28 Film Discussion Threads Later

[Irish]

I can't snuggle up to the idea that a movie that's essentially about loneliness, frustration, and depression is rendered invalid because it examines these things.

I agree with most of your other points-- but personally, there's a certain exhaustion at play here too. These topics aren't inherently bad or uninteresting but they are well trod ground. We've had nearly a century of it. Sherwood Anderson, Ernest Hemingway, Something Happened, Eric Rohmer, The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit, Belle du Jour, Woody Allen, Microserfs, White Noise. &c.

To that enormous canon, Zach Braff is going to add special meaning? It's hard not to roll one's eyes.

[Sycophant]

To that enormous canon, Zach Braff is going to add special meaning?

Maybe he could? Can no one from here on out? Did the book close on this in the 90s?

[Spun Lepton]

Just remembered a few more.

Monty Python > Red Dwarf > Father Ted > That Mitchell & Webb Look > The IT Crowd > Black Books > The Young Ones > Garth Marenghi's Darkplace > Spaced > Black Adder > Bottom > Mr. Bean > The Office > Faulty Towers > The Mighty Boosh > Hyperdrive > The Comic Strip

Edit: Remembered another one!

[Izzy Black]

I think Rabin's critique is still the most damning and relevant, but while the film doesn't break any ground, there are some funny bits in there, I thought. I also liked the Zero 7 drug sequence. It reminded me a little of The Rules of Attraction (a much better film).

[MadMan]

Mara's posts remind me that I have not viewed too many Shakespeare adaptations. Or read enough of the Bard's plays.

Recently I viewed The Birdcage. It was funny touching and wonderful. Too bad Nathan Lane and Robin Williams only made one film together.

[Mara]

Hoffman's A Midsummer Night's Dream is serviceable. It's not going to knock your socks off, but it's not annoying enough to turn anyone away. The cast ranges from excellent to, you know, fine.

Actually, the bookends of the film are pretty good. Despite the inexplicable need to change the location from Greece to Italy (when you spend 75% of the story in the middle of the woods, why bother?) the in-town scenes are visually interesting and strong.

But everything in the forest is a bit of a mess. The soundstages look cheap and silly. The fairies look extremely silly. The special effects? Silly.

The fact is, there are things we are willing to overlook in a stage performance that you can't get away with on film. For example: plastic wings, pasted-on plastic horns, pounds of body glitter, etc. But try as I might, I couldn't think of a good way to fix these problems. CGI may have helped a little. But can they really film three-quarters of the movie outside in an actual forest, in the dark? What, on film, will look realistic to make a dozen people into believable fairies?

After much thought, I think I'm going to have to agree with a thread that Alex Weitzman did on RT, like a decade ago, when he said that the best way to do this play (or was it The Tempest?) would be high-quality animation. He mentioned Miyazaki specifically. I spent several hours thinking about it, and I became nearly sick thinking about how much I would love that. Someone do that? Please?

I know I saw this one in theaters, but I don't think I've seen it since then. There are several actors in it that I now particularly like, but who I didn't know at the time, includingAnna Friel, Dominic West, David Strathairn, and Sam Rockwell. In fact, given how little I remembered about the film, I was pleased when a scene showed up that I had forgotten, but which I now recall was very moving to me at the time: where Rockwell (as Thisbe) tires of being mocked and suddenly plays his final scene in P&T completely straight, and gives a bravura performance that deepens and adds interest to his whole character. It's a perfect example of how to add pathos to a comic character.

Also of note: Kevin Kline made an excellent Bottom. He found a balance between being pathetic and being a deeply human, empathetic person. Very well done.

[Wryan]

So got the syllabus to my first graduate film studies class: Hollywood Classic Cinema. The screening list is not bad.

Rouben Mamoulian. Queen Christina (MGM 1933)
Josef von Sternberg. The Scarlet Empress (Paramount 1934)
Gregory La Cava. My Man Godfrey (Universal 1936)
John Ford. The Grapes of Wrath (20th Century Fox 1940)
Frank Capra. Meet John Doe (Warner Bros. 1941)
Preston Sturges. Sullivan’s Travels (Paramount 1941)
Alfred Hitchcock. Suspicion (RKO 1941)
William Wyler. The Heiress (Paramount 1949)
Billy Wilder. Double Indemnity (Paramount 1944)
Howard Hawks. The Big Sleep (Warner Bros. 1946)
Orson Welles. The Lady from Shanghai (Columbia 1946)
Gene Kelly & Stanley Donen, Singin’ in the Rain (MGM 1951)
George Cukor. A Star is Born (Warner Bros. 1954)
Elia Kazan. A Face in the Crowd (Warner Bros. 1957)

I've seen a good chunk of these, and might gain a newfound appreciation for the musicals thanks to the class. Some I haven't seen that I've wanted to, like the Kazan, Welles, Sturges. Should be a good class.

Nice list! Kazan's Face in the Crowd knocked my socks off.

[Morris Schæffer]

http://www.avforums.com/news/are-the...-blu-ray.10599

Star Wars OT theatrical versions quite possibly coming to Blu-Ray. Would be even cooler if they were 4K releases as a 4K restoration has already been done.

[Briare]

Would you guys recommend the mini series version of Scenes from a Marriage or the US theatrical cut? Got it from the library but ended up being too busy for it now its overdue and I can only squeeze in one or the other.

Thoughts?

[dreamdead]

I've only ever done the miniseries of the Bergman set, but it's phenomenal. I don't know how effective its amassing power would be trimmed by 2/3.

[Spinal]

I've only ever done the miniseries of the Bergman set, but it's phenomenal. I don't know how effective its amassing power would be trimmed by 2/3.

Only seen the theatrical cut and it certainly gets the job done as well.

[Irish]

http://www.avforums.com/news/are-the...-blu-ray.10599

Star Wars OT theatrical versions quite possibly coming to Blu-Ray. Would be even cooler if they were 4K releases as a 4K restoration has already been done.

Debunked in various places as bullshit.

Disney does not own the rights to Star Wars (ANH). Fox does.

[baby doll]

In principal, I'm on the side of the people who want to see the version of the film released in 1977 (just as I'd like to see the 1982 version of Blade Runner), but I'm still perplexed by people who get really pissed off about Lucas' various alterations, as if he were desecrating a masterpiece. I mean, I loved it when I was eleven, but surely no amount of technical downgrading would suffice to make it a great movie when the characters are scarcely less plastic than the action figures based on them.

[Irish]

Doesn't the original Blade Runner still exist? I was under the impression the DVD/Blu special editions or whatever included all versions of the film (1982, 1992, 2007, work print, whatever).

As for Star Wars-- serious inquiry: How much character do you need in genre pictures?

[Mara]

Zeffirelli's The Taming of the Shrew is a beautiful film. It is a well-acted, thoughtful, visually striking film.

But can it be a great film when the source play is such a problem? It's very difficult to talk about The Taming of the Shrew without talking about misogyny, like we can't talk about Othello without talking about racism, or The Merchant of Venice without talking about antisemitism. All three of the problem characters in these plays are not one-note stereotypes, but fully-fleshed people with good and bad qualities, and dreams and ambitions and flaws. Othello is the hero of his story, although a tragic hero who dies by his own flaws. Shylock is the antagonist of his story, but is the most interesting person in the entire cast. And I have no idea if Katherine is the protagonist or the antagonist of her own play. But even given these interesting, complex people, there are really troubling aspects to the stories.

And I think it matters that we delineate whether or not a work of art (a play, in this case) is misogynistic/racist/antisemitic, or if Mr. Shakespeare himself is. We can look at his other works for answers. When he talks about Judaism in other plays, it is often casually (though not violently) antisemitic. He may have been a little more progressive than his counterparts, but he was still a man of his time and "Christian" is often used as shorthand for a good person, and "Jew" as... not. Regarding race, in almost all of his plays, Shakespeare mentions that beauty is pale-skinned and ugliness is dark. Desdemona loves Othello despite his skin. But that's pretty much the scope of Shakespeare's racism; he doesn't portray dark-skinned people as being bad people, but he makes plenty of aesthetic judgments. Othello doesn't kill his wife because of his race, but because he is a human person consumed with jealousy.

But scholars are endlessly baffled by The Taming of the Shrew because the misogyny seems to come out of nowhere. In every other play, a woman who speaks her mind and fights for her own happiness is lauded and rewarded. Petruchio says:

"I will be master of what is mine own.
She is my goods, my chattels; she is my house,
My household stuff, my field, my barn,
My horse, my ox, my ass, my anything."

He is not the first or last man in a Shakespeare play to say such a thing. But he is the only one who is (at least nominally) not a villain.

Juliet's father says:

"An you be mine, I’ll give you to my friend.
An you be not, hang, beg, starve, die in the streets,
For, by my soul, I’ll ne'er acknowledge thee,
Nor what is mine shall never do thee good."

But Juliet's father is an antagonist, and he is punished for this.

Hermia's father says:

"As she is mine, I may dispose of her—
Which shall be either to this gentleman
Or to her death—according to our law
Immediately provided in that case."

Again-- A BAD GUY.

But Petruchio gets exactly what he wants at the end of the play, and I think we are supposed to be happy about it. Where did this come from? Almost every production I've seen of The Taming of the Shrew deals with this issue by subverting it somehow. I've seen it done where Kate learns not to be subject to her husband, but that her life is easier if she pretends that she is. I've seen it done where Kate is the one who "tames" Petruchio by learning how to manipulate him to get what she wants. The most successful productions I've seen toss the idea of a happy ending together but is about two cantankerous personalities who fall in love and find a way to live together like a team instead of tearing each other apart.

I have an unusual relationship with Zeffirelli's film because I think it was the first Shakespeare film I ever saw. My parents had taped it on VHS off television and I first watched it when I was 8 or 9. I watched it dozens of times over the next five years, trying to puzzle it apart. I loved the feisty Katherine and her screaming matches with Petruchio. But even as a child, I found the end baffling. Anyway, when I was in my early teens our VCR ate the tape and so I haven't seen it in twenty years.

I remembered it as being firmly on the side of "Petruchio wins because Katherine is awful" side of the argument, mostly because of my clear memories of the final scene, where Katherine's final speech ("men rule and women drool"-- direct quote) is played entirely without irony. But Zeffirelli's take is actually much more complex than that, based on several interesting narrative choices:

*Bianca is shown as being just as antagonistic and unpleasant as Katherine, when nobody is looking. She pretends to be sweetness and light around her father and suitors.
*Petruchio is shown as being a brute. He is a belching, dirty man with no manners. Therefore, his brutal actions are not shown as being admirable.
*The script made deep cuts in Petruchio's behavior towards Katherine. Although he denies her dinner on her wedding night, they cut all the other scenes showing her begging for food as she starves over the next several days. In fact, the camera lingers on bowls of fruit, etc. placed around, so we can assume Kate is eating. They also completely cut the fact that he is keeping her from sleeping, and we see her slumbering in bed a couple of times. By the way, these are traditional brain-washing tactics: nutrient deprivation, sleep deprivation, and love-bombing. No wonder Kate is confused between the sun and the moon by the end.
*They also added a certain amount of tit-for-tat where Kate gets back at Petruchio. She knocks him out cold at one point, and then takes his household away from him (charming his servants, replacing his filth with her own items, and generally running things.)
*The play is coy about whether or not Petruchio and Kate are sharing a bed while warring with each other. Per this film, they are not.

The trickiness of the play aside, Zeffirelli's production is excellent. He makes great use of space; the actors run all over the sets, sometimes destroying them, and are pushing over tables and shattering chairs, climbing walls, and clambering over rooftops. Both Taylor and Burton give physically impressive performances.

In everything else, however, Burton outshines Taylor. Though she is good at the physical stuff and has an expressive face, Taylor fumbles a little bit with the language, and every line comes out in the same shrill, pinched tone. She is, however, extraordinarily pretty. This might be the height of her prettiness. She is so pretty it made my teeth hurt.

Burton is a perfect Petruchio. He is larger than life; all flailing arms and bellowing voice. He manages to be charming despite Petruchio's flaws, wandering into downright seductive a few times. His personality is to boisterous, so bon-vivant, that he takes up all the air in the room. No matter what insanity is going on with the plot, he always looks like he is having a delightful time.

Long story short (too late!) I wouldn't hesitate to call this one of the best Shakespeare-to-film adaptations out there if I didn't have such ambivalent feelings about the source play itself.

The original tagline on the poster for this film was "A motion picture for every man who ever gave the back of his hand to his beloved... and for every woman who deserved it. Which takes in a lot of people!" So let's just think about that.

[Mara]

Total side note: Burton drunkenly sings out several snatches of songs during the film, and I wasn't able to catch all of them, but at least one was stolen from Twelfth Night. I wonder if they went raiding in other plays for the rest.

[Dead & Messed Up]

In principal, I'm on the side of the people who want to see the version of the film released in 1977 (just as I'd like to see the 1982 version of Blade Runner), but I'm still perplexed by people who get really pissed off about Lucas' various alterations, as if he were desecrating a masterpiece. I mean, I loved it when I was eleven, but surely no amount of technical downgrading would suffice to make it a great movie when the characters are scarcely less plastic than the action figures based on them.

Consider the emotional connections we forge with our first favorite toys, or the first car we own, or the first book that hits us in the solar plexus, the album that requires us to sit down, take a moment, and just listen, man. And yes, I'm equating material possessions with artworks, because I had that teddy bear, and that dodgy '84 Chevy Celebrity, and I still own that torn paperback of Michael Crichton's Sphere (I know, Sphere), and Pink Floyd's The Wall, and while I know that there's no shortage of better toys, cars, books, and albums, if someone came out and said they were gonna improve the sound chip in that teddy bear's lullaby or take a knife to Crichton's purple exposition (and even worse, pretend like the original was never there at all), I would express outrage. I would tell that person to screw off before I punch them in the kidney.

[Lazlo]

Consider the emotional connections we forge with our first favorite toys, or the first car we own, or the first book that hits us in the solar plexus, the album that requires us to sit down, take a moment, and just listen, man. And yes, I'm equating material possessions with artworks, because I had that teddy bear, and that dodgy '84 Chevy Celebrity, and I still own that torn paperback of Michael Crichton's Sphere (I know, Sphere), and Pink Floyd's The Wall, and while I know that there's no shortage of better toys, cars, books, and albums, if someone came out and said they were gonna improve the sound chip in that teddy bear's lullaby or take a knife to Crichton's purple exposition (and even worse, pretend like the original was never there at all), I would express outrage. I would tell that person to screw off before I punch them in the kidney.

Not to mention the historical value of preserving what sci-fi blockbusters looked like in the 1970s and 80s, the Star Wars trilogy being the most culturally impactful of them all.

[Dead & Messed Up]

Not to mention the historical value of preserving what sci-fi blockbusters looked like in the 1970s and 80s, the Star Wars trilogy being the most culturally impactful of them all.

Seriously.

[Sycophant]

As for Star Wars-- serious inquiry: How much character do you need in genre pictures?

Serious answer: A lot.

I mean, if they're gonna be any good.

[Mara]

It occurred to me that Kiss Me, Kate would fit in the narrow parameters of films that I'm looking over. But I don't feel motivated to rewatch it, as I seem to recall it was stupid.

[Mara]

I'm sure you're all sick of this Shakespeare stuff, but...

I'm starting Czinner's As You Like It and can barely keep up with how thoroughly they're chopping the script. The unwritten rule for Shakespeare to film adaptations is that you can excise as many lines as you need, or rearrange them, or change the chronology slightly, but you can't add anything. Except, for some reason, having characters shouting each other's names.

But this film is changing lines, taking out speeches and substituting in abridged or simplified language, and sometimes changing the entire meaning.

Tell me what the point is of changing the exchange:

CELIA: But is all this for your father?

ROSALIND: No, some of it is for my child's father.

[Meaning: she has fallen in love, and is pining for the man she wants to marry.]

To:

CELIA: But is all this for your father?

ROSALIND: No, some of it is for my father's child.

Meaning... what? Herself? Or did she just flub the line?

[Mara]

I'm not going to be able to finish. Olivier was slumming it in this nonsense.

[Winston*]

The original tagline on the poster for this film was "A motion picture for every man who ever gave the back of his hand to his beloved... and for every woman who deserved it. Which takes in a lot of people!" So let's just think about that.

Holy shit.

[Mysterious Dude]

Star Wars has great characters.