Check into Kang's Motel (18: Unedited)

Dodging the restrictive stereotype of Asian-American cinema is a difficult task for modern day filmmakers, especially in comedy. If the film isn’t martial arts based, then it usually focuses heavily on the difficulty of living in the U.S. through the scope of a character’s Asian ethnicity. The Motel, written and directed by Michael Kang, operates on the uneasy deadpan humor that made Napoleon Dynamite famous, but in a more genuine and less annoying way.

In The Motel, Ernest Chin is a semi-autobiographical 13-year-old character based on Kang. Ernest and his small nuclear family (a younger sister, his mother and grandfather) are English-speaking Chinese that own and operate a small hourly motel.

Ernest is an awkward adolescent going through the torturous and immediately identifiable period of puberty, and the changes he faces and endures are the heart of this story. His Chinese heritage has almost nothing to do with the plot, other than the two lines spoken in Chinese and the taunts he receives from an older bully.

The world of The Motel is a small and slow moving universe in which Ernest comes home from school and cleans up the rooms after the three-hour rentals. He’s bored, as most teenagers would be, and inattentively listens to the scolding of his bat-wielding mother with rolled eyes and a “whatever.” When Sam, a young and successful businessman, rolls through the motel drunk and with a woman under his arm, Ernest cautiously attaches himself to the wild, but cool 20-something.

After late nights of hanging out and sharing found chicken legs, Sam shows himself to be a sad and confused husband, either abandoned by or fleeing his wife.

With that realization, the audience begins to catch glimpses of everyone’s insecurities and how they try to deal with them. Ernest’s older love interest, Christine, smokes and drinks to be cool, and repeatedly shoots Ernest down when he finally musters up the courage to make a move on her from Sam’s advice. His mother, afraid of the feeling of abandonment already made familiar by Ernest’s father, tries to keep him on a short leash and discourages his contest-winning short stories with an emphasis for hard work. Even a bully, the son of a poor long-term room renter, expresses his insecurity by attacking Ernest and making him kiss his sister.

Although the characters and their situations are sad and humiliating, the film is hilariously written and acted. The subversive and situational humor of Ernest’s little sister asking why customers are so loud during their naps, while watching the infamously violent “Happy Tree Friends,” is trumped only by Ernest’s discovery of pornography and Christine telling him to “get your boner out of my face.”

The humor is very similar to Me and You and Everyone We Know, and most of the laughs come from your own discomfort. The dialogue between Ernest and the bully’s sister is as memorable as the “back and forth, forever” scene in Me and You, and the same naïve sense of maturity lends itself to heavy and embarrassing ridicule.

Ernest and Sam’s time together apexes when pair screams, “We want to be happy” at the top of their lungs, and the movie changes gears for the upsetting fight and self-realizations between them about themselves and each other.

The disc’s special features are great, the funniest of which is a half-hour behind the scenes documentary called, “The Making of The Motel.” In it, cast and crew members break down the casting process and their excitement over the professionalism of working with child actors. There are also a few bizarre tidbits about a fire breaking out and their dependence on power generators. The extras also include the original theatrical trailer and four “Director’s Picks” with outtakes and commentary.

Unfortunately, this independent film missed Houston’s theaters, but PALM’s DVD release offers the opportunity to relate the pains of adolescence most of us try to forget, without suffering the stereotypes of Asian-American cinema.

MOViES Offers Unique Selection, Community (17: Unedited)

Montrose area residents may have noticed a new independent business next to the post office on Richmond Ave. last December. MOViES is a new DVD and VHS rental store-front owned and managed by Rob Arcos, a former Landmark Theaters city manager.

With last year’s March 31^st closing of Cactus Music and Video, the independent DVD rental market was left with a void that could only be filled by Netflix. Cactus offered its customers a wide selection of obscure and discontinued titles that couldn’t be found in the local Blockbuster or Hollywood Video. The store’s closing upset many Houstonians, and left most without a place to find the low-budget cult classics Cactus was infamous for.

Arcos hopes to fill that void and offer Inner-loop patrons a convenient location and interesting selection. He doesn’t expect to compete with the rental giants and Netflix, but he hopes to develop a status in the community as a go-to guy for rental recommendations, and welcomes feedback and discussion from his customers. In an interview with Montrose Monitor, a podcast and website by John Buffington, Arcos tells Buffington that he appreciates customers spending 10 to 20 minutes discussing their rental choice and what they thought about it.

Although MOViES can’t guarantee and stock 40 copies of a new release, the store does offer other promotions and discounts. For example, Arcos recognizes the addictive nature of television series box-sets, and gives a discount and extended rental period when customers rent two or more discs at once.

“I know that people aren’t going to be driving out here from Katy to visit the store, “ Arcos said, “but judging by how many people live in the area- in a mile radius there’re 14,000 addresses, and 6,000 people go up and down Richmond a day. From the almost 300 memberships I have, most are people that just drive by the store.”

But how is a small, one store rental company supposed to survive in the wake of downloads and Netflix putting movies in mailboxes? Arcos plans to make MOViES another stop in the eclectic down-town community with screenings on the store’s back patio, trivia and game nights, and even local director spotlights and festivals.

The actual retail space MOViES is in used to be a fitness center, which explains the floor to ceiling mirrors on the west wall. The building has a brown interior with concrete floors, and a TV on the counter- Arcos, always a movie lover, has something playing at all times. The new releases are on a lit shelf to the left, with the rest of the store’s selection on hand-made shelves to the right. The far corner has boxes of free movie posters, and the former-gym’s fitting rooms still occupy the left part of the back wall.

Arcos plans to take the fitting rooms out to free up more room for future ideas; oscar parties, small theater productions, and annual film events. MOViES seems to put more focus on community than making sure people take home DVDs, but Arcos stresses his ideology that pleasing his customers and building relationships with them is what’s most important. “I want to remind people why it’s fun to watch movies,” Arcos said, “not just for the simple sake of a distraction, but for the love of it.”

Contact information: http://www.moviesthestore.com/ 1407 Richmond Ave. Houston, TX77006 Phone: (713) 527-9997

Extras, Gervais's Second Album (16: Unedited)

Most fans of the BBC sitcom The Office will adamantly argue that the British version is much better than its American remake, not only because its funnier, but because the style of slow-paced storytelling and British witticisms work better in an English setting. The character the show is based around, the annoying boss David Brent, was invented and best acted by Ricky Gervais, the show’s co-writer and producer.

In the special features of The Office, Gervais and co-creator Steven Merchant explain why the show ended where it did (after only two seasons and a special), leaving fans without much else to chew on. The pair did a series of free podcasts, which were basically hour-long segments of Gervais making fun of their friend Karl Pilkington, but they didn’t have the creative acting and storytelling provided by a TV series. However, in 2005, HBO picked the pair up to do a semi-autobiographical recount of how The Office came to be, with a few details changed, and simply called Extras.

Unlike the realistic documentary style of The Office, which allowed characters to take asides and speak to the camera, Extras is meant to be entirely fictional. We learn about Andy, played by Ricky Gervais, Maggie, played by Ashley Jensen, and Andy’s unnamed Agent, played by co-creator Steven Merchant, by watching their interactions with others and the featured celebrities, much like a standard drama.

However, Extras is still unlike the fast-paced American sitcoms about making TV, like Studio 60. Extras instead resembles the slow movement of Wernam-Hogg’s cubicle space in The Office. The show’s transitions are a guy moving a light around or some actors walking to the catering table, the actors and extras take their time getting to places on the set, and the crews huddle around in quiet discussion. This movement takes the drama away from getting something done in time and puts it on the people in the show. The people answering phones at Wernam-Hogg are the actors looking over scripts on the set.

Most of the show is about two “background artists,” or film extras, named Andy and Maggie. Andy spends most of the show trying to get speaking lines, get his face into frame, and talk to the celebrities on-set in a seemingly vain attempt to network. His agent is completely useless- he greets Andy with a newly discovered calculator trick that spells out “boobs” upside-down on the screen- so he butts himself into conversations with producers and tries to impress people like Patrick Stewart in order to advance his acting career.

The six episodes in the season are titled by the A-list celebrities that star in them; Kate Winslet, Ben Stiller, Ross Kemp, Samuel L. Jackson, Les Dennis, and Patrick Stewart. These actors and actresses are not the center focus of the episode, but instead appear in the cinematic sequences and the awkward conversations between Andy and Maggie. Maggie’s discussing her new boyfriend’s fetish with talking dirty on the phone when Kate Winslet walks up in a nun’s wardrobe with some suggestions to spice up the phone sex.

Also similar to The Office, with an extra page taken from Curb Your Enthusiasm, is the awkward moments and uncomfortable confrontations between characters. Maggie frequently makes childish observations about race and sexuality, oftentimes when speaking to someone of that nationality or gender.

The six episodes may not seem like much, but the special features more than make the DVD set worth its list price. Both discs include blooper reels, which are mostly Ricky Gervais sabotaging a scene by making everyone laugh (just like in The Office) and redoing the scene thirty times. Disc one also has some deleted scenes, but the real bonus features are on disc two; “Finding Leo” is a panicked Gervais and Merchant trying to find Leonardo DiCaprio’s agent to fill a spot in an episode originally casted for Jude Law. The segment is about 10 minutes and absolutely hilarious as Merchant and Gervais try to figure out how they made it this far in show business when they can’t even dial outside the hotel room and only manage to be slightly productive- by doodling a monster with a phallic nose.

Also on disc two is the half-hour and insightful interview of Gervais and Merchant called “The Difficult Second Album,” where the pair talks about the creation of Extras and what it’s like to work with A-list celebrities. Merchant explains that the show uses the celebrities to add realism to the show and that they come with certain baggage that can be used to help the show’s humor, “you can play with the image they already have, and it’s like a shortcut to comedy.”

The second season of Extras started airing on Sunday, but because the series follows a greater narrative, viewers should consider picking up the first season before turning their TVs onto HBO. If you’ve already memorized the lyrics to “Freelove Freeway,” consider seeing Gervais’s other embarrassing character and awkward humor.

A Note, and Our DVD Collection

To start, I want to do more with this blog. It's primary purpose is to post my columns, unedited, for everyone who doesn't- or can't- read The Daily Cougar. However, I'd like to start posting more frequently with other news about DVDs, deals and bargains, and information about new releases that I don't have room for in my column. I'd like this space to become more of a resource concerning DVDs, and I want to answer any questions asked of me, whether they come from comments or emails.

After I spent about an hour cataloging Caitlin's and my DVDs in Delicious Monster (see my September 26th post), I figured I would print to a .pdf, put all of the pages together in Photoshop, and size it down so you guys could see it. This blog is about DVDs, right? Obviously, some of the titles are missing directors, proper covers, etc. But I was too excited to go ahead and post this than spend time fixing all of the little errors (which I'll do later). Unfortunately, the program I used is only for Mac OS-X, so only Apple users can utilize it.

The image below is a link to the full-sized image (click it), which you may have to click the magnifying glass to enlarge to its full size. There are 174 titles, 13 of which are Criterion Collection, and 9 of which belong to my Stanly Kubrick box-set.



Thanks, and feel free to check back soon.

Region Coding Woes (15: Unedited)

Pretend you were vacationing in Europe and picked up a few DVDs from street vendors or video retailers. Somehow, they had your favorite movie that isn’t available in the States. After you get home and past the jet-lag, you pop one of the movies into your computer or DVD player- and it doesn’t work.

The blame falls on a region coding system endorsed by almost all DVD distributors around the world. Region coding basically restricts the use of a DVD to a certain geographical location, denoted by a single digit number on the back of the packaging, from zero to six.

Region one represents the United States, other US territories, and Canada, but to the south, Mexico, the other countries in Central America, almost the entire South American Continent, and Australia and New Zealand are Region four. Region two is Europe, The Middle East, Egypt, South Africa French overseas territories, Greenland, Japan, Lesotho, and as strange as it sounds, Swaziland. Region three contains Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Macau, South Korea and Taiwan, and Region five covers most of Africa, Russia, the Indian subcontinent, Mongolia, and North Korea. Lastly, region six DVDs can only be used in China.

There is a Region seven coding, but it is currently unused. And, for whatever reason, international planes and cruise ships use a special Region eight.

So, why all of the fuss? Most motion picture studios explain that it somehow benefits the customer’s product safety and guarantees compatibility with DVD players or computers purchased in their respective regions.

The truth of the matter concerns the distributor’s rights to control release dates, pricing, and what’s on each version of the DVD. For example, if a DVD bound for Mexico has a special feature European audiences don’t care for, distributors can put out two separate copies, playable only in DVD players with the proper Region coding.

Recently, more and more titles in Region zero have been showing up, and hardware manufacturers are even making DVD players with multi-region capabilities. The players identify the region coding on a disc, and allow the viewer to choose which region the player should adapt to. Other DVD players simply bypass the coding all together.
If you travel with a laptop, and want to watch the anti-Bush documentary you picked up in France, you might have a little bit of trouble.

Most computer DVD-Rom drives allow users five chances to select their final region coding. Dean Marks, from AOL Time Warner explained, “And, the way it works, and I apologize because it's a little bit complicated, the consumer can set it five times.” After those five chances are used up, consumers have the ability to reset the count up to four more times. He continued, “After the fifth time that they've reset it, they do have an ability to reset it again, but they have to bring the drive to an authorized dealer or an authorized service representative, who can then authorize an additional set of five changes, and then they can bring it back for a second, for a third, fourth and fifth set of authorized changes. So you can change it 25 times in total, but you have to go back for each set of five.”

For permanent solutions, the growing company VideoLan has created a free VLC Player. The program bypasses region coding and has a built in DVD player.Almost 29 million users have downloaded the player from the company’s website (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/), and the open-source program is supported on 15 different operating systems.

For those of us who don’t like watching movies on computer screens, a German website (http://www.dvddemystifiziert.de/codefree_en/codefree.html) has instructions for unlocking most home-theater DVD players, but it should be noted that most of the techniques listed void the product’s warranty.

The next generation of HD-DVD and Blu-Ray formats only have three different region codes, although Europe is still separated from America and Japan. But still, our DVD manufacturers have not become democratic enough in their restrictions to embrace a region-free market and global economy.

The Ever-Aging 3 Letter Words (14: Unedited)

Vertical Helical Scan isn’t an attempt at an awkward sex position; it’s the full name of the dying 30 year-old cassette format for watching movies, VHS.

VHS, which casually stands for “Video Home System,” was invented in 1976 by Victor Company of Japan, Limited, or JVC. As most everyone knows, the cassettes are played in an analog video cassette recorder, or VCR. The format won widespread use over Sony’s Betamax during the famous console war in the early 1980s, and finally became the industry standard in 1990.

Concerning the downfall of VHS from the popularity of DVD and new recording mediums, Variety Magazine quoted Buena Vista Home Entertainment general manager Lori MacPherson saying, “It’s pretty much over.”

Although DVDs were introduced to the United States in 1997, it took until June 2003 for American consumers to overcome their skepticism and accept the new optical format as superior to VHS. After those six years of initial growth, DVD has all but completely obscured the cassette format, almost completely reducing VHS to dollar stores and discount bins.

VCRs remain somewhat popular (though declining) for their inexpensive cost and television recording ability. DVD-recorders haven’t completely replaced them due to infamously temperamental recoding processes, and the fact that single layer DVDs offer a much shorter recording time than four-hour VHS tapes. However, with Tivo, other Digital Video Recorders (DVR), Video-On-Demand services, illegal downloading, networks offering episodes on-line, and the quick turnaround of DVD television box-sets, VCRs are quickly loosing their footing in the home recording market.

30 years really is a pretty long time for one format to be the entertainment standard of the world. DVDs took six years to catch on, and now, only three years later, have already met the introduction of two competing High-Definition formats. Is the life-expectancy of home entertainment media getting shorter?

The war between High Definition (HD) and Blu-ray (BD) only seems to be getting more heated and complicated since their official announcements earlier this year. Both offer unique advantages, but for the most part maintain similar technology in increased storage capacity; 15GB for HD, and 25GB for Blu-ray– exponentially larger than a standard DVD.

Most research firms, including the market researchers at Forrester, predict a Blu-ray dominance after about two years of consumer uncertainty, in part fueled by Sony’s new Playstation 3. However, the industry giant Microsoft has signed up for the HD camp, so heavy marketing tactics and the highly- anticipated X-box HD attachment could pull more customers. However, both formats are shooting themselves in the foot by making customers wary of buying either; no-one wants to get stuck with failed, or short-lived, technology.

Whichever format ends up dominating the market after the advertising and marketing push is over, we shouldn’t expect either to last very long. The rate of consumer technology is increasing so quickly that physical media may be soon outdated. Apple’s iTunes Music Store now offers feature film downloads for $9.99 and single episodes of popular television shows for $1.99.

This year’s expected death of VHS may mark the death of format longevity; the increased turn around for new technology and startling impatience for the consumer dollar only hurries the industry giants’ efforts to get the customer what they want to see.

Pretty soon, it will be time to stash your VHS tapes with your vinyl records and cassette tapes, just be sure to leave enough room for the next few years of DVDs and High Definition formats.

3 Holiday Suggestions (13: Unedited)

When it’s late in the night before whichever winter holiday you celebrate, scramble to the DVD section for these last minute gift ideas. They’ll be a hit with whoever you forgot to shop for, and almost completely mask your inability to buy your sister something thoughtful.

Wonder Showzen: Season One and Season Two

We’ve all seen the re-dubbed G.I. Joe videos on the internet, stuffed with suggested violence and latent homosexual innuendo.

Wonder Showzen takes that idea of perverse children’s entertainment too many steps further with bloody animations, drug induced puppet hallucinations, and Tom Green-style Clarence, who interviews the sleeping and irritable strangers of New York City.

Both seasons are double-disc sets and have about an hour of special features, the funniest of which show children being interviewed by the show’s producers.

Individually, they run $26.99 each, but a gift set will be available December 12^th for $59.99 list price.

Brick

Probably better than the old flatfoot detective movies Brick pulls its structure and style from, this modern day interpretation of the unpredictable mystery demands recognition for the surprisingly good performances of its pseudo-high school cast.

Brendan Frye’s flighty girlfriend is murdered and left in a storm gutter, forcing the introverted outsider (with the help of his only friend, the Rubik’s cube expert and hear-it-all “Brain”) to figure out- and punch- his way to revenge and understanding.

The movie is funny, compelling, and at times, downright confusing. Therefore, having the DVD allows rewinding for clarification of the characters’ bizarre slang and intricate vocabulary. Writer and director Rian Johnson has impressive fast-paced scriptwriting ability, and the tonal composition of the cinematography plays a highly effective storytelling role.

Because it’s from Focus, the special features are minimal and the included booklet is an advertisement. $29.99.

Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic

Aren’t quotes on stand-up comedy DVD packaging annoying? They all say relatively the same thing: Hilarious! Explosively Funny! Outrageous! Jesus Is Magic deserves something more that doesn’t fit in the leftover space, whether it’s a recommendation or a warning.

The borderline anti-Semitic comedy (Silverman is Jewish) rips into common decency and surprising vulgarity. The movie is mostly Silverman on stage, sometimes interjected with behind-the-scenes narrative featuring her manager, Bob Odenkirk, and awkwardly racist music videos. There’s also a strange fascination in watching a beautiful woman start a sentence with, “So I was licking jelly off my boyfriend’s penis…”

For $26.99, Silverman provides a mouth-hurting 72 hilarious minutes by violating our racial and gender sensitivities, perfect for grandma.