The Tales of Hoffmann, The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Mississippi Mermaid, & Bed and Board

The Tales of Hoffmann was outstanding. As it was an Archers production, it was absolutely gorgeous and the special effects were very good. I was really impressed with pretty much everything. Especially due to my missing of ballet due to being sick this weekend. So I got some ballet in anyway. And some opera. So I was all "Gimme some culture", and this movie was all "Here's some culture", and I was all "I'll watch", and it was all "Offenbach!" and I was all, "OOOH!" and "AHHH!". Really, really gorgeous in every way. Impressive. And, um, apparently, I can thanks this film for Dawn of the Dead and The Departed. Yeah, apparently, George Romero and Martin Scorsese fought over a 16mm print of the film and a projector. Really, wow. I knew that Scorsese was an immense fan of the Archers, but I never knew that Romero was such a fan. Makes me even more thankful for them, besides the brilliance of the films. I really didn't expect to see an interview with Romero on the disc. Criterion, thank you.

The Sorcerer's Apprentice was a short, done by Michael Powell, which was done by Disney fifteen years earlier. It works a little better without Mickey Mouse, though. I also want to thank Criterion again for putting this on the disc. Sonia Arova was pretty impressive, although I would have wanted to see the full 30 minute version, because 13 minutes just doesn't feel very long.

Mississippi Mermaid was a little disappointing, although there were two gratuitous Catherine Deneuve topless scenes. I mean, two completely necessary scenes. Yes. I guess I've never been in love quite enough to kill for it, but I liked the nod to Shoot the Piano Player near the end. It just felt a little light.

Bed and Board was... what the hell Truffaut? You really created Antoine Doinel to be my favorite character in movie history, right? I mean, seriously. Although I've never spent any time with prostitutes. Although I've always wanted to have a job moving remote-controlled boats around a model of a port. And that I'm pretty sure that I would have much more to talk about with a Japanese lady. Plus, why would I leave Claude Jade? I am pretty sure that Kyoko was made to be boring, and it was very successful. And what's up with the name Hiroko Berghauer? Strange.

The Little Matchgirl, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The French Lieutenant's Woman, & Stolen Kisses

The Little Matchgirl is an Oscar nominated short, which I watched online. See, the internets are good, MPAA, don't destroy them. Of course, it's based on a Hans Christian Andersen story, so it's depressing as hell. But it's directed by the guy who did The Lion King, and wrote Aladdin and The Little Mermaid, so it's actually quite impressive and Disney-feature film quality (at least before they killed off 2D-animation). The problem is that it's a former-workers-at-Disney-production, so I can't quite tell whether its chances will be hurt or helped by that for the Oscar. Stupid Oscar can go screw itself for the horribleness it has inflicted upon society since it's creation.

Never having had any illegal drugs of any kind (save alcohol before I was 21), I never really spent a lot of time lionizing Hunter S. Thompson. I had read a lot of his columns on Page 2, and had seen and enjoyed the movie version of Fear and Loathing, but I never read any of his books. And then I ran out of books and my friend didn't have his copy of Lolita (mmm, 12 year old girls...), so I borrowed his copy of Fear and Loathing and read it in a relatively quick fashion. I still only read on the metro to and from work, but when you get stuck on it for around an hour extra in one week, it really helps speed through the short book. It's crazy, makes me want to know what kind of article could have been produced from such a drug-induced haze, and increases my curiosity about mescaline. Not that I'm ever going to try it, but it seems, from the book, less bothersome than ether, at least. Having said that, LSD will continue to be a drug I will never, ever try. I want to get back to the book, though. There are some seriously funny scenes, and some seriously disturbing Ralph Steadman drawings. Weird book. But, as a student of American history, and a fan of reading, I heartily recommend it to anyone who hasn't read it. Plus, you get funny looks on the metro when you're reading it and smiling like a mofo in public.

The French Lieutenant's Woman has another movie where Jeremy Irons is a creep. Not creepy though, just a creep. And Streep has a different accent this time. Because it wouldn't be an Oscar nominated performance for Streep without it. She's good, but the film feels strange, because it's a film within a film, but you don't really get that feel, because there are very few breaks between the 19th century story and the current time story. You get them commenting upon it, but you don't see them break character to go to the current time. I think the lack of that threw me for a loop, especially after the car in the background of the first scene. I would have thought there'd be more of it. It was quite well made, but it didn't connect with me, because I was expecting more of a post-modern approach. Of course, this does allow for the filming of two of the endings to the Fowles novel rather than just one, or filming all three and confusing the audience. I am fascinated by the film, and the more I think about it, the more I appreciate it, but that doesn't mean the long film was necessarily worth it. I also want to read the book.

Stolen Kisses is the third in the Antoine Doinel series, and it's all about him after leaving the army and trying to find his way in life. What's up with Truffaut pretty much able to do everything well? He's just amazing, and this film is hilarious. Easily up there with the best of Truffaut, Stolen Kisses finds both Truffaut and Leaud clearly enjoying themselves with the character, and that enjoyment really comes through in a couple set pieces, like the private detectives at the hotel and the accidental "sir". Really, I just enjoy his work immensely. Bravo to you both. And to Truffaut for understanding just how delightful Claude Jade was, and trying to marry her.

Journeys with George, Gun Crazy, Grace of My Heart, & The Brothers Grimm

Journeys with George is depressing. I imagine that it's the same on pretty much every political press junket, but man, why the hell were people so charmed with someone who seems to view bologna sandwiches and Cheetos as haute cuisine? Plus, ugh. I bet that the film would have been slightly better had it not been released after 9/11. Because that probably cut out quite a bit of extra stuff. There's no way that was the film as originally intended. Karl Rove is not a guy who throws snowballs and jokes about the liberal media. He's a turd blossom of evil. And man, he was so ridiculously wrong about New Hampshire. It's frustrating to see the media like this. The craptacular system we have now where the media has to suck up to the candidates in order to keep their place in the circus just leads to fluff articles, which really don't help in, say, anything. We need serious articles, and serious coverage. We need to stop the fluffing of candidates.

Gun Crazy is a proto-Bonnie and Clyde, although since it was made well before the end of the Hays code, it feels far more wild than it is. The shooting competition scene was impressive in its suggestiveness. Lighting matches? Woo! It's really pretty darn good, and quite as good as the classic film noirs of the time. And the opening scenes of the young Bart Tare and his obsession with guns are pretty impressive. Impressively phallic. Seriously, the kid is completely obsessed with holding guns. And aren't we all?

Grace of My Heart is full of great music, retro-chic songs by the likes of Elvis Costello, J Mascis, and Sonic Youth, among others. Yeah, the movie messing with history is crazy, but it's still fun to see Brill Building and mid to late 60s Beach Boys. The problem is that the movie is melodramatic to the extreme. How many men can mistreat Illeana Douglas? Oh, every single one in the film? Ok, sounds good. Basically, the film was good, but should have been far better. Just try to make some multi-dimensional characters, and you'd have a great film.

The Brothers Grimm is a mess of a film. Nothing works like it should, and the film is hopelessly muddled. The use of fairy tales is nice, although the unnecessary confusion of details is bothersome. As much as I wanted to like it, I didn't. Probably the worst film Gilliam's done that I've seen. Damn shame.

Vernon, Florida

Vernon, Florida is Errol Morris's second film, an hilarious look at a small town in Florida, and the crazy people who live there. Seriously, it's only 55 minutes long, but it's 55 minutes of crazy, crazy frakin' people. It's up there with The Thin Blue Line and Fog of War as his best films. I could just try to list my favorite people in it, but how can I do that, when it's really just touching and sidesplitting stories after the same. I just wish there had been more of a structure and more film. 55 minutes of goodness was great, but it could have been better with more. Also, seriously? Bare bones DVD on a 55 minute film? Come on!

A little housekeeping

I have decided to move over to Feedburner for my feed needs. If you are reading this in a RSS or feed reader (and if you aren't, then you aren't getting quick notes on new entries and are wasting your time..., I recommend the very cool Google Reader, because Google owns all, and if you do, let me know, so we can share posts easily), add this feed (or http://feeds.feedburner.com/CaseusVelox if you are having problems with the link for some reason), and remove the other feed you might have. It allows me to add some fancy new features. And know how people are getting to my blog. And generally be a good internet stalker. I will be removing the old feed in around a week or so (unless I forget or someone actually says something to convince me to not delete it), so do it fast to keep up on all the pop culture consumed. Even if I'm not talking about my prodigious TV, music, and video game consumption as much as I probably should.

Somehow, this incredibly disjointed and beparentheticalled post made sense to me at some point. Basically, use http://feeds.feedburner.com/CaseusVelox for your feed rather than whatever you're using now, because I am not going to use the normal Blogger feed anymore.

Also, I added labels for my posts. If you happen to see any posts about things that I haven't labeled, let me know. So you can go read all of my posts on any of those topics on the side.

Went the Day Well?

Went the Day Well? was far more brutal than I was expecting. Were all the British censors too busy being involved in the war effort that they didn't bother with a film that kills many innocent people? I mean, they're Nazis, but they even shot the kid in the leg. What the hell? That said, it's a great and suspenseful film, something which would never have been made by a major Hollywood studio. Especially not in 1942. The war was starting to turn, but the use of a post-war framing device made three years before the end of the war was a very interesting choice, and it works pretty well. It's not like an English film wouldn't have ended in the way you'd expect, but it took quite some time getting to that point, and with a lot more casualties than I was expecting. Good for them. I definitely enjoyed the film, and I recommend it if you liked The Eagle Has Landed, or are a fan of Graham Greene who wrote the short story the movie was based on. I need to read some of his stuff.

The Phantom of Liberty & Small Change

The Phantom of Liberty was the first in an unintentional episodic film minifest about life in France in the 1970s. As this was by Buñuel, it was quite a bit more insane than the next film, but as it's Buñuel, it was very funny. Some classic scenes, like the missing persons report and the dinner party, make the film necessary, especially for fans of surrealism, but it doesn't reach the heights of Discreet Charm or Obscure Object. Oh, and I forgot about the monks playing poker. Um, and the nephew-aunt incest. Strange film. It's about the absurdity of bourgeois society, so it basically fits in perfectly with most of Buñuel's oeuvre. And the episodic nature of the film means that the criticisms aren't quite as effective.

Small Change, on the other hand, was a completely excellent look at children in small town France. Truffaut understands children in a way few people do. It was not a very deep film, but all the scenes were enjoyable enough to make up for it. Like the abandonment of the child who liked the dirty bag, the boy buying flowers, and the small kid and the pasta. But there was at least some anti-child abuse theme to the film, which was good. Because child abuse tends to lead to kids who become criminals. Boo child abuse.

Bells of Innocence, Antoine et Colette, & Les Mistons

Bells of Innocence apparently cost $2.75 million. I am pretty sure it all went into the coke the writers were taking when they thought this was a good idea. Wow, it was outstandingly bad. Every single person in the film was a terrible, terrible actor. Even Mr. Chuck Norris. And the names... Jux Jonas, Oren Ames, Conrad Champlain, Joshua Ravel, and Lyric? Seriously? I swear some 12 year old's D&D character is named Jux Jonas. Or, I guess, since WOW is so popular, some Horde warlock is named that. Are warlocks even an option there? I don't know, and I don't need to, really. It's bad enough I know that the two factions are the Horde and the Alliance. The more I know, the more likely I am to get involved in that crackrock. The movie is amateurish in every possible way. The ADR (or Additional Dialogue Recording, for those of you who didn't spend too much time with film nerds in college) was atrociously obvious. And I was rooting for a nuclear holocaust to wipe out the film crew on set. Too bad that I knew that wasn't going to happen. I kept hoping though. The set itself, the town of Ceres (nice overuse of Greek and Roman mythology and names to just point out how sacrilegious those people were), looked like it was only one street, and they just kept changing camera angles. Good for them for that though, because otherwise I never would have noticed that the same fence kept going behind them when they were walking down the street. Oh, the movie is so terrible it's somewhat enjoyable, but man, that 97 minute running time felt like I was in hell forever. Soooooo long.

I also saw two Truffaut shorts, Antoine et Colette and Les Mistons. The second one is a story of five pubescent boys who torture an attractive older girl because they don't know how to express their real feelings for her. And the first is a sort of sequel to The 400 Blows, but instead of it being about a juvenile delinquent, Antoine Doinel has grown up to be a young man who is very impressive with parents but not as impressive with the woman he's in love with. No, I have absolutely no connection to either of these protagonists. They were both around 20 minutes long, and Antoine et Colette was actually from a collection of films, Love at Twenty, that included four other foreign films. Apparently, it's unavailable anywhere. So maybe the other films were nowhere near as good, or something. Because this was great. I'm looking forward to finishing off the Antoine Doinel collection in the upcoming weeks.

My Left Foot & The Man Who Laughs

My Left Foot was outstanding. Daniel Day-Lewis was crazy, really, as expected, he was pretty much in character the entire time he was on set. But he was very good, as was his mother, Brenda Flicker. Quite a life-affirming movie. Definitely worth watching, although if you get depressed by cerebral palsy or Hamlet, then maybe you should watch it only if you want a good cry.

The Man Who Laughs is one of the last great silent films and one of the best German Expressionist films. It stars Conrad Veidt, who, even though I have seen the excellent The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, I still think of him as Major Strasser. It actually is fairly similar to Hunchback of Notre Dame, although it works better. But I don't like the Hollywood ending. That's fitting, considering the strange dichotomy between two "freaks" and gypsies and both written by Victor Hugo and the silly Hollywood ending in both films. But the actual parts of the film that follow the plot of the book was very strong. The hatred of the gypsies is quite messed up though. Feels a little like the hatred of Jews. I mean, they're all dark and swarthy, like me, but man, boo. Strange how it's always about someone not white. Oh, wait. It's just that racism is so easy. Anyway, the film is a horror film in the sense of most films of the time. Not actually scary at all. Quite good anyway, though.