"Hi, this is Rich from Oak Ridge, first-time, long-time. I am new to the Daly Blog and just wanted to say that I dig it as much as John from Wayne. More Blog please."You know, fans (both of you), I'm tempted to add to this blog
every damn day, but I've been trying to exercise some restraint.
Yay, the people have spoken, and hence I have blogged anew. My latest brain emission appeareth below. Soon, another shall appear above...and then another, and another, and another, until there is peace throughout the land.
Thus spake I.
Leave the latest
Matrix epic to the Eberts and Roepers of the world. (Frankly, Roeper was much better as a landlord than a movie critic, but that's for another blog.) I prefer to search the art houses for potential hidden gems.
This week I took a flier on a short, independent film called
I Loved Paris, the story of young lovers...well, one young lover and one aging would-be playboy, to be honest...who embark on a series of undercover adventures.
Newcomer Bimbeaux Riche plays Paris, a club-hopping socialite in her late teens who is world-renowned for dancing on tables at all the hottest clubs in all the fabulous cities. During a triumphant, headlining engagement at Club Sucrerie de Nez, Paris wanders off and stumbles into a dimly lit hotel room, where she finds Rick (Solomon Doherty, who also wrote and directed). Rick convinces Paris that he is Triple Agent Double-O-Nothing, working simultaneously for the United States, North Korea and Las Vegas. Most of his missions involve skulking around dimly lit hotel rooms, scoping out nefarious evildoers and morally challenged debutantes with his night-vision camcorder.
At this point, Paris notices that Rick is nude. When she asks why, he explains that a new, top-secret technology developed by Napster renders him invisible when he is unclothed. He then tells her that her keen observational skills would serve her well in the spy game. She jumps at the chance, and Rick promptly indoctrinates her as Agent 69.
Soon the two naked sleuths are off on a mission to check the linens on each and every bed in the hotel for bodily secretions, using a device that Rick refers to as a "black light." Also aiding them in this pursuit is a special flashlight-type thingie that's mounted atop Rick's camcorder.
Unforeseen tension builds when Rick finds a cache of small vials filled with liquid in one of the rooms.
"That's the mini-bar, silly," giggles Paris.
"To the untrained eye, yes," cautions Rick, "but in each of these bottles is one of those tiny little surveillance cameras that are used to spy on private citizens via pop-up windows on the Internet. To keep our cover from being blown, we must drink the contents of these vials in rapid succession until we have emptied them all."
Surviving that particular scrape together enables our protagonists to forge a bond, from which, as the title suggests, a romance ensues. Sadly, this is where the film starts to fall apart. The love scenes are awkwardly staged, and the decision to film them with low-grade night-vision equipment proves both frustrating and potentially damaging to the eye. Miss Riche certainly sounds convincing enough, but because the visual effect gives her what can only be described as alien eyes, we're never quite sure whether she's physically nailed the performance.
Unfortunately, what the viewer
can see through the grainy, green/gray haze of these love scenes are two amateurish actors brazenly jockeying to be the focal point of each shot, to the point where they actually steal looks at an off-camera monitor to gauge their respective positions within the frame. By now, Mr. Doherty has obviously lost control of his leading lady and his project, rendering the ensuing sequences uneven. And then, without warning, the film comes to a maddeningly abrupt end.
It all left me puzzled as to what the auteur was trying to convey, and disappointed that
I Loved Paris failed so miserably to live up to its early promise. I found myself watching it over and over and over to see if there was some subtle clue along the way to foreshadow such an exasperating shift in the plot, but each subsequent viewing only left me more befuddled than the last. Ultimately, I came away feeling like I'd just watched an amateur porn video.
Miss Riche reportedly is next due to be seen opposite onetime pin-up girl Missy March in
Now You're Toying With Me, helmed by another first-time director who is known simply as Sebastian. Mr. Doherty is said to be pitching a courtroom drama that, ala Tarantino's
Kill Bill, would be split into two chapters. With any luck, both actors will be able to distance themselves from the disastrous
I Loved Paris and go on to distinguished careers in cinema. If not, at least Miss Riche still has her youth; perhaps she could parlay the table-dancing skills she mastered in the film into some form of celebrity. Alas, it's not likely that Mr. Doherty will be able to talk many more budding ingenues into starring in his projects after this stinker.
Welcome, everyone
To the world's longest "on" ramp
It's Route 46
What are you doing
Besides 23 miles an hour,
You F***ING A**HOLE?!?!
