Chapter Two: Hamlet 2
By Brett Beach
May 6, 2010
This week: An anniversary. BOP unity. Musical leftovers. An unsung director. A (kind of) sequel to Hamlet. Getting rocked by a sexy Jesus.
So here it is, May 2010, and this week marks the one-year anniversary of Chapter Two. You have resting in your hot little hands - um, metaphorically speaking - the 38th installment of an ever-evolving attempt to define that nebulous area where a movie might have given birth to a franchise, or it might simply have delivered a second installment. On the off chance there is any applause out there on the other side of the monitor, rest assured I will be here taking bows all week.
In an effort to better coordinate my meanderings with current articles on our home page, allow me these brief digressions. Kim Hollis’ take on American Graffiti reminds me that I must needs check out More American Graffiti at some point.
The hidden message to be found on the Death Hunt poster offers me an opportunity to suggest a Lee Marvin film: the 1972 weirdly humorous gangster pic Prime Cut, co-starring Gene Hackman and Sissy Spacek, in her film debut and fully in the flesh. It’s an odd duck, tonally speaking, at once over-the-top-and-back camp and rough-and-tough character study. If it had been inspired by a comic book or graphic novel, I might know what to make of it. As it stands, the action is crisp, the set pieces are vivid and director Michael Ritchie offers up a gorgeously harrowing chase through a field of wheat that climaxes with the best non-transportational use of a limousine in the history of cinema (give or take.)
And as for Top Chef…well, actually, I have nothing insightful to offer in that arena.
To circle back briefly to the extensive musical notations (pun intended) in last week’s column - and this will be relevant as Hamlet 2 (the play within the movie) is a musical - not every artist is a lock waiting to be picked but sometimes particular songs are. To wit, two of my most beloved songs of all time are from albums that I loved from the moment I first heard them but these particular songs were not favorites.
“All Her Favorite Fruit” by Camper Van Beethoven off their 1990 album Key Lime Pie had never really moved me from the start the way “Sweethearts” or “I Was Born in a Laundromat” did. I believe the precise moment that I fell in love with it came while hearing it over the loudspeakers at a downtown Portland electronics store circa 2003 where I was selling back my two Atari 2600 game systems and about two dozen or so games. It took me a moment or two to recognize it - I may even have had to look up the lyrics on-line when I got home - but the melancholy seemed appropriate and it felt symbolic of…something. I still qualified at this time as freshly divorced so perhaps this added to the mix, but now I simply love to think about David Lowry’s oblique lyrics, close my eyes to the sway of Don Lax’ violin-playing and imagine a really good game of croquet.
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