Yacht Rockers, unite!

Submitted for your approval, here are the Top Ten Smoothest Songs Ever. They’re so smooth, your blood will turn into butter. They’re so laid back, you’ll fall backward and float away like a cool summer breeze. They’re so soothing, you’ll feel your soul getting all coconut milky like a piña colada. Speaking of which:

10. “Escape (The Piña Colada Song)”: Rupert Holmes

At first, you have to wonder why the “lovely lady” of this song didn’t dump this guy. But of course she couldn’t…this guy was too smooth to let go! Besides, she was just as guilty as he was. This song is simply about two people cheating on each other…with each other! If that isn’t true love, I don’t know what is.

9. “Sailing” by Christopher Cross

Not including this masterpiece in any smooth list is like not including Abraham Lincoln in a list of the greatest Presidents. Enough said. I had to get it out of the way.

8. “It Keeps You Runnin’” by The Doobie Brothers

This wonderfully slick song is about a woman who can’t get over her heartbreak, and a smooth guy smooth-talking her out of it. Good stuff for the fellas dealing with this all-too common scenario. Honestly, why are you in such a hurry to be lonely one more night?

7. “Southern Cross” by Crosby, Stills and Nash

All you really need to do to smooth out your song is insert a yacht. CSN followed this principle to very smooth results. This song is about a fella who gets over his heartbreak in the most efficient manner…by sailing his yacht!

6. “What a Fool Believes” by The Doobie Brothers

“Self-delusion” and “smooth” don’t normally appear in the same sentence, yet Michael and The Doobies are so smooth, they made it work! This song is about an awkward date where the girl realizes the old chum she agreed to meet just isn’t that smooth. So what’s the moral of the story? Get smooth, man!

5. “Butterfly” by The Seatbelts (vocals by Mem Nahadr)

From Cowboy Bebop soundtrack composers The Seatbelts, this silky smooth lounge tune is knock-out gorgeous. Listen carefully to the wistful lyrics. She’s singing about the King of Yacht Rockers. My theory is that she’s pining over Michael McDonald.

4. “Night by Night” by Steely Dan

The sleaziest, slickest, nightiest tune by sharp cheddar masters Steely Dan, “Night by Night” is about a night owl who’s navigating the Street Life, the only life he knows. The wah-wah pedals and Hammond organ are all urban action. When you’re ready to cash in your 10-cent life for another one, or the dawn patrol gotta tell you twice you don’t do it with a shotgun, you’re living the Night by Night life. This is your song.

3. “Reminiscing” by The Little River Band

This song is about how the same chucklehead from “What a Fool Believes” gets hip and manages to fire off a smooth, unforgettable night. “Reminiscing” also has the dubious distinction of having the worst music video ever. What’s with the half-dead all-sausage party? No matter, this song is unabashedly romantic and dreamy, featuring too smooth for words drum bridges, trumpet solo, and keys. Resistance is futile.

2. “This is It” by Kenny Loggins

Kenny Loggins puts the “adult” in “adult contemporary.” Sometimes we yacht rockers have to get tough, especially when there’s some other joker going after our lady. Being smooth has NOTHING to do with being nice. So prepare to repel boarders, and remember…there are no rules in the game of love. This is it!

1. “Summer Breeze” by Seals & Croft

“Summer Breeze” is what Yacht Rock is all about. Is there anything more pleasant…more smooth…than blowin’ through the jasmine of your mind? After a hard day navigating the rough waters off an idyllic tropical isle, a captain comes home to recharge his smoothness. It doesn’t matter what the weather looks like outside…just fire up this tune and suddenly it’s a breezy day in July, you’re reclining on the beach, with a piña colada in your hand…

Stay smooth!

“I heard an old Chinese expression. It is easier to kill a coward than to insult him.”

Master of the Flying Guillotine is the arguably the greatest Shaw Brothers film ever made. Jimmy Wang Yu’s masterpiece has carved itself upon Martial Arts Film consciousness in all its baroque absurdity, and stars the most ludicrous and frightening weapon ever to grace the silver screen. Master of the Flying Guillotine also sits proudly with The Great Sequels that have surpassed their sires, such as The Empire Strikes Back, The Wrath of Khan, and Evil Dead 2. But most of all, Master of the Flying Guillotine is a savagely funny film, showcasing Jimmy Wang Yu’s audacious and elaborate black humor while still retaining the fast-paced rhythm and grim tone of a solid Shaw Brothers beat ‘em up.

Continuing the epic saga of One Armed Boxer, Master of the Flying Guillotine opens with a surreal and disturbing scene. A blind old man discovers, via pigeon post, that the One Armed Boxer has killed two of his disciples. The message leaves out the part that it was self-defense, not that it matters; the blind man is an assassin for the Manchu regime. Well, what’s a blind old man gonna do to the invincible One Armed Boxer? Kam Kang, in a career-defining role, demonstrates precisely what a blind old man is capable of. This Shaw Brothers Stevie Wonder whips out the Flying Guillotine, a contraption that is essentially a round cap attached to a long chain. The cap’s exterior is ringed with a buzz saw, with a second set of whirling blades inside of it. What you do is simply toss this cap on someone’s head, a chute drops the whirling interior blades, and then you yank the cap back to retrieve the head in question. Any questions?

The old man proceeds to toss this Frisbee of Death about with horrifying accuracy; he chops off the heads of several practice dummies, and then for laughs, lops off the head of a chicken who was clucking around in the wrong place. The Master of the Flying Guillotine also happens to be The Master of the Hand Grenade. He extracts a little grey explosive ball from his robes, and chucks it behind him. This blind old man just blew up his own house, and he doesn’t give a damn. Cripes. Disguised as a Buddhist lama, the assassin hits the road with one mission: Bring Me the Head of the One Armed Boxer.

We cut to the scene of the One Armed Boxer (director-star Jimmy Wang Yu) training his disciples. The One Armed Boxer demonstrates his incredible jumping and balance by walking around the rim of an empty wicker basket. (While you’re dazzled by that move, suspend your disbelief and pay no attention to Jimmy’s suspicious arm-shaped bulge in his shirt). The school then learns that there is a major martial arts tournament coming up. The One Armed Boxer decides it would be a hoot if he brought his students along to watch. Hey, it’ll be educational. What could possibly go wrong?

The One Armed Boxer and the blind assassin’s shenanigans are just the tip of the iceberg. We’re talking Jimmy Wang Yu, who was infamous for cramming as many weird weapons and fighting styles as he could into his films. Entering the tournament is a cocky Thai kickboxer who dances a merry jig before each fight, an Indian yogi who can stretch out his arms ten feet (yes, this is precisely where they came up with Streetfighter’s Dhalsim), a Japanese tonfa fighter who calls himself Win Without a Knife (a moniker that turns out to be complete bullshit, much to the chagrin of his stabbing victims), and a host of other cannon fodder fighters demonstrating Dragon, Monkey, Eagle Claw, Snake, Mantis, and Lord only knows what else.

Since he’s visually impaired, the blind assassin decides the best route to fulfill his mission is to kill every one-armed person he runs into. After he decapitates one poor slob who claimed to be the One Armed Boxer, a bystander cries out, “That wasn’t the One Armed Boxer! He was just a bum!” The blind assassin then utters what is perhaps the coldest line in cinematic history: “I don’t care who he was.” Yikes.

Master of the Flying Guillotine features wall-to-wall fistfights, with each fight progressively more ridiculous than the last. The kung fu tournament redefines the word “brutal,” and the way the One Armed Boxer deals with the kickboxer will have you grabbing at your feet and screaming. You can well imagine how our hero deals with the Indian Stretch Armstrong; let’s just say it involves a roof support beam. The last inevitable showdown between the Boxer and the Assassin is spectacular, and takes place in two stages, culminating in a coffin shop, naturally.

If the superbly choreographed boxing, tripped-out story, and head loppings weren’t enough, Master of the Flying Guillotine features the nuttiest movie soundtrack ever to grace a Shaw Brothers production. According to Wikipedia, the soundtrack to the original theatrical release included “Super” and “Super 16″ by Neu!, portions from Tangerine Dream’s album Rubycon, and pieces of “Mitternacht” and “Morgenspaziergang” from Kraftwerk’s Autobahn. Holy moly. It bears mentioning that this film was made in 1975; whoever the hell scored this film was in touch with some seriously underground music. Incredibly, this techno/proto-punk music fits in perfectly with this kung fu period piece, especially the piece selected for the blind assassin’s “theme music.” Due to copyright infringements, the latest DVDs now feature a newly composed original score, but I still prefer the ripped-off music.

What more can be said of Master of the Flying Guillotine? Like Joseph Sylvers says, see it with someone you love.

Hausu inspired one of those once in a life-time moments when you will laugh so hard you piss yourself, and then crap your pants from being stunned by sheer cinematic prowess.

I had sat down expecting Hausu to be a cruel and mildly atmospheric J-horror ghost story, but instead I got a tornado of avant garde stylistic explosions married to a tongue firmly implanted in its cheek. It’s as if Dario Argento, Richard Lester, Vera Chytilova, Seijun Suzuki, and Takashi Miike secretly collaborated to re-make Star Wars, and then privately screened the results for you while you were hanging upside down over a tank of piranhas. It’s that good.

The seven Japanese schoolgirls of Hausu have names to conveniently denote their characters:”Prof” for the smart one, “Gorgeous” for the prettiest one, “Mac” for the overweight one, “Fantasy” for the stylish one, and my personal favorite “Kung-Fu” because well, she knows Kung-Fu. They are all members of a team of some kind, though I’m not sure what exactly and they need a place to train for the summer, as they do every year.

Gorgeous’s father is getting re-married to a woman who only appears with a breeze blowing in super slow mo, to the accompaniment of ethereal string music. As you can imagine, that constant slo-mo shit can get kind of irritating, and Gorgeous wants to get away from it all. Georgeous writes a letter to an estranged aunt that she has never met, asking if she and her friends can spend the summer doing whatever it is they do. The aunt agrees, and they are off to the titular house.

The bus trip is like a day-glo version of Willy Wonka’s psychedelic boat ride, only this time through artificial rainbow streaked countryside. After the girls arrive at the aunt’s home, they soon discover that the house is unfortunately possessed by a ghost/demon who likes to eat virgins.

The girls are devoured by mattresses and pillows, turned to glass, eaten by pianos (one of the funniest and truly most disturbing scenes I’ve ever watched), attacked by severed floating heads, plagued by horrible visions of bananas, among other nuisances. The phrase, “I’m sure there’s a reasonable explanation for this” becomes an all purpose punch-line. Hausu is horror-comedy-coming of age tale, par excellence.

Every scene has some kind of cinematic interjection and manipulation, from the shifting color filters, to deranged collage and montage of events and images, to wildly varied animations, mattes, props (the wall paper in the rooms of the house match the print on some of the girls dresses), and mini-movies stylized as beautiful and heartfelt silent films and WW2 era romances, and of course obligatory whirlwind action scenes that follow the shout “Save us Kung-Fu!”.

Hausu features a heavy emphasis on wall to wall Spaghetti Western-esque wall to wall music. Gorgeous’s dad is a composer; he is mentioned to have auditioned for Sergio Leone, who said he was better than Ennio Morricone. There are also horror movie themes, cartoonish comedy sections, pop songs, strings, and sounds that are just generally unclassifiable possibly because they might be two songs playing at the same time.

I have seen director Nobuhiko Obayashi’s work before; he was responsible for the campy kaleidoscopic Sada, based on a true story about a woman who, during World War II, castrated her lover and became an overnight celebrity. Sada, it turns out, was only a mere hint of the madcap reservoirs unleashed in this movie. Obayashi is actually most famous for directing game shows, and so he brings this same everything and the kitchen sink dynamic to Hausu.

The least important element of Hausua is the plot, as there is so much happening in literally every scene, as easy to forget altogether and still enjoy it. The only other film as unrelenting in terms of visual excess is perhaps Jorodowsky’s The Holy Mountain.

I’ve never laughed so much at a film that was so dazzling to watch. Hausu skyrocketed into my favorites instantly. “It’s like were trapped in a b-movie.”, says on the girls, “An out of date of one too…” See this film with someone you love.