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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).

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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”?

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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.

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4X4 2: TSAI MING-LIANG and "STRAY DOGS"

Our four film investigation into slow cinema master Tsai Miang-liang tackles his 2013 masterpiece STRAY DOGS.

If you can vibe to a five minute opening static shot of a woman brushing her hair while her children sleep beside her in a charred husk of as bedroom where even the sheets on the bed look like ruin before cutting to a nearly ten minute long shot of a depressed homeless man in the lashing rain of Tai Pei holding a sign at a busy intersection, we have the movie for you! It also includes: cabbage desecration, alcoholism, abandonment of buildings and humans, and a house built inside of a nightmare's nightmare (this is NOT a comedy).

Joined by guest Annabel once again, Ken, Jack and Ryan get into a fairly dense and deep convo about Stray Dogs. Co-host Thomas is once again absent due to his covert foreign work as a CIA super spy (who we just outed?) and he is missed.

Slow Cinema is an important part of international film and we are delighted to discuss one of the contemporary greats this month.

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4X4 III: TSAI MING-LIANG: REBELS OF THE NEON GOD

It's the beginning of our four film dive into Queer Asian New Wave master Tsai Ming-liang. Released in 1992 and made shortly after Taiwan's "quiet revolution" from a dictatorship to democracy, Rebels of the Neon God stars the director's muse, Lee Kang-sheng (who would go onto being in every one of his films and the two live together in... interesting circumstances) as a Cram Student who becomes obsessed with a small time hood after a brief act of violence in the street, who drives around on a scooter in Tai Pei, smoking cigarettes, playing video games, walking around his partially flooded apartment and being on the outside of polite society. It sounds like a crime film but, trust us, it is not. Tsai Ming-liang has the eye of an artist and the patience of Rip Van Winkle in holding some of his compositions - something he will go deeper into as his career grows.

Picked by S13 guest host Jack, we get a tutorial on Taiwan, Tsai Ming-liang's career and antecedents to his slow cinema masterpiece before next week's STRAY DOGS.

WARNING: Due to the difficulty of being able to see Rebels by a few hosts, we do talk about access to foreign or obscure films in the streaming era (spoiler: we are not fans).

WARNING II: Co-host Thomas is not on this episode because he was in Europe legally watching Matthew Barney films at the Louvre when we recorded. He will return in two weeks.

Special guest Annabel also shows up and slow cinemas us all.

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THE LONGEST YARD

This week, the TGTPTU boys return to prison for more fun and games, this time stopping this 4x4 season’s first round drafted director Robert Aldrich’s run with inches to go. For the final film of the first four and to cap the Aldrich coverage, Ken drafted THE LONGEST YARD (1974).

Following Ryan’s fumbling the intro and benched as provisional cohost, this season’s four host run the tape back to explore Aldich’s plays in prototyping the sports underdog movie and somehow manage to avoid speaking too ill of the Sandler 2005 remake.

The first of the four initial films of Season 13 not to be based on a novel, The Longest Yard was a smashing success and a standout in an era of cinema that defined both the sports underdog and spirited prisoner genres. As Ken and Thomas cover this ep, Aldrich needed the win after the failure of Aldrich Studios (introed last episode).

For your amusement this episode, Ken spits fresh lyrics during his Burt Reynolds Rap (hopefully not censored by the parole board) before providing summations on Aldrich’s career and films accompanied by odd ambient squeaks this week provided by Thomas’s dog.

Note that next week will not be the start of four films by Lars von Trier but will instead be Rebels of the Neon God (1992), Tsai Ming-liang’s feature film directorial debut.

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THE DIRTY DOZEN

Season 13’s 4x4 marches on with the most ill-mannered, ill-disciplined hosts that it’s ever been you’re your displeasure to meet, sergeant. That’s right, the dirtiest voices in the TGTPTU’s army are getting filthier covering Robert Aldrich’s THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967).

It’s a story of twelve convicted army men, who don’t bath, until they do and the man chosen to whip them into shape: Corporal Lee Marvin fresh off an Oscar win in the role of Major Lee Marvin a.k.a. Major Alcohol a.k.a Major John Reisman. Their mission: to kill Nazi officers, women, and, if you got them, children and cute puppy German Shepherds too.

The WWII picture was immensely successful for Aldrich. Wade through episode commentary and takes about the movie’s plot structure and whether this is secretly a sports movie and how Aldrich recast around actors who were leaving the film and declining scenes to get to a teaser at the end of the episode for a further discussion of Aldrich Studios, the endeavor this film allowed Robert Aldrich financially when he sold his stake in The Dirty Dozen for an endeavor that will run (and run into the ground, spoiler!) in the interval between, and be cause for, next week’s film, The Longest Yard. And then wait a week for more information. (Or use the internet, ya geek. Or get a book from your local library {shout out}!)

For those familiar with the bit, famously Francophobic Jack takes exception to the line “free the French, kill the Germans.” Meanwhile, the boys snicker and make references to Ernest Borgnine’s secret to eternal youth (available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I_PeLNzxNQ). And for major stans of the cast, Ken pulls back the curtain to reveal the pre-record ritual rhyme the hosts chant as a mnemonic to execute a perfect show.

And where is Donald Duck?

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What Ever Happened To Baby Jane?

TGTPTU Season 13’s 4x4 continues with the second half of its first Robert Aldrich pairing, WHAT EVER HAPPENED TO BABY JANE? (1962).

Like last week’s entry, WEH2BJ is another black-and-white film adaptation of a novel, this one truer to the source material, at least to cohost Thomas who read Henry Farrell’s 1960 novel of the same title (in other words no changing out a briefcase of drugs for a nuclear weapon or the star of your book series an unlikeable asshole as had happened in Aldrich’s adaptation of Kiss Me Deadly). Outside minor changes in date and storytelling, both novel and film follow the story of the two sisters in their autumn years: Jane Hudson, a child actress of stage fame whose star dimmed well before her sister Blanche Hudson’s movie career was on its meteoric (to keep with astronomical idioms) ascent until a car accident with a drunk Jane driving left Blanche in a wheelchair and in her sister’s care. While acrimonious, their relationship turns horrific when reruns of Blanche’s films lead to fan mail and her sottish sister Jane to exact a lifetime’s worth of revenge on her housebound sibling.

Yet the meta story of the film separates it inexorably from its source material as Aldrich casts, and to his credit completes a film, with both divas alive with both eyes, most their hair, and out of jail: Bette Davis as the nostalgic Jane and Joan Crawford as Blanche. TGTPTU hosts cover the Oscar shenanigans and personas of these two great ladies of early cinema. Speaking of, WEH2BJ was nominated for five Academy Awards. This was Davis’s tenth nom, and at the time she would have had the most Oscar wins for Best Actress if the picture had won her her third. Unfortunately, the film won only for an obsolete category (Best Costume Design, Black-and-White). And (strikethrough as appropriate one of the subsequent adverbs after listening to the discussion) deservedly/somehow garnered Victor Buono a nomination as Best Supporting Actor.

Stans of the pod are forewarned that a Season 1-3 bit returns thanks to the evils of Davis’s character’s choice of dishes to feed her sister. Other listeners are forewarned that there will be much discussion of the can’t-believe-it-exists films Trog (1970) and Who Slew Auntie Roo? (1972).

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