Fun fun fun. I have no problem admitting that I still love cartoons. I’ve always been fascinated by the process of animation itself (still wondering how they get the characters’ lips to match with the voices) and many cartoons still make me laugh, and I’m not just talking about The Simpsons or South Park. Just the other day I watched an early Mickey Mouse cartoon called “Haunted House” (very similar to “The Skeleton Dance”), and many times when I visit home, I still love to sit down watch some Looney Tunes (in recent years, I’ve bought some of the DVD sets for my mom’s birthday and Mother’s Day). Hell, just last night I was roaring while watching Ren and Stimpy (the kind of “kid’s cartoon” that neither Nickelodeon nor any other network would ever broadcast under “children’s programming” today). For whatever reason, animation has flourished even further with my generation into more “adult” territory, as programs like the aforementioned South Park, Family Guy, and almost every show under Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim banner. Filmwise, audiences still seem to see animation as a children’s medium. There have been some degrees of success, like South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut and the highly-overlooked Beowulf, but there’s still some way to go. Maybe more progress will be made within the next few years, as films like Sin City and James Cameron’s forthcoming Avatar begin to bridge the gap between live action and cutting-edge animation.
Anyway, Winsor McCay, Mickey Mouse and Betty Boop made for quite an afternoon.
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Friday, December 5, 2008
"Citizen Kane" Review
-Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) - Ah, yes. AFI's # 1 greatest film and the movie that everyone passionate about films is encouraged to see by professors, critics and various experts.
Tuesday marked the second time for me to see Citizen Kane and I have to admit I groaned inside when our Dr. Hendricks announced we'd be watching it that day, so I was really quite shocked by how much more I enjoyed it this time, or at least how much more involved I felt. The first time I saw it--about two summers ago, I think--I was definitely taken aback by the filming techniques and cinematography, but something about it just kind of put me off about it, moreso when I discussed with my parents after we watched it together.
I was still impressed this week (it still looks more "modern" than many of its peers at the time), but I just felt so much more swept in by the storytelling; it's electric and ever-moving, filled with a sense of excitement over its discoveries (that's my critical blurb for the night, folks). One can imagine many filmmakers-to-be (Martin Scorsese came to my mind) watching this and sitting up, exclaiming "Holy $#%&! Where's a camera?" Random as this is, someone once remarked that Tim Burton's Batman movies were stylistically similar to Citizen Kane, and I can totally see that now; just watch the opening of Batman Returns and see what that shot over and through the large gate toward the Cobblepot mansion reminds you of. I'm sure there are many more examples out there...can any of you out there name some other movies that reference or are similar to Citizen Kane?
As I've discussed with a few other people, I thought that after seeing this and Touch of Evil Welles's storytelling was sometimes illogical or at least filled with plot-holes. Before I saw Citizen Kane again I thought, "well maybe it works in Kane's favor since it's a story largely told by various people, allowing for some inconsistencies," and maybe one could still defend this point. But seeing the movie again, I think that the story works well beyond that, largely because it doesn't have so many problematic plot-holes. The truth is that Citizen Kane has a purpose in conveying a message and telling a story, and it does both of these things very well with plenty of style and innovation to spare. My point is, for those who may not be so taken with the movie or are unsure about seeing it, Citizen Kane has a story to back up its visuals, and both are equally compelling.
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
"Dr. Caligari," "Rules" Reviews
-The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (Robert Wiene, 1920) – I saw this last year during summer school in my dormitory, having heard references to it in numerous books and articles, and was later aware of its influence on Rob Zombie’s music video for “Living Dead Girl,” which is a very detail-oriented homage to The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari. The film was still effective when I initially watched it, but one law of nature that seems to be becoming truer and truer is that movies really are better on a big screen, in the dark, with a good sound system to surround you without pummeling you (the case could be argued against this for other movies, but that’s an article for another time). In this light, it’s astounding to think that some people actually willingly watch movies on iPods (I echo my sentiments with David Lynch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKiIroiCvZ0).
But anyway, Caligari was of course much more effective in our class screening room. As much of a cliché as it may be, this is how movies were meant to be seen, and that’s why I yearn to see so many older movies on a big screen, and why going to the theater and NOT waiting for the DVD is so important. Caligari works better in a theater because it’s creepier (the perfectly complementary modern score will make you jump at least once) and, in a way, while watching it with others, it’s more hallucinatory in the sense of “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” The only thing that could possibly make the experience eerier would be to see it late at night, when it’s either close to or past your bedtime. But not too late—you’d have to get back to bed to have enough time to have Dr. Caligari and Cesare visit your dreams.
Speaking of Cesare…Have you ever seen another metahuman antagonist quite like him? The term--after listening to Dr. Hendricks and another student describe him--“balletic zombie” came to mind, even though he’s not undead—he’s just been asleep for most of his life. In a way, he’s almost like a cross between the western conception of a vampire, and of course, Frankenstein’s monster: he acts gracefully under his master’s instruction, but when he sees a woman—a creature he’s never seen before in his life, who literally slept through puberty—he’s completely and utterly inept. In this light, Conrad Veidt, the man who played Cesare, is in such marked contrast with Max Schreck as Count Orlok or any of Lon Chaney’s memorable character creations. Plus I love the fact that he’s in Casablanca…I’d definitely like to see how that transition occurred.
-Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939) – This one’s a little tricky for me to talk about; I watched the movie the entire time, I never nodded off, and I feel that I followed the story and its characters well enough, but my mind came and went from my head. Not from boredom, but from preoccupation, because the film is quite good (so good that some of the DVD’s special features consist of a professor commenting over certain scenes and shots, who’d spent years studying this film alone; he called Renoir’s multi-faceted, theatrical universe an “’and’ world” rather than a “’neither/or’ world”). I was just distracted. I definitely did not hate the film like the original audience who wanted to burn their movie theaters down upon the movie’s initial release, shortly before World War II broke out.
The movie reminds me somewhat of Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), what with both films’ tangled romantic webs, and Bergman’s film in turn is vaguely reminiscent of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the first two comparisons are rather unfair. Rules of the Game takes place in pre-World War II France, and is much more concerned with how we conduct ourselves in social circles rather than, say, the social circles themselves. It seems to say that although people are supposed to conduct themselves differently under different circumstances, the different conducts are much more similar than they appear. The famous “Hunt” sequence, for example, where various rabbits and pheasants are driven out to be shot and caught, seems to foreshadow the boisterous, rowdy behavior that will take place during the party in the movie’s 2nd half, as well as the fatal finale for one of the lead characters (on a technical/visceral level, “The Hunt” is very well-done and made me wonder how they made it look like the animals were dying—if in fact they were fake animals—and how they got that last rabbit’s amazing physical, bodily shudder as it breathes its last breath; although the two scenes are very far apart, “The Hunt” took me back to when Daniel Day-Lewis shoots the elk at the opening of Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans). I hate to spoil it for anyone, but the character in question who dies at the end is labeled by one of the other characters as a martyr, and as discussed in our class, Renoir seems to imply that these social “rules” can potentially kill those who try to stray from or ignore them outright.
Speaking of Renoir, he plays “Octave” in the film and winds up with a surprisingly meaty role for himself. Personally speaking, I often have conflicting feelings when it comes to directors acting in their own films. Cameos are great, I always love looking for those; everyone knows of Hitchcock’s cameos in his films by now, and Oliver Stone’s death as an army major in Platoon makes me laugh just thinking about it (telling that to my dad, he called me sick—and he may be right—but I insisted to him that it was Stone’s acting that I thought was so funny). Some people find him annoying, but from what I’ve seen so far, I’ve enjoyed watching Woody Allen in his films, as well as Ben Stiller in Zoolander and Tropic Thunder, both of which he directed. My friend Matthew introduced me to filmmaker Jaques Tati through the movie Parade, who to me was a logical step in this direction because he was a performer before he started directing, and furthermore, Parade was about…performers (now I really want to see Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot).
However, one director whom I was obsessed with for a time—M. Night Shyamalan—took The Director’s Cameo and started to go a little too far with it. It was all innocent enough at the beginning what with his small cameos as a doctor in The Sixth Sense and a potential criminal in Unbreakable; they were quick and painless appearances, and furthermore it was fun for me to be a dork and point out to others “that’s the guy who made this movie.” Then came Signs, a movie that, while it’s my favorite Shyamalan movie and I feel it’s the best of his movies I’ve seen so far, is still marred by plot holes and one small detail: Shyamalan cast himself as a supporting character. Not as a “bit” character, not as an extra who merely walks by the camera or even does something coolly amusing in the background, but as a character who has a major impact on the plot and the main characters. Ignoring the fact that for a moment that I know who M. Night Shyamalan is and what he looks like, the fact of the matter is that he’s just not a very good actor. He says he wants to act more—which is fine, I mean we all have our hobbies—and he wants to create more opportunities for Indian and foreign actors—admirable, I feel—but Signs would’ve benefited more from him casting another actor, any actor, someone whose sole job is acting. People may point the finger at Francis Ford Coppola for casting his daughter Sofia as Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part III—and for the record, I do think he should’ve gone out and found another actress, and I wish that the originally-cast Winona Ryder hadn’t fallen terribly ill, as her presence probably would’ve aided the film at least a little bit—but at least Coppola wouldn’t have cast himself as Don Altobello if anything had happened to Eli Wallach (at least I think he wouldn’t have…). It’s a glaring blunder in Signs because there comes a pivotal scene when Mel Gibson’s character confronts Shyamalan’s character, and from Gibson’s end, the characters should obviously be experiencing an emotionally-charged moment with boiling tensions dictated by a past history, but judging from Shyamalan’s character’s blank wall reaction, the characters may as well be talking about the new Lowe’s that opened in town at 6 in the morning. His cameo in The Village wasn’t as bad, but it still came off as self-indulgent. I haven’t yet seen Lady In the Water or the horribly-titled The Happening, and I don’t think that he makes an appearance in the latter, but his part in the former sounds even worse as he plays—according to what I’ve heard—a writer whose work will be significant to Earth in the future. Shyamalan has a strong visual sense and interesting ideas, but it sounds like he needs to negotiate with his ego in order to take his movies back to a level of fine quality where they used to be.
Anyway, all of that said, I thought Renoir performed very well, and fit right in with the rest of the narrative.
But anyway, Caligari was of course much more effective in our class screening room. As much of a cliché as it may be, this is how movies were meant to be seen, and that’s why I yearn to see so many older movies on a big screen, and why going to the theater and NOT waiting for the DVD is so important. Caligari works better in a theater because it’s creepier (the perfectly complementary modern score will make you jump at least once) and, in a way, while watching it with others, it’s more hallucinatory in the sense of “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?” The only thing that could possibly make the experience eerier would be to see it late at night, when it’s either close to or past your bedtime. But not too late—you’d have to get back to bed to have enough time to have Dr. Caligari and Cesare visit your dreams.
Speaking of Cesare…Have you ever seen another metahuman antagonist quite like him? The term--after listening to Dr. Hendricks and another student describe him--“balletic zombie” came to mind, even though he’s not undead—he’s just been asleep for most of his life. In a way, he’s almost like a cross between the western conception of a vampire, and of course, Frankenstein’s monster: he acts gracefully under his master’s instruction, but when he sees a woman—a creature he’s never seen before in his life, who literally slept through puberty—he’s completely and utterly inept. In this light, Conrad Veidt, the man who played Cesare, is in such marked contrast with Max Schreck as Count Orlok or any of Lon Chaney’s memorable character creations. Plus I love the fact that he’s in Casablanca…I’d definitely like to see how that transition occurred.
-Rules of the Game (Jean Renoir, 1939) – This one’s a little tricky for me to talk about; I watched the movie the entire time, I never nodded off, and I feel that I followed the story and its characters well enough, but my mind came and went from my head. Not from boredom, but from preoccupation, because the film is quite good (so good that some of the DVD’s special features consist of a professor commenting over certain scenes and shots, who’d spent years studying this film alone; he called Renoir’s multi-faceted, theatrical universe an “’and’ world” rather than a “’neither/or’ world”). I was just distracted. I definitely did not hate the film like the original audience who wanted to burn their movie theaters down upon the movie’s initial release, shortly before World War II broke out.
The movie reminds me somewhat of Ingmar Bergman’s Smiles of a Summer Night (1955), what with both films’ tangled romantic webs, and Bergman’s film in turn is vaguely reminiscent of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, but the first two comparisons are rather unfair. Rules of the Game takes place in pre-World War II France, and is much more concerned with how we conduct ourselves in social circles rather than, say, the social circles themselves. It seems to say that although people are supposed to conduct themselves differently under different circumstances, the different conducts are much more similar than they appear. The famous “Hunt” sequence, for example, where various rabbits and pheasants are driven out to be shot and caught, seems to foreshadow the boisterous, rowdy behavior that will take place during the party in the movie’s 2nd half, as well as the fatal finale for one of the lead characters (on a technical/visceral level, “The Hunt” is very well-done and made me wonder how they made it look like the animals were dying—if in fact they were fake animals—and how they got that last rabbit’s amazing physical, bodily shudder as it breathes its last breath; although the two scenes are very far apart, “The Hunt” took me back to when Daniel Day-Lewis shoots the elk at the opening of Michael Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans). I hate to spoil it for anyone, but the character in question who dies at the end is labeled by one of the other characters as a martyr, and as discussed in our class, Renoir seems to imply that these social “rules” can potentially kill those who try to stray from or ignore them outright.
Speaking of Renoir, he plays “Octave” in the film and winds up with a surprisingly meaty role for himself. Personally speaking, I often have conflicting feelings when it comes to directors acting in their own films. Cameos are great, I always love looking for those; everyone knows of Hitchcock’s cameos in his films by now, and Oliver Stone’s death as an army major in Platoon makes me laugh just thinking about it (telling that to my dad, he called me sick—and he may be right—but I insisted to him that it was Stone’s acting that I thought was so funny). Some people find him annoying, but from what I’ve seen so far, I’ve enjoyed watching Woody Allen in his films, as well as Ben Stiller in Zoolander and Tropic Thunder, both of which he directed. My friend Matthew introduced me to filmmaker Jaques Tati through the movie Parade, who to me was a logical step in this direction because he was a performer before he started directing, and furthermore, Parade was about…performers (now I really want to see Les Vacances de Monsieur Hulot).
However, one director whom I was obsessed with for a time—M. Night Shyamalan—took The Director’s Cameo and started to go a little too far with it. It was all innocent enough at the beginning what with his small cameos as a doctor in The Sixth Sense and a potential criminal in Unbreakable; they were quick and painless appearances, and furthermore it was fun for me to be a dork and point out to others “that’s the guy who made this movie.” Then came Signs, a movie that, while it’s my favorite Shyamalan movie and I feel it’s the best of his movies I’ve seen so far, is still marred by plot holes and one small detail: Shyamalan cast himself as a supporting character. Not as a “bit” character, not as an extra who merely walks by the camera or even does something coolly amusing in the background, but as a character who has a major impact on the plot and the main characters. Ignoring the fact that for a moment that I know who M. Night Shyamalan is and what he looks like, the fact of the matter is that he’s just not a very good actor. He says he wants to act more—which is fine, I mean we all have our hobbies—and he wants to create more opportunities for Indian and foreign actors—admirable, I feel—but Signs would’ve benefited more from him casting another actor, any actor, someone whose sole job is acting. People may point the finger at Francis Ford Coppola for casting his daughter Sofia as Mary Corleone in The Godfather Part III—and for the record, I do think he should’ve gone out and found another actress, and I wish that the originally-cast Winona Ryder hadn’t fallen terribly ill, as her presence probably would’ve aided the film at least a little bit—but at least Coppola wouldn’t have cast himself as Don Altobello if anything had happened to Eli Wallach (at least I think he wouldn’t have…). It’s a glaring blunder in Signs because there comes a pivotal scene when Mel Gibson’s character confronts Shyamalan’s character, and from Gibson’s end, the characters should obviously be experiencing an emotionally-charged moment with boiling tensions dictated by a past history, but judging from Shyamalan’s character’s blank wall reaction, the characters may as well be talking about the new Lowe’s that opened in town at 6 in the morning. His cameo in The Village wasn’t as bad, but it still came off as self-indulgent. I haven’t yet seen Lady In the Water or the horribly-titled The Happening, and I don’t think that he makes an appearance in the latter, but his part in the former sounds even worse as he plays—according to what I’ve heard—a writer whose work will be significant to Earth in the future. Shyamalan has a strong visual sense and interesting ideas, but it sounds like he needs to negotiate with his ego in order to take his movies back to a level of fine quality where they used to be.
Anyway, all of that said, I thought Renoir performed very well, and fit right in with the rest of the narrative.
No time like the present...
...so let's get started and see how this goes. The whole blog thing is totally new to me, so any comments or tips are much appreciated, thanks.
This is part of an assignment for my Film History class, in which we watch movies and have to write about them on this here dang ol' blog, but maybe I'll rant about other things if I feel like it (I need to write more anyway), so drop in once in a while, why don't you?
Here are two movie reviews to help us get our sea-legs...
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