Posted in Culture, Movies, Television, tagged apocalypse, games, Movies, pop culture, television, zombies on 14 Aug 2012| 2 Comments »
And speaking of the Apocalypse, what is it with zombies, anyway?
We all know that the Apocalypse begins with zombies, (You all did know that, didn’t you? I mean, Rev. 11:11 is pretty clear on the subject; if Revelation can be clear on anything, that is) so I understand why the faithful are always alert to the sudden appearance of the shambling undead. I mean, they’re sort of an End of Days Early Warning System (EDAWS). See a zombie? Better pack your spiritual bags. (more…)
Posted in Movies, tagged deja vu, French cinema, Movies, Sophie Marceau on 07 Aug 2012| 2 Comments »
I got a severe case of déjà vu today. It lasted 89 minutes.
I was getting ready for my workout. I pulled up a “Anthony Zimmer” from my Instant Queue and got going.
A woman goes into a restaurant. She waits. She’s being stood up. A messenger enters, sees her, and gives her an envelope. She reads it, crumples it, burns it, and leaves.
I knew I’d seen this movie before. I knew what she was going to do next, I knew where it was going, but I also knew that I’d never seen this movie before. And it wasn’t just the Bernard Hermann inspired score (equal parts “North By Northwest” and “Vertigo”) or the scenes of Paris and the Riviera that I’d seen in a dozen movies from “To Catch a Thief” to “Ronin”. No, I’d have remembered Sophie Marceau in this movie. I remember Sophie Marceau in every movie I’ve seen her in (call me crazy). The damned thing was…I couldn’t remember how it ended. (more…)
Posted in Movies, tagged AFI, BFI, Citizen Kane, Greatest films, Hitchcock, Movies, Vertigo on 01 Aug 2012| Leave a Comment »
This just in from the “Are You Freaking Kidding Me?” column…
A recent poll conducted by the British Film Institute has placed Alfred Hitchcock’s “Vertigo” on top, as the “greatest film of all time.” The classic thriller unseats the long-reigning “Citizen Kane” from the #1 spot it virtually owned for the past 50 years.
I say again: Are you freaking kidding me?
Don’t get me wrong; I’m a big fan of the Hitch, but “Vertigo”? How can any film be deemed the greatest of all time when it has Kim Novak somnambulating across the screen like a Valium-popping golem. It’s ridiculous. There are plenty of Hitch’s movies I’d put up there with “Kane”—”Rear Window” to name the first that comes to mind—but never in a thousand years would I have put “Vertigo” up there.
How could “846 critics, programmers, academics and distributors” have gotten it so desperately wrong? It has to be mentioned that “Vertigo” has rated highly in the BFI’s poll for a while, climbing from 7th, to 4th, to 2nd, and finally, now, to 1st place over the past 20 years. So, if nothing else, at least these misguided muppets are consistent. Though why “Vertigo” should be the only one of Hitch’s 45 opera to break the top ten is a complete and utter mystery (“Psycho” rests down at #35, and no other title of his is to be found on the list).
Blimey!
I will say this, though: taken as a whole, the BFI list is much more interesting than the AFI’s, and I would recommend any fan of film to pop on over and jot down a few of the more esoteric titles. Take a chance on Lang’s “Metropolis” (one of my personal favorites) or Kurosawa’s “Rashomon” or De Sica’s “Bicycle Thieves,” which took the top spot back in the poll’s early days.
k
Posted in Movies, tagged adaptations, books, Daniel Craig, Dragon Tattoo, Movies, Noomi Rapace, novels, Rooney Mara, screenplay, Stieg Larsson on 25 Jul 2012| 3 Comments »
Last night we screened the American version of “The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo.” I was disappointed, but not unexpectedly so.
Spoiler alert: If you haven’t seen the movie already, skip this post.
We read the books (in hardcopy, of course) years ago, burning through the trilogy in record time (for me…I’m a slow reader). While I didn’t find them flawless, I found them much more entertaining than Dan Brown or any of the other modern “thriller” genre. Personally, I found the whole Blomkvist-as-Babe-Magnet a bit tiresome, and felt Larsson intruding into the story with every conquest his hero made.
We did enjoy them, though, and when the Swedish movies came out, we snapped them up, screened them, and loved them.
In adapting a novel to the screen, you have to change something; you have to. Many people just don’t get this, and they’re angry when the screen version doesn’t match up with the novel, point for point, like a DNA profile. Every adaptation has to drop some elements, combine others, and sometimes insert new elements in translating from word to picture.
The Swedish versions did this perfectly. They dropped everything that was unnecessary (like the Blomkvist-as-Babe-Magnet wish-fulfillment), collapsed time, merged some ancillary characters, and told a story that was tighter, leaner, meaner, and more compelling than the original. Not bad.
Then, because Americans can’t be bothered to read subtitles, we made a version of the same movie, in English. It wasn’t atrocious, and if I’d seen it first, I’d have been less disappointed, but here were my complaints:
Not all was less than the original. Some of the Kubrik-esque rolling shots were quite effective, the soundtrack (apart from the opening credits) was effective, and Duck Li…I mean Daniel Craig was a more animated, less cryptic Blomkvist.
k
Posted in Movies, tagged Characters, Movies, Writing on 23 Jun 2012| Leave a Comment »
One look at the cast list and we knew we had to see it, but I have to say, this is probably not a movie everyone will love as much as we did. And no matter how many superlatives I throw its way, for some folks (like many with us in the theater today) this movie will somehow, for some reason, miss the mark, fall flat, or just make them go “Hunh?”
For my money, though, it was brilliant. It was a perfect piece of craftsmanship. The acting, the writing, the cinematography, the art, the direction, it was all superb, absurd, and totally hilarious.
But humor is such a subjective thing. Ilene and I were laughing out loud through the whole movie–every shot, every scene, every performance was…just…a little bit…off center, over the top, surreal, comic. Every shot had some little bit of business in the background. Every scene had just a little bit of business as an aside. Every line, every angle, every bit of costume and set design was thoroughly thought out, and it was all both spot on for the period (1965) and subtly heightened, exaggerated, and lampooned.
This is, I think it fair to say, a movie goer’s movie. You have to have an appreciation for the craft to get many of the jokes, whether it’s the nearly clumsy camera work (each tracking and pan shot started with a little jerk and went a little wide of the mark at the end) or the nods to other movies (I dare you to watch the flood and not think of “The Shining”).
But even if you aren’t a devotee of the cinema, I still recommend it. The deadpan performances, the stiff-limbed gestures, all evocative of a school play or church pageant, are there for laughs, and the characters that populate the story are unique, memorable, and priceless. When Bill Murray comes into the room, half naked, bottle of wine in hand, goes into the closet, takes out an axe, and announces, “I’ll be out back,” it’s a marvel of understated comedy. And the movie is chock-a-block with moments like that.
See it.
Kurt R.A. Giambastiani 