Re: RARA-AVIS: Rainbow Drive/Cat Chaser

fwillard@mindspring.com
Fri, 11 Sep 98 14:09:56 -0400 In <5f0ca938.35f95041@aol.com>, on 09/11/98
at 12:30 PM, BaxDeal@aol.com said:

>but can't say I agree with your assessment of Ferrara's adaptation of Cat
>Chaser, Fred. thought it was a huge botch of what seemed to be a sure
>slam dunk. most puzzling is the 3rd person voiceover narrative by
>someone who isn't even a character in the movie. who is this supposed to
>represent-
>Leonard?

I always assumed the voice was either Leonard, God or Adam Smith's "unseen
hand."

Personally, I like voiceovers for certain types of film adaptations,
(particularly noir/HB), but I know many people really hate them.

I'm also aware that my appreciation of Ferrara's Cat Chaser is not widely
shared. The thing I like most about it is the way the conflicts seem to
grow from what seems, at first, a meandering exposition of the characters
and their situation. There isn't that feeling of cleverness that exudes
from much writing which uses the caper as an undisclosed framework to
build a HB/noir story around.

> however, Kelly McGillis is to be lauded for her incredibly
>brave performance. to get the full measure of it, one must rent the
>unrated version.
>

This is crucial in other Ferrara films as well. I was talking to a friend
who had seen the Bad Lieutenant and thought the film was incoherent. As we
discussed it, it turned out her had seen a rated version which had done a
rather sloppy job of deleting the scenes that pulled the story together.

>far better representations of Abel Ferrara's sensibility would be the
>extremely hardboiled trio of films- Bad Lieutenant, Dangerous Game and
>King of New York.
>

Agreed. Although, I thought the weakness of Bad Lt was that it was such a
downward spiral that it didn't have much internal moral dialog. King of
New York was much more morally complex.

It seemed the film KoNY was a take on Joey Gallo. Does anyone know if it
was an adapted from a book?

I was also interested in comments about the novel _Trainspotting_ by
Irvine Welsh. I haven't read it, but the film certainly seemed to share
many of the defined characteristics of HB fiction as outlined in previous
discussions.

Fred

-- 
-----------------------------------------------------------
Down on Ponce by Fred Willard
fwillard@mindspring.com
http://fwillard.home.mindspring.com/
-----------------------------------------------------------

# # To unsubscribe, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to majordomo@icomm.ca. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.vex.net/~buff/rara-avis/.