The Man Is Chan

By Salim Garami

What's good?

I just wanted to tie up our celebration of Jackie Chan's quintessential Police Story and Police Story 2 finding their way into the esteemed catalog of the Criterion Collection by recognizing the other thing he's best known for besides kicking fools in the face: pre-emptively auditioning for the Jackass crew by partaking in some of the most dangerous stunts recorded on film. Safety is for mere mortals as far as Chan is concerned and he is probably convinced that if any characters are ever killed on-screen in a movie, then the actor themself must also be killed for versimilitude.

Not really, but much like his fight choreography, the sort of discipline and ambition Chan displays on screen in order to wow audiences around the world is the kind that pays off a lifetime of painful falls and crashes. He mirrors his own character's resilience to obstacles and defies fear and death with his stuntwork.

Let's get that listing over with so we can watch some more Jackie Chan.

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Chan's the Man

By Salim Garami

What's good?

This past Tuesday saw the home video Criterion Collection release of a 4K restoration for Police Story and Police Story 2, two of movies that made a household name out of Hong Kong international superstar Jackie Chan. Chan is ostensibly a man who needs no introduction in the world of action cinema, but put it this way: the bodily injury and risk, the way this man twists and flips his body and face for our entertainment, the rigorous and grueling discipline that he pushes despite looking so rubbery and clownish... it all makes Tom Cruise's high-altitude climbs and dives look like square cowardice.

The Hong-Kong-based actor-director is a more painful descendent of the school of physical comedy that Harold Lloyd and Buster Keaton opened up, utilizing his background in the Peking Chinese Opera to make things as small as answering multiple phone calls look like athletic feats...

In order to illustrate his excellence and to celebrate this canonization and recognition through the Blu-Ray set release, I've opted to provide two mini-lists here: his top five fights in this post and his top five solo stunts in a post later tomorrow...

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Pussywillows! Serial Mom at 25

by Salim Garami

What's good?

The existence of Serial Mom 25 years ago establishes that America’s current obsession with true crime stories – with the likes of Serial and American Crime Story and the never-ending avalanche of Netflix documentaries – is not something remotely new to our day and age. Hell, it wasn’t even new to 1994; many of the social observations Serial Mom makes arguably were already well before up to the previous year’s The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. There is little prophetic in the satire but there is A LOT of scary forecasting regarding the OJ Simpson murder case that was just around the corner at the time of its release...

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Great Moments in Kissing: "Spider-Man"

For Valentine's we asked Team Experience to share favourite screen kisses. Here's Salim Garami...

What’s good?

When I think of THE most cinematic of movie kisses, what pops into my mind isn’t necessarily my favorite (which would be Alfred Hitchcock’s explosive fireworks button on To Catch a Thief) or what I think of as the best (which would be Hitchcock’s taboo-busting “Another one! And another one!” in Notorious). I think of the kiss that was most formative. The kiss that showed me how image and movement could communicate ardor to somebody as young as 6. The kiss that came in possibly the most formative movie in all of my childhood: Sam Raimi’s 2002 superhero landmark Spider-Man. A film that has long informed the majority of what I love to see in movies and established itself deep in my heart (although it is quite possible that Into the Spider-Verse has now embedded itself deeper), it should be no surprise that it informed what I love in romantic scenes, especially the moments in movies that are accused of oversentimentality and cheesiness...

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Salim Gives Thanks

Team Experience members were invited to give thanks this week so you'll be hearing from a few of us. Here's Salim Garami...

What's good?

2018 has proven to be a very busy year for yours truly, hence my radio silence here in The Film Experience (I didn't have much time to write on my own personal blog Motorbreath). But it has also proven to be a surprisingly rewarding year for me, both in my personal life after much hassle earlier in the year and run-around later in the year (I have been going back-and-forth between not two but THREE U.S. cities for professional reasons) and in cinema

I think 2018 has been one of the best moviegoing years I've experienced in my whole life. So many surprises and experiments, so many crowdpleasers where I am proudly on that bandwagon, a couple of Oscar contenders that I actually enjoyed. And there's no shortage of music, television, or literature from this year amusing me in some way or another as well so let's dig in...

• Comedic songwriter/teleplay writer/critical writer extraordinaire Demi Adeyugibe has blessed us with not one but TWO funny "fake" credit songs for the nerdiest tentpoles of the summer: Future imitation "Snap" for Avengers: Infinity War and the compulsively catchy Childish Gambino imitation in "L-A-N-D-O" for Solo: A Star Wars Story.

• Tom Cruise trying to figure out where the "payload" is at and finding a giant switch saying "payload" in the helicopter chase climax of Mission: Impossible - Fallout...

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