Hobo With A Shotgun [film review]

* Limited Canadian theatrical release in March; released on DVD and Blu-Ray today

Hobo With A Shotgun follows in the footsteps of last year's Machete (read my review here), which originated as a fake trailer included in Grindhouse, Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez's 2007 double feature. Canadian theatrical screenings of that film also included another fake trailer for Hobo from amateur filmmaker Jason Eisener, who had won a contest. That lead to discussions with Alliance Films, the Canadian film production company and Grindhouse's distributor, to turn his idea into a feature length film, which now stars M.I.A. 80's star Rutger Hauer. Hobo makes Machete look like The King's Speech in terms of restraint and taste, with both b-movie schlockfests cut from the same cloth, paying significant homage to violent 70's and 80's exploitation cinema.

The plot (actually fairly succinctly summed up right there in the title) is steeped in those decades' frequent revenge/vigilante justice-type of story lines, and is intentionally derivative to the point where it borders on stifling, as the irony virtually never lets up during the movie. Hauer, haggardly looking every minute of his 67 years, plays the hobo who arrives in Hope Town, which is located in an unnamed part of North America (the town is played by Halifax). Hope Town has been overrun with lawlessness, as the corrupt police force kowtows to a crazy crime kingpin dressed in a white suit named Drake (played by Brian Downey), who conducts business with the aid of his two equally loony sons Ivan (played by Nick Bateman) and Slick (played by Gregory Smith). Hauer's hobo, naturally, decides to take matters into his own hands and clean the scum off the streets, so to speak, working towards his goal of one day owning a lawnmower (on several occasions throughout the film he dreamily looks at one displayed in a pawn shop window) and starting his own grass cutting business. I shit you not. Along the way he finds himself caring for a hooker with - wait for it - a heart of gold.

There's no level of bad taste that Eisener (who co-wrote the script) won't stoop to, which is made clearly obvious in one of the first scenes. Drake and his sons murder his brother, Logan (played by Robb Wells, one of the Trailer Park Boys), on the streets in front of a large crowd of onlookers. Logan is stuffed into a manhole with just his head exposed above ground and then decapitated by a barbed wire noose pulled by a speeding truck. Drake's lady friend, clad in only a fur coat and bikini, then orgiastically bathes in the spurting blood emanating from the corpse. Then, just to put an exclamation point on the ridiculous gruesomeness and set the lowbrow tone for what Hobo has in store for the viewer, the brother's head is mounted on Drake's pickup truck as a hood ornament. Some other charming things you can look forward to: a pedophile dressed in a Santa outfit, the homeless hunted down and killed like animals, a school bus full of children torched alive while the "burn baby burn" chorus from "Disco Inferno" plays on the soundtrack, human heads smashed like melons, disemboweled bodies, and death by hockey skate. There's lots of dialogue in this movie that is so off-colour that I'd be too embarrassed to repeat much of it here (and I am far from what you would call a prude). Here's a sample, though: before a cop tries to rape a hooker he tells her, "Hey baby doll, I am gonna break your legs off to get to your sweetness". Lovely.

Eisener makes liberal use of bad 80's music and there's plenty of 80's-style bright, prime colours worked into the film's set pieces, but it's not immediately clear whether the film is, in fact, set in that decade (there's a weirdly displaced feel as to the time and space the Hobo world inhabits). Numerous things in the movie don't make sense and more than a few ideas would have been better left in the imaginations of Eisener and the other screenwriters, such as the plot angle involving The Plague, a couple of Road Warrior-style bounty hunters who are almost too preposterous, even for this movie. I will admit, they do sport some pretty badass harpoon guns that lynch their enemies, though.

Hobo With a Shotgun is quite possibly the most repugnant, least life-affirming movie I've ever watched...which is also part of its (admittedly limited) charm. The aimed-for cheesiness is smothered on to way-beyond-excess levels and the sadistic violence is off the charts, which should go a long way in making this one a cult staple for a long, long time.

Rating: ★★★★★★☆☆☆☆

Talking Funny [television review]

* Premiered in April on HBO and HBO Canada

In Talking Funny, comedians Jerry Seinfeld, Chris Rock, Louis C.K., and Ricky Gervais discuss the art of stand-up comedy and what it takes to perform it. If that description sounds like a recipe for boredom for those of you not aspiring to take the stage at the local Yuk Yuk's, then you'd be mistaken. Talking Funny is a fascinating insight into the craft of an occupation of which Seinfeld says, "No one is more judged in civilized society than a stand-up comedian. Every 12 seconds you're rated". There may be a just a tad of hyperbole in that statement, but no doubt, it requires a unique skill set level, something that three of the four of these top tier stand-ups possess (Gervais is still relatively new to it and, as funny as he is, just isn't in their class yet).

In the field of stand-up comedy, Seinfeld and Rock need no introduction. C.K. is lesser known, but has over 20 years of stand-up experience, along with a couple of starring roles (as well as writing and producing credits) in sitcoms you likely missed: Lucky Louie, one of my favourite sitcoms ever, ran on HBO for one and a half seasons, and Louie is returning for its second season starting tonight on the FX network. What the shows lack in creative titling they make up for in edgy, clever humour. Gervais, of course, is best known for his television shows The Office and Extras, as well as an oddly forgettable (in comparison to his superlative TV work) burgeoning film career. He's at his funniest, however, while hosting his extensive series of podcasts and audiobooks with partners Stephen Merchant and Karl Pilkington.

Gervais, who executive produces, acts as an informal moderator, loosely steering the conversation to certain subjects that reveal the inner workings of the art form from the comedians' perspectives. Each comedian has their own distinct style, and while there's an obvious mutual respect for each other's talent, there's an engrossing level of civilized disagreement between the foursome on stand-up philosophies and methods. Seinfeld only adds about 10% of new material to his latest act and C.K. and Rock like to come up with a whole new show every year, which prompts Seinfeld, with mock disdain, to respond to with, "Alright, fine...can we get some real comedians in here?". Everyone but Seinfeld works "filthy", as C.K. describes it (Seinfeld is notorious for his clean act). C.K. discusses challenging himself by taking his strongest bit, which he used to close his shows with, and then deciding to open some of his subsequent shows with the same bit, a philosophy that Seinfeld marvels at. Seinfeld has never performed a sound check, while Rock always does one, just to get the feel and scope of the venue he's playing. Another area of disagreement focuses on whether a stand-up with lesser talent, who still manages to achieve a high level of success, can sustain that over the course of a lengthy career (the name "Dane Cook" seems to be implied during the discussion, but his name is never used).

Although these are comedians discussing the best way to tell jokes, there's a consistently high level of thoughtful and intellectual discourse occurring during the show. Seinfeld reveals that Rock's old bit on the differences between "white porn" and "black porn" were an enlightening insight into the differences between the two races. There's also some clever metaphors and analogies delivered: Rock likens a stand-up's ongoing relationship with their audience to that of a romantic relationship ("Your woman is with you because you assumes she loves you because she's there every day, but you still have to work on her liking you for this to work."), Seinfeld compares C.K. being able to get away with a rape joke to "tap dancing over six laser beams", and C.K. describes why he likes to refresh his act regularly ("There's a weird, almost fruit-like cycle to it, because it gets ripe and then starts rotting a little bit for me.").

With Talking Funny, HBO takes a simple concept that certainly isn't wholly original (The Green Room With Paul Provenza has a similar format and let's not forget Jon Favreau's sorely missed Dinner For Five series), but succeeds in being the most entertaining 50 minutes I've watched on the flat screen this year. In fact, that's my only gripe, that this one-off special wasn't longer. More, please.

Rating: ★★★★★★★★★★

Clarence Clemons: 1942-2011

Just before going to sleep earlier this morning, I went online for a final catch up on the news and read the headline I'd been dreading I'd see for the last week: E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons had died. Since his stroke last week, it seemed that a man who had been in extremely poor health over the last decade or so was slipping even further downhill. At the very least, it seemed highly unlikely most of us would ever see him play onstage again. That's a selfish thought, I know, but a natural one for any hardcore Bruce Springsteen fan, such as myself. From the Springsteen fan perspective, a Bruce show with the E Street Band minus Clemons would simply not have been the same experience. Sadly, the "would" has now become a "will".

I've been a Springsteen fan for some 30 years now, although I never got around to seeing him live until 2003. Since then, I've seen him six times, including a couple of five hour drives to Ottawa for shows. Part of the reason for seeing him so much the last few years was to make up for lost time, plus the fact I wanted to see the original E Street Band while the members were still with us. Keyboardist Danny Federici was the first of the group to pass on, in 2008. With all due respect, Federici was possibly the least visible member of the group, tucked behind his keyboards at the side of the stage and always exhibiting a fairly low-key personality. Still, his presence was conspicuously missed on Springsteen shows following his death. Don't get me wrong, Springsteen and his band still put on a phenomenal show, but it just wasn't quite the same any more. Clemons' absence on Springsteen's right side of the stage now leaves a huge hole, not just from his imposing physical presence, but his centrepiece sax solos and comical interplay with The Boss.

One of my lingering memories of Clemons occurred at one of those Ottawa shows a few years back. I was standing in the front row and a couple of times when he made his way closer to my side of the stage I had a couple of those "eye contact moments" with him that one gets when they've got a stellar vantage point at a concert. He had that great smile on his face and I know that he was just doing what performers do, that it's just part of the show for them and as soon as his eyes left me he was just on to someone else whose face he likely wouldn't have recognized if you showed him a picture of them ten minutes later. For me, however, it meant something more - it added to the great experience I had at the show, just knowing that the dude who blew the solo on friggin' "Born To Run" had locked eyes with me, if only for a brief moment. Yes, I know that sounds like I'm completely geeking out - guilty as charged (and proud of it). Another memory from that show involves seeing him and Bruce take an unplanned spill a mere few feet in front of me while the pair were goofing around mid-song. If you've seen Clemons play onstage the past few years, you'll know that it was downright painful watching him move around, as he was hobbled by multiple hip replacements, knee replacements, and other assorted maladies. More so than watching the star attraction take a header, you could almost feel the entire audience gasp as the fragile Clemons, who was quite a few years older than anyone else in the E Street Band, went down. Both were okay, probably more embarrassed than anything.

The last work Clemons released before his death was the sax solo he contributed to Lady Gaga's newest single, "The Edge Of Glory". Most Springsteen fans would likely deem that an unfitting, undistinguished capper to the man's legendary body of work (and who knows what unreleased material featuring Clemons that Springsteen has lying around), but I'm okay with it. Nobody in music is as high profile as her right now, so hopefully their collaboration inspires one of Gaga's "little monsters" (as she calls her fans) to go and check out some music with a lot more substance from Springsteen's catalog, featuring Clemons' beautiful playing on tracks such as "Jungleland", "Night", or "Secret Garden", just to name a few.

R.I.P., Big Man.