Estrechos Desesperados

Desperado was so awful that I cut my losses and gave up right after Tarantino's character had his brains splattered all over. If one of the crew here wants the DVD it's yours for the price of postage.

There's no future in trying to figure out a particular angle of criticism for this steaming load of celluloid. There's absolutely nothing about it that has the least redeeming feature.

I will point out one way in which they left no stone unturned in their awfulness. I often watch noisy movies with the sound relatively low and the subtitles on. I noticed that the subtitles were an even worse match for the audio than is usual for a cheap disk. Almost every line of dialog was inexplicably pared down, not for reasons of time, space or clarity, but for pure cussedness.

"Is that going on right now?" became "Is that now?" "He's dead, boss" became "He's dead." In both instances there was plenty of screen time for an accurate rendering and the cut impaired the exposition in a tiny but meaningful way. Why? The only thing I can figure is that someone wanted to leave no doubt that the joke was on the customer.

Friday Night Update

After having the oddest experience at a bigbox hardware store, I'm now watching "Desperdo," one of the worst movies ever made (Broadway Frolics of 1932 is a close second). I was lumbered with a copy of it in a 2-for-1 deal with a movie that I actually wanted to see.

Full report later.