that the self-billed "supernatural thriller" The Fury is no Carrie, Sisters, or Phantom Of The Paradise since it's a more convoluted retread of the former leaden with mismatched elements from the traditional spy movie, but it's an interesting overlapping of genres which is worth suffering any incoherencies and shoehorning in narrative sub-plots for the above finale - obviously a precursor to that scene in Scanners - with its grand guignol multi-camera angle shot (done in 1 take, I believe) of Cassavetes's comeuppance, the sorta ethereal Irving being the perfect choice in the role of the post-Sissy Spacek confused teenage girl with paranormal abilities who inadvertently makes anyone who touches her bleed from their eyes, Cassavetes with his arm in a black sling which immediately gives him the duplicitous air of a Bond villain the moment he steps on screen, some heavily stylized Hitchcockian set-pieces you'd expect from our Brian, the magnificent John Williams composed scoring performed by the London Symphony Orchestra, a cast which also included Kirk Douglas as an ex CIA agent trying to rescue his son from the clutches of his old colleague-turned-enemy Cassavetes's agency, and early appearances by an 18 year old Daryl Hannah, Dennis Franz, and, ever so briefly, James Belushi.

As far as hallmark De Palma set pieces go, the operatic slo-mo sequence where Irving escapes the psychiatric treatment centre with a little help from Snodgrass and Douglas set to an evocative Williams composition is the other genuinely remarkable scene the movie has to offer. Man, oafish British gangster/football hooligan movies really did ruin the art of slow-motion :



All in all, a fair few bull's-eyes hit for a movie so flawed, including Amy and the young Daryl Hannah in bikinis at one point, and I've finally found an oppurtnity to post Always Look A Man In The Eyes When You Kill Him (a great song that sounded out of place as a new bonus cut on the 1997 reissue of P's The Ghetto's Trying To Kill Me album when it replaced 1 of the 3 King George songs from the original 1994 press which were removed from the reissue due to legal issues stemming from George leaving No Limit) so everybody wins here.

14 comments:

hl said...

That body explosion was awesome.

Mr Bozack said...

Nice. Yeh Fury's bit naff innit. Used to love Scanners - ain't seen for years and luckily it's on this week.

d said...

ha man the whole point of warnings is to put them BEFORE the spoiler, still, appreciate the sentiment. actually, complaing bout spoilers in somethin called greatest movie scenes is a bit of a fail come to think of it.

is king george the dude whos pictures blurred out on the cover? wonder who freddie gibbs blurred for his tribute thing.

favourite rap scanners reference :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvHWGSpK0FE

that jigga man flag pales next to the sickening pandering to the crowd he did when i saw him live a few years back. he had this cringe-worthy intro video with bono. bono. where bono kept repeatin how "jay-z is dope". jay then proceeded to rap over sunday bloody sunday. seriously.

d said...

@Mr Bozack: what channel?

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Oh man, that sounds terrible. Was that the tour when he brought out KanYe to do Diamonds, Can't Tell Me Nothing and Good Life for the encore? Certainly better than his UK tour this summer when he did 70% songs from Blueprint 3 and had Drake and Mr fucking Hudson out on stage with him.

Yeah, I think that's King George. Better to remove your ex label employee's songs and pictures from your releases, than to use the Ca$h Money method of having them killed (alledgedly!), I suppose.

d said...

nah but that kanye encore sounds amazin, i dont fux wit good life but id imagine its great live.

think it was "retirement"-era jay, probably pre-linkin park abortion cos i was still a big fan. remember bein dissapointed at how it had exactly the same set as fade to black sans the reasonable doubt era shit or black album album cuts, it was sorta shite basically.

"70% songs from Blueprint 3 and had Drake and Mr fucking Hudson out on stage with him" - exactly why Jay-z is dead to me. whatever happened to this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr1NV7fzBYM&feature=related

industry rule no. 105643467990b:
never sign to any label with an "artist" as label head, youl be shot/jailed/blacklisted etc. or jive.

Mr Bozack said...

Done - BBC4 on Weds, part of their horror season I think.

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

I don't know why we even bothered going to see him this time since I can't stand to listen to anything by him anymore and we were stuck in the middle of a row between a bunch of goobers.

d said...

@Mr Bozack im definitly stayin in for that, sound.

that sounds far worse, hope you got the ticket free or somethin.remember people always complained how rappers cant sustain a long-term career and be like the rolling stones? THIS is what happens. at least LL had the decency to stop being relevant.

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

Speaking of the BBC horror seasons, any of you gents watch the last part of History Of Horror with Mark Gatiss last night? Good interviews with Romero, Hooper, Carpenter, and he paid homage to Psycho, Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Omen and Cronenberg, but I was disappointed there was mention of Carrie or any of Argento's flicks.

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

The less said about the Jay-Z show, the better.

James said...

Never seen The Fury but that scene is bonkers.

Watched the 1st 2 parts of the BBC documentary, gonna catch the 3rd on the iplayer later.

Mr Bozack said...

Yeh saw that last night, good stuff. Those "zombie walks" were pretty amusing.

Kelvin Mack10zie said...

"They're too fast! It's not 28 Days Later!"