Gonna Need Some Dice

 The World Therein 

    There are a lot of movies that I haven't seen. It feels as though there are more movies coming in and I'm losing more and more time each and every day in my ability to observe these movies. To be able to sit down with a nice cup of coffee and give them their proper due. To see the beauty of cinema through the dogshit dribble that seems to be all that fuels the soul. That and coffee. 

    I need to quit my job. I need to stop wasting so much time eating, using the bathroom, and interacting with my family. All of it a waste but the guilt that fuels my morality prevents me from giving movies my first and foremost attention. Though I did get around to re-watching a film I hadn't seen some time. Probably wasn't the smartest move to make but it looked to be the only move I had.

pretty cool poster I think

    It was a particular Memorial Day in that I still didn't have a car and I had even less motive as to trying to get through the day but I figured in-between the hours of waking up from sleep and having to go back to sleep, I should probably watch a movie. The idea traveling through my body after igniting in my brain flowed through my veins with a need for a genre and the only one to fall from my tongue was a single word: CRIME. But what kind of crime? 

    Instantly when I think of crime the first thought that comes to mind is the Michael Mann film Heat. Goddamn that's a solid crime movie but its also a very loud crime movie with the centerpiece of the film being that famed Los Angeles shootout and I didn't want to watch something loud even though that seems to be a big trend. Big Loud Crime Movies should be its own genre as the most recent sequel to that not great but alright movie from years before had come out recently and was very loud. Mostly the loudness came from Gerard Butler and his talking beard.

I bet you guessed correctly that it was this film

 

    Loudness wasn't what I needed and so I searched for the calm and cool. I need characters that smoked constantly and talked in conversational tones while some crime shit happens. I had just recently bought that beautiful Blu-ray of John Dahl's Red Rock West but unfortunately I bought the film during Vinegar Syndrome's Half Way to Black Friday sale and the shipping time of having just bought and now would take about 3-4 weeks according to the FAQ. 

    The wait wont kill me but I will admit that it was a bummer to not have the cash on hand to buy that new 4k of Billy Friedkin's Jade. A tumultuous movie where Joe Esterzhas vehemently refuses to take credit for the script that Friedkin had promised not to change a single word and did just that as well as the confusion that Friedkin had over the reception and box-office of the film since he considers it to be strong work. God, I need to go about and procuring a copy of that. Though to be honest, I did have the money but just didn't go about in buying the movie since it would have blown out my wallet and I rather get the most bang for my buck these days when it comes to movie buying.

    Regardless, I had to look through the collection of movies and sifting through I came across two that sort of the fit the form of calm crime and between Rounders and Hard Eight, I decided I wasn't interested in poker at the moment but was feeling lucky on dice rolls and so Hard Eight it goes.

 

What a Poster!
 

Now Showing; The Film as Best as I can Remember 

 

    The film starts off with John, played by the always great John C. Reilly, sitting outside a diner without a cent in his pocket when out of thin air appears Sydney Brown played by the always cool Philip Baker Hall. He offers him a cup of coffee and a cigarette for his troubles and soon Sydney learns why he's down and out. John just tried to win six thousand to pay for his mom's funeral by gambling. Though Sydney can't offer John the money to pay for the funeral, he can instead offer him a way to get back on his feet.           He accepts under the condition that Sydney recognizes that he isn't a prostitute and Sydney agrees. What then sets off the first twenty minutes is Sydney teaching John the basics of the rate card scheme for hotels. 

    Probably an antiquated technique that probably doesn't get much traction these days since Vegas no longer uses coins and physical representations of monies inside of their casino when it comes to payments. It's all digital. All bullshit. Or maybe I'm wrong. I haven't been to Vegas in years.

    John keeps this scheme going on of trading in a hundred bucks over and over again on his rate card to then get a room for the night. Sydney is a proud teacher but he keeps it close to his chest. No real emotion but giving off a feeling as though he had showed him the way. 

    A couple years pass and Sydney and John are professional gamblers living their days in a casino. Sydney meets a waitress by the name of Clementine, played by Gwyneth Paltrow, and the two form a sort of bond similar to that of the parental that he has with John. Their brief conversation giving off the feeling that this was the one of many that they had in the past.  She leaves right when John swings by and introduces Jimmy, played by Samuel L. Jackson, who doesn't get on Sydney's good side with the ensuing conversation. 

    The big highlight being that Jimmy had seen Sydney back in day put a two thousand dollar bet on the hard eight. This being the numbers 4 showing up on both dice after rolling them down the table. Sydney laughs it off and their conversation goes bad and soon after, John and Jimmy head out and Sydney takes a walk around the casino.

    Heading out for some fresh air, he meets up with Clementine who apparently works a side hustle being a prostitute. Sydney doesn't care much for it but he cares for John and asks Clementine up to his room to clean up. She thinks they are about to have sex but Sydney ain't interested and offers instead the bed for her to sleep it off. The next day, everything seems cool with John taking Clementine out for a day out and Sydney is just chilling until he gets a call

    A real fucked up situation where Clementine doing her side hustle as a prostitute but not getting paid and then having John knock the guy out in this sleazy motel room and handcuffing him into the bed frame. Shit goes sideways fast and the more and more they tell the story to Sydney, the less patience the guy has with the two but then his heart opens when he hears that they got married. 

    I mean, he still doesn't care much for the situation that they put him in but his heart opens up and through his old school criminal ways, figures out a solution to the problem the best way they can. Sydney gives John and Clementine some cash to go to Niagara Falls for their honeymoon and it looks like the narrative is starting to wrap up until Jimmy reenters the movie.

    Jimmy knows some stories about Sydney about his time in Atlantic City. Sydney doesn't care to hear them until Jimmy pulls out a gun and tell him that he wants money or else he'll let John know that it was Sydney that killed his father. Shot him in the face he says. Sydney agrees to pay him but only with what he has on hand and they have to go to his hotel room where the final conversation between the two occurs. 

     Now this conversation is a strange one. It's one that you really see or hear in crime movies because not a lot of crime movies have a character like Sydney Brown. Sure there are shades of his character in other movies but here is something wholly original. 

    There is no cool slick dialogue being said but what he says and the way he says it if following through of this undertone that has been present all throughout the film of you either take it or leave it. Though he sounds like he's begging for his life, its not really begging. He's talking about the situation and what the situation means for him as an individual and how Jimmy needs to understand what the money really means when he takes it. Sydney has gotta close his heart again and that's going to be the ultimate cost of this transgression but Jimmy doesn't see it that way and after they make the money exchange, Sydney goes about in doing what he needs to do.

    John calls him up and thanks him and tells him that he loves him. Sydney says he loves him as well and when he hangs up the phone, its done. Sydney is back to that dude he didn't want to be but now he doesn't have to choice if he wants to survive. 

    He sneaks over to Jimmy's house and finds his stash of guns then waits. Jimmy comes in and without saying a word, shoots Jimmy till he stops breathing. He grabs his money and goes.

    The last scene of the movie taking place at the same diner that he picked up John in the beginning. Enjoying his coffee as best as he can but then sees blood at the cuff of his sleeve and tries to cover it. Then the movie ends.

 

A Few Words 

    I remember watching this debut of one Paul Thomas Anderson a couple months after having seen The Phantom Thread in theaters. That was a cool movie and building up the anticipation for his debut resulted it not being as great but re-watching it now, it really feels like something special. 

    A lot more of a character drama and just throwing these character in a situation that resolves itself in such a way that then a secret is revealed that seems to be on the edge of breaking a man's identity. The main character of Sydney is a man with walls surrounding him. He doesn't let anyone near that he doesn't need near but the people he does, its tough to say what the motivations are. Does he create this paternal relationship with John out of the fact that he had killed his father? Is it guilt that is motivating this man to raise a son without a father? What about with Clementine? He does what he does out of nicety or some sense of nobility? 

    There's a lot of questions to be derived from the actions of this character but regarding internal monologue or some outside force being there to answer them, its nonexistent.

    Its just such a well done character drama about a man who was one thing and tried to be another but got pushed back to be who he really was.

    There was a mention in the summary of the Jimmy talking about Sydney making a two grand bet on the hard eight. The morning after John and Clementine go about in their date, Sydney goes to the crap tables and watches a gambler, Philip Seymour Hoffman, goddamn this movie has a great cast,  a true blue lout mouth gambler antagonizes Sydney. Sydney doesn't reply and just puts down a two thousand dollar bet on the hard eight. The gambler doing all the talking and Sydney just watching him making a fool of himself. It's such a not important to the plot but says so much about the character. 

    When I was sifting through the collection, I came across two Jean Pierre Melville films. I held these films and felt real close to putting one of them in the Blu-ray player but they already existed vividly in my mind and I had picked out Hard Eight beforehand.

 

 

the two fantastic films in question

 

    After watching this, its easy to see the influence of these, or at least Bob Le Flambeur more so than the other, on this film. These similar vibrations of the criminal element with characters negotiating their way as best they can through a destiny that they have to play through to the end. I can't say for certain its as great as these two but at the moment I'll be lenient as say that this is just as good or at least as good as an American film can get to something as great as either one of these films.

 

Final Few Words Equaling a Paragraph

 

    As can be read from the review, I liked this movie. That's why I wrote these worthless paragraphs about it. It's such a simple and solid debut film. One that any struggling filmmaker should give a watch to just see what can be done with something small and minuscule but come out with something so strong. There's no rush in the way it moves and you can tell already the techniques that would grow to be a part of this guys repertoire. The characters are solid enough to be believable but I can't just give it a complete FANTASTIC kind of rating. The music isn't there at all. Everything that hits doesn't necessarily hit as strong as the scene I was watching but other than that the movie is truly worthwhile.

Fahrenheit 451 - 31 = 420

Lets A Go   

    What maybe surprising to those that have read any of these reviews, the amount of readers this is indicating is certainly being near or is absolute 0, is that I try to do as much reading as possible to balance out the amount of movies I try and watch. With the following text being one of the few that I will get around to writing something, I wouldn't call it an essay but a half full glass review would be more indicative, that reflects two adaptations of a novel that I just finished the other day. 

The Recommendation

    A person close to me had put a gun to my head and demanded that I go about in reading Fahrenheit 451 if I knew what was good for me or else. I had actually planned on watching Sam Fuller's Shock Corridor that very Saturday afternoon but my plans changed and so dear readers, I went about in reading the book. 

 

what the heart desired but was denied

Quick Thoughts

    I finished the book and I can kind of see why its important and all the love for it but, for lack of a better word, the structure of the fucking thing doesn't really do the material justice. From what I learned reading about the writing sessions that Bradbury had with this novel, he had gone about in grabbing various pieces from other various stories he had written and stitched the pieces together to come up with the basic novel. Adding a couple thousand more words to make it truly novel length and in the end the final book we have today.

    Reading this factoid after reading the book goes about in explaining the strange patched together feeling the overall novel has. It's pieces that sort of fit together but feel more awkward than it should be. Uneven flow all throughout for me personally. Not a perfect novel but it is pretty solid science fiction about censorship and more importantly, the prescient vision of the decay of our societies willingness to engage in material that may or may not be up to their liking

The Recent Adaptation

    So I read the book and thought that was cool then I saw Shock Corridor and goddamn is that movie real fucking great. Hard hitting and pulls no punches. Sam Fuller always delivers even when he doesn't like a film that I will talk about later or never depending on how I feel. 

 

what a trailer for what a movie

    Now after having seen Shock Corridor, I saw that it was only around 1:40 am and had time to try and squeeze one more movie before heading off to bed. In this span of time lasting seconds but feeling like years, I  had the inkling to try and see if there were any adaptations available to check out and lo and behold, I see one for immediate viewing on one of those terribly overpriced streaming services that I have been forced to indulge in.

 

Pretty rad poster I will admit

     And so it goes with the advent of terrible streaming platforms, I was given the opportunity of watching this and I did to my dismay.

The Movie

    To be fair, the material in the book doesn't necessarily need to be a one to one adaptation into a film since there some stuff that probably can't be pulled off unless it was animated. The biggest hurdle is the concept of the Mechanized Hound in the novel. This sentient machine dog that would chase down these book readers and drug them before the cops came to arrest them. The big chase in the novel is fueled by the mechanical hound tracking down Guy Montag and while it works great in the novel, there is no way to pull this off in a film. This recent film goes about in jettisoning that material which is fine but also makes some other changes/modifications that I see as far more detrimental to the overall film and ultimately not only make it a bad adaptation but also a pretty bad movie in general.

    In the future, Firemen no longer stop fires but instead start fires. They start fires for this totalitarian government that is suppressing people being able to have this knowledge. For this knowledge is too cumbersome and causes too much pain but there's a revolution going on maaan. One that nobody can see. And there is only one man to lead the revolution or as the film plays out, fumble his way into the revolution and ultimately destroy it. That man is Guy Montag. Also, the Ominus is something to look out for. A poor man's MacGuffin and so we shall call it the McGuffy.

    Though the summary isn't necessarily the most serious write up, its the most honest. Guy Montag is no longer a clean slate from which his interest in books breaks his brain. Instead, this Guy Montag is one that is haunted by the memory of his father's books being burned. Though i'm pretty sure his dad doesn't die or anything really tragic as that but I can't be sure since the movie does a pretty bad job of being able to commit to the tragedy itself that is haunting Guy Montag. 

    Fire Chief Beatty is no longer the man who can accept willingly and with gusto that books should not exist but instead is also a man haunted by the job he does and the books that he has read. Everyone is haunted.The world is haunted. I am haunted. By the ghost of Dennis Hopper which is actually a pretty good time overall.

    Clarisse is no longer a girl that lives her life completely opposite of how everyone else in society lives. As she was a character that saw everyone else stagnate themselves in this state of distraction while she lives in the moment. Wanting to do nothing more but exist in the world instead of exuding her life force by watching television. Modern day Clarisse is instead a haunted woman along with all the other haunted members of society who was part of a revolutionary cell, or I suppose THE revolutionary cell, but is now a informant for Fire Chief Beatty as she can do nothing else but fink to get by.

    The characters and their motives are vastly different and honestly vastly inferior to those of the novels with the wholly original constructed revolutionary party seeming to be the most disappointing aspect of it all. They are creating a super hard-drive called the Omnius. In the Omnius, all information will be stored. The value of this information? Pretty important I guess. At least that's what the movie is trying to tell me again and again instead of showing me but then again, books are made to be read by the individual and who are these individuals that will benefit from these books? A lot of effort is placed on the Omnius but nothing really seems to placate that the thing is actually worthwhile. Also, how do we store this information? In the DNA of a bird that needs to reach Canada.

     Guy Montag reads a book, I think it was Notes from the Underground, and it breaks his brain and he sneaks out into the night going undercover to reach out to Clarisse and they then become friends and read to each other and its all very not good because beautiful people reading books always seems to give off a clip art vibe and ultimately Guy Montag gets in touch of the revolutionary cell while being tracked down by Beatty and inadvertently destroys the entire revolutionary cell. 

    It's a pretty funny plot contrivance of needing to have this big showdown between Guy and Beatty that ends up being nothing more than a wet fart. Montag letting go the super smart bird from the burning farm and Beatty screaming in agony as he has to burn Montag alive. Why? Some sentimental nonsense is the feeling I have but maybe it was meant to be a genuine sense of sacrifice. To become a martyr even though he fumbled the ball and destroyed the revolution. I mean other members are killed and some get arrested so maybe the revolution lives on. The bird flies away though. 

    Its hard to say how much of the book is in the movie since they got rid of one of the most important aspects which was the Montags wife Mildred Montage. She was supposed to be the central example of what this society was as well as the example of what the destroyed individual strives to be in this repressive society but maybe the character stuff was too boring? I've been trying to figure out a good reason as to why to jettison her out of the movie but I suppose they wanted a love story of Clarisse and Montag to be the true heart of the movie.

    I can't remember much regarding the cinematography except the never ending dreariness of how the world was since books don't exist and regarding the music that played, I sure can't remember a tune so maybe there wasn't anything worthwhile in the first place to listen to.  

    As the credits were rolling, the feeling of hollowness came over as I started to process what I just saw. Truly amazing to see a film have just a complete lack of worthwhile characters and having to fatten up the film with all this additional material that truly added nothing like the social media stuff of the firemen streaming their raids, the revolutionary cell trying to do something to save the people or something and just all the modifications to the overall material that go nowhere. 

    Lackluster to the fullest. Dull to the core. Nothing good came out of this except for Michael Shannon. I don't know what it is with the guy but he never seems to disappoint. Even when he plays a real stupid character like this because there really doesn't need to be a Fire Chief with a sense of ambivalence at what he is doing. There isn't enough of a character in the novel to deal with this dual sided nature because the character in of itself is one that has accepted wholeheartedly the idea that books needn't not survive. What a swing and a miss of a movie. 

The Search for Another...

    I was in despair after enduring that movie. I needed something to dull the pain of such a not so good movie. There had to be something else. The book was 72 years old and in that time someone must have gone out of their way to make an adaptation. I searched through the ancient scrolls like Gandalf did for 20 years after catching sight of that gold ring. Just like him, I was smoking some of the finest weed of the shire and in what felt like 20 years but was actually 20 minutes later back in the past before the present that I realized there was another.

    I had a VHS tape. One from childhood that I never really got around to watching. As a child, I only saw a handful of VHS tapes over and over again and this one I remember vividly since when I first started watching this particular tape, I got really bored at everyone not talking so I didn't care much about finishing it. I knew the title though was Fahrenheit 451

Can't forget a cover like this

     I searched through my library of tapes but unfortunately, I did not see it. I was distraught and in being distraught over a movie I never got around to watching, I looked online to see if there was any post-VHS physical release of the film and lo and behold I found a what seems to fairly uneven quality Blu-ray for cheapie and then my eyes exploded the moment I saw this credit: Directed by Francois Truffaut

 

a reaction akin to this

    Apparently the dude had gone about in making his own adaptation back in the mid 60's and with me immediately buying the film because I knew I would forget to do so the next day from all that shire weed, I bought it and waited for delivery and it came and I saw it from the beginning to the end and so let us begin.

Flashback Chain Reaction to the First Adaptation

    Immediately I was hooked. The opening montage is that of photographs showcasing those old ass analog antenna's while a narrator speaks out the credits. The film already starting off on a strong note by throwing the viewer for a loop compared to what the 2018 adaptation does which contains opening credits that look as though they belong to a television show. I digress.

    The movie opens with firemen charging with their loud firetrucks, which look pretty nice in the now retro future look everyone expected the future to look like since they were all high as fuck, towards a location that is filled with books. A man in an apartment receives a phone call and immediately books it out of the house and has to go on the run for the rest of his life.

    The firemen rush into the building and start taking out every book they could find. Destroying the place as they toss all the furniture over to find as many books as they can and throw them out in handfuls over the balcony. All them landing into a pile like trash growing outside. Guy Montag suits up and burns the pile of books where a group of bystanders watch in enjoyment. This is done in relative silence which was interesting. Just this silence in their due diligence in doing their job. Like silent soldiers doing their duty without a question as to why.

    As the movie goes on, it follows the novel for the most part. Guy Montag has interactions with Clarisse who is back to being a neighbor as well as his wife Linda taking up a lot of his anxiety and pain. Here though is an interesting take on the material by having one actor, Julie Christie, play both roles. An idea that a producer or so suggested that they both be two sides of the same coin and I like the way it plays out. Clarisse being the woman that can enlighten while the wife Linda is here to make sure that the standards of conformity are always met with every invention that comes to existence.

    Guy Montag slowly starts to become a reader all the while Fire Chief Beatty is there on the outskirts watching. Him and this other Fireman goon that I can't remember. The two always seeming to be aware of what Montag is up to and goes about in creating a lesson for him that he will need to toe the line. That to become a reader will be something that will not matter in the end as there is nothing to gain from books. Or at least that is what they believe. For Montag though, he can't get enough of the books and this becomes this downfall. 

    He has a manic breakdown with his wife Linda that she sees that the only reasonable thing to do is fink on Guy and just at the point of his professional and personal lives are collapsing, the firemen all drive down to burn his house down. Guy going through the motions of finding all of his books and then being given the task of burning them. He ends up snapping and burns the fire chief and the goon then goes on the run. 

    The interesting part here is that he doesn't run to the resistance. There is no resistance. There are only the bookkeepers who have to wait for the time when books will be allowed then. They did do away with the whole notion of the bombs about to drop but I like this. Guy Montag running till he hits the outskirts of the city where the book-readers are. Meeting everyone that recognizes themselves as a book. Feels more natural here than in the modern adaptation. 

    Guy Montag is given the task of having to memorize his book so that they can burn it as no one there has a book on hand but just remembers the one book. As the movie ends, snow begins to fall and every book-keeper is walking around and reciting out loud the books they have mesmerized. No interaction with one another as they walk past each other. People alone with a book they love and put to memory. That's how I take the ending at least. It does leave room to take it another way but for this, I love it. Just absolutely fantastic.

   Just a few notes of interest though that maybe only interest me. The jettison of the old man. A sort of teacher for Montag that becomes a person for him to search for near the end of the novel but his disappearance shows that his character wasn't necessarily the most needed and his absence isn't as greatly felt. The Mechancial Hound not existing is no surprise. Probably would of looked like that dog from Sleepers. 

a mechanical hound

    I also like the fact that the romantic element seen in the modern movie is just non existent. Clarisse and Guy are just two people wanting more for themselves and could find them in a book compared to some techno crap being sold to them. The Fire Chief works better here since they took away the tortured element that seems so important but was ultimately unimportant in the modern movie.     

    Overall, this just felt far more truthful with the original material than the 2018 adaptation but also it feels less forced in the way the drama plays out. All those abundant and unnecessary changes to a novel that didn't need it. Whats there works for the most part and if you could navigate through the necessary and unnecessary then you can get a good movie as seen here.

All There Is and Shall Be

    It's not much of a contest when it comes to the more interesting adaptation. Truffaut has just about everything working in his favor. The music is great because Bernard Hermann was one of the greats. The world that this society exists is far more interesting since it takes place the previously mentioned retro-future world of the 60's. Looks better overall just because everything doesn't look so goddamn dark and moody like the most recent film. It just works out better so go see it. It's pretty rad.