I'll admit it -- I'm fairly sensitive about this category. Mostly because I think a lot of the movies that take place in space don't really have anything to do with what I could define as science fiction, which is the exploration of how technology and science impacts the human condition. By that definition, movies like The Fifth Element aren't really science fiction, but simply action movies set in space, while movies not set in space but dealing with science issues, such as Oryx and Crake and Donnie Darko (because of the time travel elements) would be science fiction. But Hollywood tends to blur this line a lot, so I won't get too uptight about it.
Primer
This movie is the little indie film that could.
Children of Men
This movie was directed by Alfonso Cuaron and stars Clive Owen. That is reason enough for me to like it. However, it has a lot of standout elements. Cuaron really knows how to film a particular look masterfully -- Great Expectations looks always perpetually shrouded in the sunshine-drenched gardens of memory. Y Tu Mama Tambien also sort of looks that way. In this movie, the future dystopian look of a crumbling society where law and order have essentially fallen by the wayside and humanity is consumed by despair is capured perfectly. The look is further accentuated by the long newsreel type shots and the attention to detail -- the setting speaks for itself, instead of having everything spelled out. It's a very stark world of grey bombed out buildings, concentration camps, and urban chaos. It looks very real. The long scenes serve to build up tension and reinforce the drama. Long scenes are rare nowadays, because Hollywood just assumes that the average viewer has an attention span of only five seconds.
Special effects are integrated seamlessly into the movie, instead of being the sole reason to watch the movie. The acting is superb. It's a classy, intelligent science fiction movie.
The Fifth Element
The thing I like most about this movie is that it doesn't take itself too seriously. I hated it the first time I saw it, thinking that it was a pile of crap, but upon watching it again later, I realized the whole thing is sort of an elaborate running joke and that you're not expected to take it seriously. Seen from this viewpoint, the movie is wildly entertaining. Yves Saint-Laurent designed the costumes, which seem to be predominately planned around the color orange. The techno opera scene is a remix of the Mad Scene from Lucia di Lamamour, with Sarah Brightman's voice. Even Tricky has a small role as Zorg's main henchman. There's some sort of Stargate-esque plot involving aliens and ancient Egyptians, but the entire first half of the movie is basically an opera comique until they actually arive at Phloston Paridise and Bruce Willis is allowed to bust out his guns and go all commando. But it's great fun, all around.
Tuesday, June 16, 2009
Friday, June 12, 2009
Film School Dropouts: Trouble in Paradise
It's easy to portray fantastical situations, faraway lands and times, heroes and villains and people whom a normal person would never normally meet. It's a lot harder to portray convincingly the tiny frustrations and desperation of normal, everyday people. The subject of suburban distopia will come up again, but here is a sample of three films that deal with this issue.
Ghost World
This should have been a really hard movie to make, considering how difficult it is to like the main characters sometimes. Enid and Becky are two disaffected girls who, upon graduating from high school, vow to not do the same boring thing everyone else is doing, and instead to get an apartment and find jobs. They also play varieties of cruel pranks on the losers of their town, not realizing, of course, that they are headed down to the road to join them in a few years. Through one of these jokes, they meet Seymour, a bookish bachelor with a large, meticulous jazz vinyl collection, and Enid, sensing a kindred soul, becomes more and more involved in his life. Becky, on the other hand, is still proceeding with their plan to get an apartment, and is becoming increasingly impatient with Enid's wasting time with Seymour and inability to keep a job. The two girls begin to grow apart, and Enid is soon forced to confront who she is and who she wants to be.
However, this is a somewhat timeless film despite its portrayal of adolescent despair, for as people outgrow the ability to identify with Enid, they can still identify with Seymour, the shy, jaded dork ("You think it's healthy to obsessively collect stuff? Can't connect with people, so you fill your life with things..."). And Thora Birch, pre-American Beauty, does a wonderful, heartwrenching job of playing the cynical, callous Enid and all her insecurities -- her experimentation with different aesthetics of clothes that no one understands, her sarcastic treatment of customers that gets her fired from her concession stand job, and her ultimate loneliness when she realizes that everyone she loves has grown apart from her. This is a very truthful story about one girl trying to find out what she wants to be instead of who she doesn't want to be, and if the truth is ugly sometimes, then so be it. I should also mention that Seymour is played to perfection by Steve Buscemi, and Scarlett Johannsen, speaking as if she hadn't yet had voice training, plays the zeroing-in-to-normalcy Becky.
Revolutionary Road
Speaking of American Beauty...
This movie had a lot going for it -- Sam Mendes directed it, and brought along Thomas Neuman, also from American Beauty, to write the score. It had the cinematographer from No Country for Old Men. It even stars Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet. How could this movie suck?
While American Beauty may have been better in that the technical aspects of the film stood out more, I think this one is the better movie overall, not because it's a lot darker (which it is), but because it feels more truthful. The performances are all top-notch. Winslet's role is that of April, a failed actress turned housewife who clings to a fanciful idea that she and her husband Frank are not destined for the obscurity and mediocrity that plagues the people around them. Somehow, they are special, they are destined for something greater. Her eventual revelation is that Frank is not the man she thought he was -- and that she doesn't love him. In fact, she loathes him. She thinks he's an inexcusable coward. Dicaprio gets to play Frank, who must live with the reality of all his failures.
Despite its idyllic setting, it is a dark and brooding movie that does manage to convey the tone of quiet desperation extremely well.
Donnie Darko
Everyone's seen this movie by now, so I probably don't have to explain the plot. I was introduced to the movie by a friend who described it as "a darker version of American Beauty". And it's true. The movie is filled with a sense of foreboding, probably because most of it never actually happened -- or did it? Donnie is given over to sulking and fits of unprovoked hostility, saved from being a completely unsympathetic character by Jake Gyllenhall's dark dreamy eyes that seem to portend a deeper meaning, a redeeming layer of fear and frustration and despair beneath the surface. The movie is gorgeously filmed and has the dreamy atmosphere of unreality, which fits in very well with the events of the movie. A few of the small ridiculousnesses of suburban life get stirred to the surface and revealed for all to see, but unlike Ghost World, they're only backdrop events to the real story -- loneliness, powerlessness, and fear. It's darkly humorous and sad, ultimately the story of a boy so overwhelmed by his powerlessness over the things in life which intimidate him that he invents an entire alternate future in his head that allows him to do things he would not normally do in real life; or, in an even more unbelievable turn of events, he is actually given the power to travel through time and is able to influence events, and so sacrifices himself in order to save his girlfriend.
Ghost World
This should have been a really hard movie to make, considering how difficult it is to like the main characters sometimes. Enid and Becky are two disaffected girls who, upon graduating from high school, vow to not do the same boring thing everyone else is doing, and instead to get an apartment and find jobs. They also play varieties of cruel pranks on the losers of their town, not realizing, of course, that they are headed down to the road to join them in a few years. Through one of these jokes, they meet Seymour, a bookish bachelor with a large, meticulous jazz vinyl collection, and Enid, sensing a kindred soul, becomes more and more involved in his life. Becky, on the other hand, is still proceeding with their plan to get an apartment, and is becoming increasingly impatient with Enid's wasting time with Seymour and inability to keep a job. The two girls begin to grow apart, and Enid is soon forced to confront who she is and who she wants to be.
However, this is a somewhat timeless film despite its portrayal of adolescent despair, for as people outgrow the ability to identify with Enid, they can still identify with Seymour, the shy, jaded dork ("You think it's healthy to obsessively collect stuff? Can't connect with people, so you fill your life with things..."). And Thora Birch, pre-American Beauty, does a wonderful, heartwrenching job of playing the cynical, callous Enid and all her insecurities -- her experimentation with different aesthetics of clothes that no one understands, her sarcastic treatment of customers that gets her fired from her concession stand job, and her ultimate loneliness when she realizes that everyone she loves has grown apart from her. This is a very truthful story about one girl trying to find out what she wants to be instead of who she doesn't want to be, and if the truth is ugly sometimes, then so be it. I should also mention that Seymour is played to perfection by Steve Buscemi, and Scarlett Johannsen, speaking as if she hadn't yet had voice training, plays the zeroing-in-to-normalcy Becky.
Revolutionary Road
Speaking of American Beauty...
This movie had a lot going for it -- Sam Mendes directed it, and brought along Thomas Neuman, also from American Beauty, to write the score. It had the cinematographer from No Country for Old Men. It even stars Leonardo Dicaprio and Kate Winslet. How could this movie suck?
While American Beauty may have been better in that the technical aspects of the film stood out more, I think this one is the better movie overall, not because it's a lot darker (which it is), but because it feels more truthful. The performances are all top-notch. Winslet's role is that of April, a failed actress turned housewife who clings to a fanciful idea that she and her husband Frank are not destined for the obscurity and mediocrity that plagues the people around them. Somehow, they are special, they are destined for something greater. Her eventual revelation is that Frank is not the man she thought he was -- and that she doesn't love him. In fact, she loathes him. She thinks he's an inexcusable coward. Dicaprio gets to play Frank, who must live with the reality of all his failures.
Despite its idyllic setting, it is a dark and brooding movie that does manage to convey the tone of quiet desperation extremely well.
Donnie Darko
Everyone's seen this movie by now, so I probably don't have to explain the plot. I was introduced to the movie by a friend who described it as "a darker version of American Beauty". And it's true. The movie is filled with a sense of foreboding, probably because most of it never actually happened -- or did it? Donnie is given over to sulking and fits of unprovoked hostility, saved from being a completely unsympathetic character by Jake Gyllenhall's dark dreamy eyes that seem to portend a deeper meaning, a redeeming layer of fear and frustration and despair beneath the surface. The movie is gorgeously filmed and has the dreamy atmosphere of unreality, which fits in very well with the events of the movie. A few of the small ridiculousnesses of suburban life get stirred to the surface and revealed for all to see, but unlike Ghost World, they're only backdrop events to the real story -- loneliness, powerlessness, and fear. It's darkly humorous and sad, ultimately the story of a boy so overwhelmed by his powerlessness over the things in life which intimidate him that he invents an entire alternate future in his head that allows him to do things he would not normally do in real life; or, in an even more unbelievable turn of events, he is actually given the power to travel through time and is able to influence events, and so sacrifices himself in order to save his girlfriend.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
Film School Dropouts: Art, Fame, and the Lack Thereof
There is a line from the HBO movie RKO 281, about the making of the movie Citizen Kane, during which the actor who plays Orson Welles, speaking about film, laments the fact that the "most powerful expressive medium has fallen into the hands of bankers." Orson Welles probably never uttered that line. Someone involved in the making of the making of Citizen Kane came up with it. However, the fact of the matter is that no matter how expressive a medium is, if people can't be bothered to watch it, the message will be lost.
That is why, in compiling this series of "best of" movies, the entertainment factor is still very much a governing factor. I'm just as much a fan of edgy, experimental art films that make no sense whatsoever as the next guy, but on the other hand, I fell asleep during Transformers. I turned off Moulin Rouge when it was the onboard movie entertainment on a trans-Pacific flight. How bored do you have to be with a movie to turn it off on an airplane? The concept of good, pithy, powerful art that still has mass sex appeal is a concept that I'm sure some of the protagonists on this particular list may understand quite well:
The Velvet Goldmine
There's almost no way that a movie starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor, and Christian Bale would be bad. There just isn't. And despite the amazing performances of all three, this movie has a lot else going for it. JRM plays Brian Slade, whose story is a loose biopic of David Bowie and his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust. However, the story is told through the lens of a reporter ten years after Brian's fall from fame, through a Citizen Kane- like structure (the reporter interviews various people from Brian's days of stardom, through which the details of his life emerge). Christian Bale plays the reporter, who aside from having personal connections to the Brian Slade story, being a former glam-rock fan himself, lives in a society vaguely reminiscent of 1984, a drab, colorless society whose main features seem to be large ever-present television screens. Ewan McGregor plays Kurt Wild, who is supposed to be Iggy Pop but channels quite a bit of Kurt Cobain as well. He represents the "real deal" to Brian's much more popular, but ultimately derivative, persona. The last piece of the puzzle is a pin that brings fame to whoever wears it, a pin that Brian steals from another man at the beginning of his career, a pin that supposedly belonged to Oscar Wilde (who is actually an alien. Go figure). How does this all fit together? It's almost more amazing that it does, at all.
It's a story about fame and the fall from it, about stardom and fandom in almost equal amounts, about style and shimmer and the lack of substance they cover. "A man's life is his image," says Brian, a philosophy which rings ominously true as his own image consumes him, not realizing until too late that the perfectly coiffed image hides an empty shell inside. However, the brash exuberance of the movie also poses the question of if, despite it all, it was still worth it in the end. Perhaps the film itself said it best in the opening credits: "Even though what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume."
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
This movie is actually a production of a Broadway musical by the same name, directed by and starring John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig, a transsexual East German musician, split between east and west, man and woman, much as the Berlin Wall divides his country, searching for the Platonic ideal of his other half (whatever that may be). As Hedwig's small band of misfits tours the bars and diners of the United States, tailing the tour of Hedwig's former protege and lover, Tommy Gnosis, Hedwig recounts his childhood in Communist Germany, his young misadventures ("I had just completed a brilliant thesis on the impact of German philosophy on modern rock music entitled "You, Kant, always get what you want...."), the impact of his botched sex-change operation, and his relationship with Tommy, whom he tutored in music and love, only to be betrayed and left behind as Tommy rockets to stardom on the strength of Hedwig's music.
It's a brilliant gem of a film that really stands out from other rock opera musicals involving transsexuals (Rocky Horror Picture Show, I'm pointing at you). Whereas it could easily have come across as ridiculous due to its campy subject matter, Hedwig's narration, by turns dryly humorous, bitterly angry, and melancholic, instead weaves a thoughtful, contemplative thread through his quest for love and self-realization. Of course, the music itself is wonderful, also.
High Art
In direct contrast to the previous two movies, High Art (the title of which is an uncharacteristic bad pun) is a very quiet, understated character piece. Radha Mitchell, who was in Pitch Black with Vin Diesel, which is not as terrible a movie as it might have been, plays Syd, a young yuppie woman working at a photography magazine, who strikes up an unlikely relationship with Lucy, a formerly famous lesbian photographer living directly above her. Lucy and her girlfriend, Greta, have moved to New York for Lucy's career, but they now don't do much besides lie around the apartment in heroin-induced torpors. Despite the disparity between their two worlds, Syd and Lucy slowly become friends, which evolves into a relationship.
It's not really a lesbian movie, even though it has quite a lesbian following because it portrays Syd's first sexual experience with a woman in a very truthful, down to earth way. It's actually a movie about the price of art, and the price of relationships. Syd and Lucy's relationship cost them Syd's former relationship with her (admittedly unworthy and douchebaggish) boyfriend, Lucy's old relationship with Greta, and put Syd's position at the magazine in trouble, but these sacrifices pale in comparison to what the cost of Lucy's art would ultimately be. The movie is a very simple production, but is all the more powerful because of it.
Gods and Monsters
Another subtle character study, but this movie has the advantage of having Magneto in it. Ian McKellen plays the aging gay director James Whale, who made the original Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein movies, but who is now elderly, frail, weakening, and mostly forgotten by the world except by film school students with interests in obscure subjects. The story is a fantasy about Whale's last days, during which he strikes up an unlikely friendship with his gardener, played by Brendan Fraser -- a somewhat surprising casting choice, but actually pretty fitting upon closer inspection, as the character of Clay Boone calls for a caveman who gains a soul through this friendship with Whale. McKellen, for his part, plays Whale to the hilt -- he's poised even when losing his memory, alternately polite, charming, poignant, and cutting, never senile, or lecherous, or laughable even at his most vulnerable. These two men, completely different both in temperament and background, form a somewhat awkward friendship that will nevertheless change both their lives.
Now, let's go back to sex, drugs, and rock and roll -- 18th century style.
Farinelli
This is the (true-but-not-really-true) story of Farinelli, a castrato singer who was so famous that he became something of an international sensation -- the first true rock star, if you will. Mutilated at an early age to preserve the angelic boy soprano he was to become famous for, he became the darling of royals and aristocrats everywhere, with his brother Ricardo, a talentless composer, hanging onto his coattails. It's not only fame that the two share, either -- the women that Farinelli attracts but cannot satisfy end up primed in Ricardo's lap. As Farinelli's star rises, he catches the eye of the great composer Handel, who acknowledges his talent but thinks him a heartless singing machine. For his part, Farinelli longs to sing the beautiful music Handel writes, but is bound to his brother and his mediocrity.
It's a rich, lavish production (a Belgian film made about Italians speaking French, although Handel speaks English occasionally), full of lush sets, wigged and powdered women (and men), and bosoms heaving in the candlelight. The story that emerges is a bit frothy, but by turns lyrical and moving. Since there is no modern day equivalent of Farinelli's voice, the director concocted a synthetic voice by fusing together a male and female singers' voices.
Frost/Nixon
By far the best thing about this movie is the performances by its two leading men. The history behind the story was diluted somewhat for dramatic effect, what emerged is rather more a flight of fancy than a real piece of reporting. However, Ron Howard, who directed Apollo 13, also directed this stage adaptation, so you know you're in for a good piece of storytelling, no matter what. And it's worth suspending your historical judgment to watch Sheen and Frank Langella go at it on the screen -- a clash between titans if there ever was one. I am a little bit reminded of RKO 281 again, and the showdown between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst, which also centered on the rise of the younger man's career through the destruction of the older man's career.
I Shot Andy Warhol
I suspect a lot of people think this movie is utter trash. Its subject matter certainly doesn't do anthing to dispel this idea -- Lili Taylor plays "motor-mouth street freak writer-prostitute-lesbian-gun-wielding assailant Valerie Solanas," as described by Amazon, who wrote the SCUM Manifesto (which is basically a huge rant about how men are inferior to women in every way) and did, indeed, shoot Andy Warhol after he refused to produce her play called "Up Your Ass." The performance, however, is amazing, and the character of Solanas is strong enough to be sympathetic despite her many roughnesses. She comes across as tough, lonely, misunderstood, witty, and driven, which is in direct contrast to the rather slimy persona of Andy Warhol, who doesn't seem to be so much a genius as just a really aloof, elitist prick that surrounds himself with pretentious ass-kissers. One of them, when watching footage of Solanas's transvestite friend Candy Darling (who hands out with the pack as kind of their star freak-show attraction), remarks "Oh, I love her. She's so real. She just gets realer and realer and realer."
The movie is filled with witty lines and and a lot of droll moments to capture the mood of the anti-establishment, counter-culture vibe and lifestyles. It's definitely worth a see.
That is why, in compiling this series of "best of" movies, the entertainment factor is still very much a governing factor. I'm just as much a fan of edgy, experimental art films that make no sense whatsoever as the next guy, but on the other hand, I fell asleep during Transformers. I turned off Moulin Rouge when it was the onboard movie entertainment on a trans-Pacific flight. How bored do you have to be with a movie to turn it off on an airplane? The concept of good, pithy, powerful art that still has mass sex appeal is a concept that I'm sure some of the protagonists on this particular list may understand quite well:
The Velvet Goldmine
There's almost no way that a movie starring Jonathan Rhys Meyers, Ewan McGregor, and Christian Bale would be bad. There just isn't. And despite the amazing performances of all three, this movie has a lot else going for it. JRM plays Brian Slade, whose story is a loose biopic of David Bowie and his alter-ego Ziggy Stardust. However, the story is told through the lens of a reporter ten years after Brian's fall from fame, through a Citizen Kane- like structure (the reporter interviews various people from Brian's days of stardom, through which the details of his life emerge). Christian Bale plays the reporter, who aside from having personal connections to the Brian Slade story, being a former glam-rock fan himself, lives in a society vaguely reminiscent of 1984, a drab, colorless society whose main features seem to be large ever-present television screens. Ewan McGregor plays Kurt Wild, who is supposed to be Iggy Pop but channels quite a bit of Kurt Cobain as well. He represents the "real deal" to Brian's much more popular, but ultimately derivative, persona. The last piece of the puzzle is a pin that brings fame to whoever wears it, a pin that Brian steals from another man at the beginning of his career, a pin that supposedly belonged to Oscar Wilde (who is actually an alien. Go figure). How does this all fit together? It's almost more amazing that it does, at all.
It's a story about fame and the fall from it, about stardom and fandom in almost equal amounts, about style and shimmer and the lack of substance they cover. "A man's life is his image," says Brian, a philosophy which rings ominously true as his own image consumes him, not realizing until too late that the perfectly coiffed image hides an empty shell inside. However, the brash exuberance of the movie also poses the question of if, despite it all, it was still worth it in the end. Perhaps the film itself said it best in the opening credits: "Even though what you are about to see is a work of fiction, it should nevertheless be played at maximum volume."
Hedwig and the Angry Inch
This movie is actually a production of a Broadway musical by the same name, directed by and starring John Cameron Mitchell as Hedwig, a transsexual East German musician, split between east and west, man and woman, much as the Berlin Wall divides his country, searching for the Platonic ideal of his other half (whatever that may be). As Hedwig's small band of misfits tours the bars and diners of the United States, tailing the tour of Hedwig's former protege and lover, Tommy Gnosis, Hedwig recounts his childhood in Communist Germany, his young misadventures ("I had just completed a brilliant thesis on the impact of German philosophy on modern rock music entitled "You, Kant, always get what you want...."), the impact of his botched sex-change operation, and his relationship with Tommy, whom he tutored in music and love, only to be betrayed and left behind as Tommy rockets to stardom on the strength of Hedwig's music.
It's a brilliant gem of a film that really stands out from other rock opera musicals involving transsexuals (Rocky Horror Picture Show, I'm pointing at you). Whereas it could easily have come across as ridiculous due to its campy subject matter, Hedwig's narration, by turns dryly humorous, bitterly angry, and melancholic, instead weaves a thoughtful, contemplative thread through his quest for love and self-realization. Of course, the music itself is wonderful, also.
High Art
In direct contrast to the previous two movies, High Art (the title of which is an uncharacteristic bad pun) is a very quiet, understated character piece. Radha Mitchell, who was in Pitch Black with Vin Diesel, which is not as terrible a movie as it might have been, plays Syd, a young yuppie woman working at a photography magazine, who strikes up an unlikely relationship with Lucy, a formerly famous lesbian photographer living directly above her. Lucy and her girlfriend, Greta, have moved to New York for Lucy's career, but they now don't do much besides lie around the apartment in heroin-induced torpors. Despite the disparity between their two worlds, Syd and Lucy slowly become friends, which evolves into a relationship.
It's not really a lesbian movie, even though it has quite a lesbian following because it portrays Syd's first sexual experience with a woman in a very truthful, down to earth way. It's actually a movie about the price of art, and the price of relationships. Syd and Lucy's relationship cost them Syd's former relationship with her (admittedly unworthy and douchebaggish) boyfriend, Lucy's old relationship with Greta, and put Syd's position at the magazine in trouble, but these sacrifices pale in comparison to what the cost of Lucy's art would ultimately be. The movie is a very simple production, but is all the more powerful because of it.
Gods and Monsters
Another subtle character study, but this movie has the advantage of having Magneto in it. Ian McKellen plays the aging gay director James Whale, who made the original Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein movies, but who is now elderly, frail, weakening, and mostly forgotten by the world except by film school students with interests in obscure subjects. The story is a fantasy about Whale's last days, during which he strikes up an unlikely friendship with his gardener, played by Brendan Fraser -- a somewhat surprising casting choice, but actually pretty fitting upon closer inspection, as the character of Clay Boone calls for a caveman who gains a soul through this friendship with Whale. McKellen, for his part, plays Whale to the hilt -- he's poised even when losing his memory, alternately polite, charming, poignant, and cutting, never senile, or lecherous, or laughable even at his most vulnerable. These two men, completely different both in temperament and background, form a somewhat awkward friendship that will nevertheless change both their lives.
Now, let's go back to sex, drugs, and rock and roll -- 18th century style.
Farinelli
This is the (true-but-not-really-true) story of Farinelli, a castrato singer who was so famous that he became something of an international sensation -- the first true rock star, if you will. Mutilated at an early age to preserve the angelic boy soprano he was to become famous for, he became the darling of royals and aristocrats everywhere, with his brother Ricardo, a talentless composer, hanging onto his coattails. It's not only fame that the two share, either -- the women that Farinelli attracts but cannot satisfy end up primed in Ricardo's lap. As Farinelli's star rises, he catches the eye of the great composer Handel, who acknowledges his talent but thinks him a heartless singing machine. For his part, Farinelli longs to sing the beautiful music Handel writes, but is bound to his brother and his mediocrity.
It's a rich, lavish production (a Belgian film made about Italians speaking French, although Handel speaks English occasionally), full of lush sets, wigged and powdered women (and men), and bosoms heaving in the candlelight. The story that emerges is a bit frothy, but by turns lyrical and moving. Since there is no modern day equivalent of Farinelli's voice, the director concocted a synthetic voice by fusing together a male and female singers' voices.
Frost/Nixon
By far the best thing about this movie is the performances by its two leading men. The history behind the story was diluted somewhat for dramatic effect, what emerged is rather more a flight of fancy than a real piece of reporting. However, Ron Howard, who directed Apollo 13, also directed this stage adaptation, so you know you're in for a good piece of storytelling, no matter what. And it's worth suspending your historical judgment to watch Sheen and Frank Langella go at it on the screen -- a clash between titans if there ever was one. I am a little bit reminded of RKO 281 again, and the showdown between Orson Welles and William Randolph Hearst, which also centered on the rise of the younger man's career through the destruction of the older man's career.
I Shot Andy Warhol
I suspect a lot of people think this movie is utter trash. Its subject matter certainly doesn't do anthing to dispel this idea -- Lili Taylor plays "motor-mouth street freak writer-prostitute-lesbian-gun-wielding assailant Valerie Solanas," as described by Amazon, who wrote the SCUM Manifesto (which is basically a huge rant about how men are inferior to women in every way) and did, indeed, shoot Andy Warhol after he refused to produce her play called "Up Your Ass." The performance, however, is amazing, and the character of Solanas is strong enough to be sympathetic despite her many roughnesses. She comes across as tough, lonely, misunderstood, witty, and driven, which is in direct contrast to the rather slimy persona of Andy Warhol, who doesn't seem to be so much a genius as just a really aloof, elitist prick that surrounds himself with pretentious ass-kissers. One of them, when watching footage of Solanas's transvestite friend Candy Darling (who hands out with the pack as kind of their star freak-show attraction), remarks "Oh, I love her. She's so real. She just gets realer and realer and realer."
The movie is filled with witty lines and and a lot of droll moments to capture the mood of the anti-establishment, counter-culture vibe and lifestyles. It's definitely worth a see.
vintage thirst returning
That phrase is from the Mr. Bungle song, "Retrovertigo."
Now I'm finding truth is a ruin
Nauseous end that nobody is pursuing
Staring into glassy eyes, mesmerized
There's a vintage thirst returning
But I'm sheltered by my channel surfing
Every famine virtual,
Retrovertigo...
It's been a year. Maybe there's time enough.
I've quit WoW, again, for who knows how long this time. And again, it was another Bethesda game that pulled me away -- I've finished Fallout3, which I really liked, to the point where I was sad to see it end. Of course, I could always play the expansion packs, but that always feels sort of like trying to relive a good memory that's already lost -- like hanging around a college you already graduated from in the hopes of recapturing the spirit of undergraduate days, when you were probably a much hipper person and more interesting to be around.
Next on the list: SPORE, Assassin's Creed, F.E.A.R.
I've moved, again, hopefully for good this time -- but I'm going to reserve comment on this until some things settle down. They're out there. And they're listening. And some decidedly un-cool corporate person may completely miss the point of personal blog versus professional blog, once again, and that's as much as I'm going to say.
Now I'm finding truth is a ruin
Nauseous end that nobody is pursuing
Staring into glassy eyes, mesmerized
There's a vintage thirst returning
But I'm sheltered by my channel surfing
Every famine virtual,
Retrovertigo...
It's been a year. Maybe there's time enough.
I've quit WoW, again, for who knows how long this time. And again, it was another Bethesda game that pulled me away -- I've finished Fallout3, which I really liked, to the point where I was sad to see it end. Of course, I could always play the expansion packs, but that always feels sort of like trying to relive a good memory that's already lost -- like hanging around a college you already graduated from in the hopes of recapturing the spirit of undergraduate days, when you were probably a much hipper person and more interesting to be around.
Next on the list: SPORE, Assassin's Creed, F.E.A.R.
I've moved, again, hopefully for good this time -- but I'm going to reserve comment on this until some things settle down. They're out there. And they're listening. And some decidedly un-cool corporate person may completely miss the point of personal blog versus professional blog, once again, and that's as much as I'm going to say.
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