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brownrecluse62
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Name: Harry
Country: United States
State: Illinois
Metro: Chicago
Birthday: 7/30/1988
Gender: Male
Interests: I guess I'd consider myself a movie buff, even though I haven't seen as many movies as people seem to think I have. I do read a lot about them, though. I also like to play the oboe and English horn, and I can sort of play the mountain dulcimer a little. I'm really random with the music I listen to. Lately I've been listening to Steeleye Span, a British folk rock band from the '70s. Good stuff. I'm also a big fan of the Smothers Brothers and the Marx Brothers, among others.
Expertise: I'm only an expert on things when compared to most of the other people I know. I don't think I have anything beyond competence in...well, pretty much anything. So I'll just say film, oboe, and English horn. And since I've only met three people besides myself who have listened to Steeleye Span, then that too.
Message: message meEmail: email me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
2/9/2005
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| Philippe Noiret has died.
He warmed our hearts with his presence, most famously in Cinema Paradiso. I haven't seen any of the other work he did in the rest of his long career, but even so, he will be greatly missed.
1930-2006 | | |
| Whenever I 'discover' works of film that I, in my limited knowledge, consider 'important,' I feel the need to post them here. So I guess you all know why, as this uneventful summer nears its end, I'm making another entry.
Fans of animation in film will undoubtedly know about Walt Disney, Chuck Jones, Tex Avery, Ralph Bakshi, and the like. Most are familiar with the work of Japanese animators like Hayao Miyazaki. Fewer, but still some, know about more eclectic and bizarre animators like the Czech surrealist Jan Švankmajer, about whom I've gushed more than once here.
But I doubt that anyone except for the most devoted followers of the field of animation are familiar with the work of Wladyslaw Starewicz (a.k.a. Ladislas Starevitch and several other variations).
Many people, and probably many of you, were quite impressed with the skillful stop-motion animation of films like The Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride. Think about the clever things Tim Burton and others did in those movies. Fascinating, grotesque, vivid characters walking around delicately on thin legs. Pretty impressive, right?
What's even more impressive is that Starewicz was doing the exact same sort of thing as far back as 1912, when he made The Cameraman's Revenge, a wonderful short about two beetles, husband and wife, cheating on each other. Other excellent works of his include the sweet Insects' Christmas and the macabre Devil's Ball (a shortened version of a longer film that I can't find), which I'd be willing to bet influenced The Nightmare Before Christmas. There is also the lovely, lyrical fable The Voice of the Nightingale, filmed in beautiful hand-tinted Prizma Color (in 1923), which I think every child should see. Disney had fairies gracefully emerge from flowers in Fantasia in 1940; Starewicz did it in Nightingale in an equally graceful way.
I implore you all to search for 'Starewicz' on Google Videos or YouTube and watch the results. True, their effect is somewhat diminished by time and the fact that others have done similar things impressively since, but I still found it stunning. | | |
| I guess it's time to do my Mid-Summer Movie Update.
I found myself going unintentionally going into an interesting trend: extremely well-shot horror films. It started with The Night of the Hunter, I guess, but most recently I've watched Ghost Story and The Shining. That probably doesn't constitute a trend, but whatever.
Ghost Story is pretty overlooked. It's from 1981, and is only really known for containing the final theatrical film appearance for each of three classic Hollywood stars: Fred Astaire, Melvyn Douglas, and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. It's flawed but good, and pretty scary, but the way it was filmed was the best part for me. Great lighting, evocative moods.
The film also showcases a tour-de-force performance from Alice Krige as the mysterious ghostly figure in the tale. She was really something. In Ghost Story, she gives her character a spellbinding sense of icy beauty and terror. For such a beautiful and talented woman, I don't know why she hasn't been more widely recognized. Probably because she has appeared in an odd mix of films. She's probably best known for playing the Borg Queen in one of the Star Trek movies. Most recently, I think she appeared in the movie Silent Hill.
Beautiful. Lethal. The ultimate femme fatale who never gets mentioned.
I feel weird with my film obsession. Maybe I'll feel better at college, being around people who think similarly. I mean, right now I'm compiling a list of favorite cinematographers: Jack Cardiff, Roger Pratt, Dante Spinotti, Tonino Delli Colli, Miroslav Ondrícek, Robert Surtees, and I'm probably forgetting some, so I'll add them later, when I think of them.
Other movies to recommend:
The Boys from Brazil - I finally watched this. It's a good thriller that's also campy. Gregory Peck is a hoot, maniacally overdoing his hammy performance as the evil Nazi doctor Josef Mengele, trying to clone Hitler, opposite the earnest Laurence Olivier as the Nazi hunter on his trail.
Love Me Tonight - Delightful 1932 musical. Full of great moments such as a symphony of street sounds, and the song 'Isn't It Romantic?' being passed on through random people from one end of town all the way to the Princess's residence.
Vertigo - This is some intense psychological Hitchcock fodder. Great twists. Good times.
On the Town - I watched it last night. It's a lot of fun, an excellent musical, directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, about three sailors on leave for 24 hours in New York City, trying to experience the sights and the New York girls at the same time. High spirits abound. Kelly and Frank Sinatra head the cast, which also includes that great dancer Vera-Ellen. The musical numbers, many of which are by Leonard Bernstein, are electrifying. The film reaches very high up toward cinematic musical perfection, a level that was achieved in the next Kelly-Donen film, Singin' in the Rain.
Speaking of which: Kelly and Sinatra get top billing, you know, names in big letters above the title, but in the film they are only two of three sailors romping around NYC. The third is Jules Munshin, who played the third member of the Kelly-Sinatra trio in two classic musicals. Munshin was quite a funny performer. It's kind of sad that people don't remember him.
Kind of like Alice Krige. Never gets a mention. So let's give them a little recognition. They deserve it. | | |
| Once in a while, a film comes along that just leaves you completely floored, jaw hanging low and eyes bulging. It's an amazing experience, and it doesn't occur very often, which makes it especially valuable on the rare occasion that it does.
Tonight, I saw such a film.
No, it isn't À Nous la Liberté. That is a very good 1931 French satirical comedy by the genius who made the superb Le Million that same year. Charlie Chaplin ripped it off in the factory scenes of Modern Times, which is also very good.
But the real revelation was to be found in the special features of that great Criterion DVD.
The disc contains a short film called Entr'acte that the director, René Clair, made in 1924 as part of the Dada or Surrealist (I forget which, exactly) movement in collaboration with composer Erik Satie and artist Francis Picabia. And that film, my friends, is an astonishing work of cinema.
Entr'acte is only 22 minutes long, but it's packed with absolutely stunning cinematic effects, especially considering how innovative they were for a 1920s film. Clair, a master of the moving camera, displays here some breathtaking skill. The movie outdoes another famous surrealist short, Un Chien Andalou, in sheer abundance of visual flourish. There are people moving in beautiful slow-motion, dizzying angles and overlapping images, a camel, and an exhilarating high-speed chase (which includes the camera moving at a breakneck pace along a roller-coaster track), as well as impeccable humor (for example, a man bursts through the 'Fin' or 'The End' sign, only to be kicked in the head and have the entire sequence be reversed).
 
Long story short: I was astounded by this movie. It's incredible. I highly recommend you all see it.
But if you'd rather go see something current in theaters, A Prairie Home Companion is really quite good. | | |
| So I just saw Wicked, and I didn't know how to feel. Watching it is rather like swimming about in a flood of so many things, your body entirely saturated in rushing torrents coming at you from both sides, and watching the debris swirling all around you.
It was too much, too much! The show starts out as something like Grease — a pop musical for and about teenaged girls — and then suddenly it turns into High Drama, albeit of the kind that is an extension of the teen drama. But wait: there are still lots of fragments of the tongue-in-cheek earlier part. Why is Glinda doing that shameless ditzy mugging at a particularly emotional part? Am I supposed to laugh, or to weep? And isn't this whole play basically a clever little joke on our beloved Wizard of Oz? I mean, whenever there was a reference to something that happened in the original, the audience laughed....
To sum it up, I could barely take it. The play is just the extremes being thrown together and forming a not-very-cohesive jumble that surrounds you and shakes you around for a while.
And I don't know how to feel about the writers taking a story like The Wizard of Oz, a piece of the foundation of nearly every American's childhood, and turning it on its ear, tainting it with shameful backstories and revisionist dark sides to our beloved classic. We already know that the world is complex. We know that things aren't just black or white. But must you take all of the simple things and complicate them with new shades of grey? Now that what is perhaps the best-loved story in America, The Wizard of Oz, has been spun 'round and discolored, is nothing sacred anymore?
I think the Wizard character summed Wicked up best when he sang about moral ambiguities, because those words refer essentially to the play itself: things aren't as simple as they seem. It all ends up a great big muddle of ambiguity for us to mull over for a while.
Although the muddle that is this play contains other things too, like the awkward juxtaposition of laughter and heartbreak. It makes my head spin.
But I guess the message is right: we live not in a world of good and bad, but in a world of moral ambiguities that don't really jell. That's how life is.
And that, I suppose, is that. | | |
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