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4X4 III: TSAI MING-LIANG 4: DAYS

TGTPTU’s back to finish (cough) the job handily (cough) with a happy ending (oh boy) for our coverage of director Tsai Ming-liang, coming together (really, dude?) to get every ounce our four gents have to offer, pulling and tugging (grow up) on each’s points and hot takes for this fourth and final 4x4 film of Jack’s offering (was that a pun?) called, in its English release (are you serious?), DAYS (2020).

If you like washing your vegetables in your bathroom or the feel of burning paper during your non-erotic electroshock massage sessions and also like to take things slow, boy-howdy do we have a film for you. Or if you like your massage erotic, well, this possibly sad, possible love story might be up your rainy, post-apocalyptic Bangkok alley (or busy street). And for fans of the previously covered Goodbye, Dragon Inn who enjoyed its minimal subtitles due to its paucity of dialogue, get excite: There is even less talk and zero subtitles in this latest Tsai Ming-liang joint.

Naturally, actor and muse Lee Kang-sheng returns. Also billed, Anong Houngheuangsy in his debut film. Lee Kang-sheng plays an older dude who goes to the city for an obscure medical treatment for his back. Anong Houngheuangsy plays a younger guy on his grind (and occasionally Grinder?). About an hour into the film, these two hook up, a gift is exchanged, and the two have a quiet, postcoital meal outside a restaurant. Then they return their separate, silent ways after about forty-five minutes of shared screentime. And with just minutes to spare in this movie just over two hours long, we watch Anong Houngheuangsy’s character at a bus stop as he sits and waits and waits and waits until, wait for it, what appears in BMI and skin tones to be a herd of Americans passes by.

Listen along as the foursome wraps up (and Thomas declines to rank) Tsai Ming-liang’s four covered movies. EPISODE SPOILER: Ken reveals for perhaps the first time to English-speaking audiences the sitcom origins of Tsai Ming-liang’s films.

Next ep, we begin the first pairing of the four William Wyler films chosen by Ryan: Detective Story (1951) and The Desperate Hours (1955).

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.

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Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

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2024 HALLOWEEN SPECIAL!

NOTE: Approximately 35 punk rock band names are concealed in these show notes. Play along!

It’s the end of October, which means the four misfits of TGTPTU are back with a special Birth-/ Halloween/Election Day episode, interrupting their regular Season 13 4x4 programming to bring you a tale fitting this celebratory trifecta: auteur director Jeremy Saulnier’s punk-horror-antifascist classic GREEN ROOM (2015).

As a low budget, mostly practical, minimally computer effects (dare one say “NoFX”?) horror/suspense movie, Green Room follows a gang of four bouncing souls in the fictional band the Ain't Rights as they tour by van the Pacific Northwest, stealing fuel and perhaps sick of it all when they find themselves less than jake at the end of their bankroll. In desperation, they take on as the replacements a gig at a club full of laces and braces.

Unlike the typical band road trip setup where their fan base may begin to lag, wagon might break down, or they become pennywise and pound foolish, the members of the Ain’t Rights’ world turns upside-down after playing for that crass, bad religion of white supremacy, i.e., those subhumans we call skinheads, when, post-show gathering their gear, the green day of these four adolescents turns rancid upon discovering a murdered young woman in the titular green room.

Like World War II’s Op Ivy, Ain’t Rights’ members no doubt scheme and raise a black flag of no surrender to escape the compound, but these youths prove only a minor threat and their plan all fugazi when it encounters the racists’ experienced violence. Even when these four self-ascribed “misfits” are helped by a violent femme (played by Imogen Poots, friend the one found murdered), the stooges are outclassed and outsmarted.

Soon the joy division occurs, rending the group who has bandmembers played by Anton Yelchin (rest in power), Alia Shawkat, Joe Cole, and Callum Turner come face to face with real murderers and violence, including a skinhead band’s strung out lead singer but also a stone-cold bearded Patrick Stewart in charge who has attack dogs sic viciously the youths with a sloppy, realistic violence unlike one sees on the television. The clash is epic as the Ain’t Rights soon accept without fear suicidal tendencies to try to get out of the jam.

And unlike other movies in the horror genre, these youth of today are lack raging hormones (a.k.a. “ramones”?). Yes, Saulneir’s, a.k.a. Jay Dawg’s, film lacks onscreen intercourse. But while no sex, pistols and violence galore. And for those sensitive to cussing, little guttermouth language is used.

So join us, if not for Halloween, then for Birthday XXI of descendent/offspring Jack and/or Election Day (R.I.P. all the dead Kennedys) for our discussion of this film not part of an AFI list.

Also throughout the ep, Ken, Jack, Thomas, and Ryan explore themes of coming of age and of guilt for accepting money/work/recognition in the face fascism, but describing these are harder for yours truly to conceal punk band names here within show notes, except perhaps to say it’s one big, repeated love fest for the flick, or, hmm, might one be permitted to say “circle jerks”?

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.

Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
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Letterboxd (follow us!):
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias

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This week’s Season 13 4x4 entry is GOODBYE, DRAGON INN (2003), the third of four films curated by guest host Jack to represent the filmography of director Tsai Ming-liang. The original TPTGTU boys are reunited this ep with the return of host Thomas but divided in their appreciation for what is billed as Tsai Ming-liang’s comedy-drama.

As promised in last episode, this third film by the Taiwanese slow cinema director takes on a lighter tone than his previously discussed movies, a tone that at times even borders on, or some might and do argue achieves, comedy. It’s a movie that allows the viewer to watch others watch a movie, to question the dimensions and positioning of moviegoers in this old Taiwanese movie theater showing its final film before closing, or to observe with mirth a Japanese tourist subtly cruise other males by switching seats and wandering the theater’s halls and bathrooms, or to observe a woman with a limp bring her coworker a bun to eat after cleaning out urinals and stalls.

For those who do not speak Mandarin and are uninterested in reading subtitles, good news! There are only about a dozen lines of dialogue, mostly at the end between one of the elderly actors who starred in the titular 1967 martial arts movie Dragon Inn and some other movie patron lingering in the theater lobby after the movie’s final showing.

Actor Lee Kang-sheng, a.k.a. Tsai Ming-liang’s heterosexual muse, returns as the movie’s film projectionist in a role with no lines but in one climatic (sarcasm) scene determines with the help of fortune teller machine whether he is a Cold Fish or a Casanova (for you Simpson’s fans).

Is this film a comedic experience playing off cinematic expectations garnered from Western films? An endurance test? An homage to earlier cinema? A reminder to all filmmakers to not show a better film in their film? Or some awkward chimera of the above? Listen as the hosts take up positions awkwardly close to each other for long periods of time with their wee-wees out.

Unfortunately, the pod’s best film critic ceded their seat at the table to Thomas back from his Western European tour. You are missed, Annabel.

WARNING I: Do not approach this film expecting laugh tracks or comedic buttons.

WARNING II: Do not operate heavy equipment while watching Tsai Ming-liang films.

WARNING III: Do not allow the dissenting voice to write an episode’s show notes.

THEME SONG BY: WEIRD A.I.

Email: thegoodthepodandtheugly@gmail.com
Facebook: https://m.facebook.com/TGTPTU
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Letterboxd (follow us!):
Ken: Ken Koral
Ryan: Ryan Tobias