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I like silent pictures and I always have. They are often so much more beautiful than sound pictures are. Perhaps they had to be.
Akira Korosawa

Pix

Akira Kurosawa and Toshiro Mifune, Venice 1967

Good Link

Here is a frame by frame comparison of Simpson's movie references.  Actually quite interesting.

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Deliberately buried? Huh! 
Dr. Heywood Floyd, 2001 A Space Odyssey

Faves: Richard III

Olivier's fantastic, star studded 1955 movie was a key piece in my political education.  Shakespeare created a neat bit of propaganda for his Tudor patrons.  Whatever its historical inaccuracies, it created such a compelling narrative that there hasn't been a King Richard of England for more than 500 years.  But the play is more than just propaganda, or it would not have remained relevant beyond the Tudor's reign.  What keeps the play relevant is its keen political analysis and the fabulously villainous Richard.

 I first saw the movie when I was 17 or 18.    It taught me that getting power, using power and keeping power are three different things.  Just having a crown doesn't make you King.   That power and office are not the same was a significant revelation to me at the time.

Olivier's portrayal of Richard is definitive.  Nobody since has been able to play the part without taking Olivier into account. As my father says, Olivier's Richard raises skulking to an art.  The movie is very stagey, but reminiscent of contemporary paintings, like Frossart's. This is my favorite of all Shakespeare films.

    Killing of Wat Tyler by Jean Frossart.

Valkyrie Verdict

    Is there something scary in that closet Herr Cruise?

The best review I've come across, from Nick Shager at Slant.

Alas, incongruous vocal intonations aren't even the most significant problem plaguing Singer's film, what with Cruise—missing a hand and saddled with an eye patch, making him seem like a National Socialist pirate—apparently engaged in a contest against himself (and cinematic history) to see how long he can hold the same, intensely resolute expression, and the answer unfortunately turning out to be 120 minutes.

Against all expectations, well, against my expectations, the film has garnered middling reviews and looks like it will generate sufficient business to keep it off the turkey lists.

Faves: Grindhouse

So maybe a double-feature tribute to '70's B movies wasn't such a good idea.  The film got mixed reviews and a relativly poor box-office reception.  Between foreign markets and DVD, the thing may have broke even.  The two movies themselves are very uneven.  But they have their moments.  What makes this a winning package, to me at least, is the trailers.  Especially the one for Machete.  This is an example of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts.

Crash of The Valkyries

  Tom Cruise working hard at acting tough.

Its possible that Tom Cruise's new movie Valkyrie will be good, but I doubt it.  It has the stink of movies that fail before they even get started.  A vanity star vehicle, numerous re-writes, shooting troubles, re-shoots, delays in release, then finally a release date guaranteed to kill attendance.  Who wants to go to a film about a failed plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler on December 26?

I don't know why the movie was made in the first place.  Von Stauffenberg's coup was a keystone cops affair.  Poorly conceived and incompetently executed, it failed on every level.  Most importantly, the one absolutely key necessity, killing Hitler, was fumbled by Von Stauffenberg himself, twice.  Had Von Stauffenberg used all the explosives (which would have fit in the briefcase), he would have killed Hitler.  Had he set the bomb off himself, he would have killed Hitler.  But no.  Von Stauffenberg used half the available explosives, and fled the premises. Someone still at the meeting unknowingly moved the briefcase into a place where the bomb's damage was minimized.  Von Stauffenberg then took off for Berlin having failed to ascertain if Hitler was dead or not.  Incommunicado for several hours on a plane, his confederates could not communicate with him or coordinate the next steps.  But the wires from East Prussia started burning up right away with a very angry Hitler.  What hope the coup might have had faded before Von Stauffenberg arrived back in Berlin.  He was shot later that night.  Von Stauffenberg was that rare man, someone willing to bravely die for their country, singularly placed to have that sacrifice mean something, and then throwing that opportunity away through agonizing stupidity.

Von Stauffenberg is revered in German history.  This is because there were precious few examples of anti-Nazi activities through the entire war.  Not that the coup would have made much difference.  They were hoping that by deposing Hitler, they could induce the Americans and British to join them fighting the Soviets.  The chances of that happening were zero, as any reasonably bright 12 year old could have told them.

In truth, Von Stauffenberg's idiotic blundering removed any possibility of the war ending in 1944.  Just as both East and West fronts gave way and the Army was retreating in disarray, there would have been an opportunity for the military to topple Hitler.  Any combination of a dead Hitler and a conflicted, retreating Army would have arguably precipitated a general collapse of German resistance.   Instead of plotting, however, senior Army commanders were scurrying to hide from SS squads armed with piano wire and meathooks, bent on smoking out all the traitors responsible for the attempted coup.

Once you are aware of the story, its hard to believe anyone outside Germany thought it was worth a movie.  No matter what way you tell it, its a story of failure, missed opportunity and nasty revenge.  I'm predicting this is not a formula for holiday box-office success.  This is a movie that should never have been made.

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One German foot soldier: Where are the horses?
Another German foot soldier: We're the horses!
From the movie Stalingrad (1993)

Faves: A Night At The Opera

This is just about the only movie made before 1970 that I can get my kids to watch.  The Marx Brothers made a lot of good movies.  This one has that something special.  I can watch it again and again, still laughing at the same jokes.  The manic edge is just enough under control so the story, such as it is, can unroll properly.  So it seems like a real movie rather than just a bunch of sketches strung together.  But its not like they let the story get in the way.  And the manic moments are among their best.  There are lots of little touches I love.  Like when the orchestra plays Take Me Out To The Ballgame, or when Groucho says "booga booga".

Faves: Rear Window

Hitchcock's cage match.  He wanted to see if he could make a film in what amounts to one room.  The camera is trapped with James Stewart in his apartment.  Of course, he pulled it off.  Its a terrific movie.  The kind of movie where if you happen across it on TV and watch for two or three minutes, you always end up watching the whole thing.

I have a theory about Hitchcock and Grace Kelly.  This was the second of three films he made with her; Dial M for  Murder (1954), Rear Window (1954), and To Catch A Thief (1955).  In 1956, she married Prince Ranier, moved to Monaco and stopped making movies.  I think she broke Hitchcock's heart.  He was so mad, he killed her twice in Vertigo (1958), again in Psycho (1960), then tormented her on and off for the rest of his career.  This theory is refreshingly free of facts, but its plausible.  Hitchcock was an exceedingly strange man.  I'm tempted to say he could never have flourished in the modern media microscope age.  But as this media culture developed in the 1960's, he not only survived, he mastered it.

In any case, there are few directors that have ever combined such thinly disguised examination of personal obsession with such  unadulterated artistic and commercial success. 

More Dylan

Coincidentally with the Dylan quote that went up a few days ago, I watched I'm Not There, the 2007 film about Dylan. It was good but not great. Not quite as good as I had expected. Still pretty interesting for anyone that likes Bob Dylan.

The film made me realize something. For most of his songs, I haven't got a clue what Bob Dylan is talking about. Even for some of the ones I really love and play often. Watching the film and reading some other stuff on the web, I realized that nobody else has much clue either. And Dylan has either forgotten what he meant or isn't saying. Or maybe never had a clear meaning in mind to begin with.

Still, I love some of his stuff in an odd way. I'm not a Dylan fan. I don't own a significant number of his albums. Most of his stuff I've never listened to. But the stuff I do like, I've worn out. Literally. I wore out copies of Highway 61 and the Basement Tapes back in the vinyl days.
I think the thing with Dylan is that people see their own meaning in his lyrics. Kind of like a musical rorsach. But the pictures he conjures aren't completely abstract, like the rorsach pictures. He writes about specific things, like ingratitude, or spurned love, or a thrilling ride, but in such a way that we can project our own experience onto the words he provides.

Apparently Obama likes Dylan. His staffers let it be known he had Dylan and Miles Davis and Yo-Yo Ma among many others on his iPod. Clearly they were highlighting a broad range to polish Obama's image. But they actually said he really likes Maggie's Farm. That he listens to it often. I believe it. Maggie's Farm is about ingratitude. About all the ways you can get screwed on the job and the kind of people who do the screwing. It was Dylan's break with the Folk movement. My guess is that anyone with a career in public service could relate, and add a few verses of their own. Obama's liking that song enough for them to mention it tells me a lot more about him than if they said he really likes Hey Jude or Stairway to Heaven or Papa's Got A Brand New Bag.

Faves: 8½

Who says a movie needs a plot?  Fellini uses a pretty thin sequence to give us some really memorable events.  There are scenes I think about often, the movie has become part of the texture of my life.  La Dolce Vita and La Strada are, I think, more highly regarded, but I like this better because its fun.  Marcello Mastrioanni is the epitome of 60's cool as he zig-zags around a nameless spa town trying to escape from his overblown life.  More to the point, he's supposed to be directing a movie.  As the production cranks up, he tries to conceal the fact that he hasn't a clue what he's supposed to do.  I've had dreams like that. 

There are many fantastic sequences.  Saraghina's rhumbabrings a smile to my face every time I think about it.  Guido's fantasy about taming his women often comes to mind when I have woman trouble.  The visit to the dessicated cardinal in the depths of the spa.  Claudia Cardinale's feathery boa as they drive in the car.

When I first saw 8½ in my twenties, I wanted to like it so much, but was a bit disapointed.  Its grown on me over the years.  Now that I'm middle-aged, some of Guido's problems have become my problems, which gives the movie more resonance.   Its images and episodes have become part of the texture of my life.  I think of them often.  There are very few movies that have done that.  The Godfather, 2001,  Pulp Fiction, M, The Third Man, Lawrence of Arabia, and The Manchurian Candidate among others.  But 8½ is special.  I'm fond of this movie like no other.

Faves: The Incredibles

Possibly the best family/action/superhero movie of all time?  I do think it one of the best action pictures.  But this category is not about the best of things, its about my favorite things.  So I try to explain why I like it rather than why its good.  There will be some entries in Faves: that are, from a critical point of view, crap.  This movie is not  one of them.

As always with Pixar, the foundation is a first-rate script.  But what I absoloutly love about the picture are the visuals.  The animation is showy in a big way, but at the same time very subtle.  They have chosen certain elements and thrown resources at depicting them in lush, fanatic detail.  Hair, for example.  Textures of things like clothes, leaves, water and flame.  Others elements are purposefully vague.  Faces are simplified.  Not simplistic or lacking character, just slightly generalized.

The other thing I love is the '60's retro art-direction.  I grew up in the '60's, and loved all that stuff at the time.  It felt clean and modern and optimistic.  This is not pure nostalgia.  I remember those couches and tables in places that were otherwise antagonistic, narrow and ugly.  There was a lot of kitsch as well, which it is best to conveniently forget.  But there's no kitsch in this movie.  Just the sleek, stylish progressive side of '60's style. 

Faves: Downfall

I can't find the quote anywhere, but remember Kenneth Clark saying in "Civilization" that the wise historian stops 50 years before his own time.  This extraordinary German film about the last days of Adolf Hitler came out 59 years after his death.  The film caused a great deal of controversy in Germany because it humanizes Hitler.  I believe that humanizing these people is necessary in understanding them and what they did.  There was nothing inherently different about Hitler and his cohorts from anyone else then, or now.  And that is the essential lesson.  The events of the War were not inevitable.  Similar crimes could happen again.  On a vastly lesser scale, they have happened again.

Anyway, the film has to be judged on its own merits.  It's an engrossing experience and an excellent piece of movie making.  Hitler entered the bunker below the Reich Chancellery in Berlin in January, 1945.  Except for one or two trips outside the door, he never came out again.  The movie details his progressive collapse, and that of the regime, through the spring of 1945.  Bruno Ganz's incandescent performance as Hitler is the backbone of the film.  It is unearthly how close he comes to what I had imagined the real Hitler.

I had the movie for a long time before watching it.  It seemed very depressing.  With my condition, depressing is not something I need or want more of.  Eventually, I did watch it and was floored.  I've watched it again several times since.  The english commentary by the director is excellent as well.  For anyone interested in history, this is a must-see.

Faves: Fight Club

Every man, young or old, gay or straight, wants to be like Tyler Durden. At least a little bit. He represents something we all feel we have lost in one way or another. I've read that only three species have active, ongoing co-operation between unrelated males. Chimpanzees, dolphins and humans. Male competition is much older and more ingrained than co-operation. We have to conquer elemental impulses to sit in meetings, stand in lines and get screwed by our cell phone companies. It's not a big deal 99% of the time. But Tyler reminds us of what we give up. Not that any sane man would want to actually live like that. Its just the idea that intrigues.

All the ways you wish you could be, that's me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.

You're not your job. You're not how much money you have in the bank. You're not the car you drive. You're not the contents of your wallet. You're not your fucking khakis. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world.

Anyway, the movie is terrific although it gets a bit squishy towards the end. I'm guessing this is one of those movies that is way better than the book. The DVD commentary is excellent.
This is my favorite movie from the last 10 years.

Faves: Yojimbo

Akria Kurosawa's 1961 samurai action picture was a re-creation of Hollywood westerns in samurai Japan. It worked really, really well. Lots of action, intrigue and comedy. My 12 year old son who likes neither sub-titles nor black and white, watched the whole thing.

The funny thing is that Yojimbo went on to influence westerns and science fiction movies. Sergio Leone's first spaghetti western, A Fistful of Dollars, was a straight re-make, including the lead character with no name, few morals (well hidden), and awesome skills. It was re-made again (not very well) with Bruce Willis as Last Man Standing in 1996.

The biggest impact of Kurosawa's samurai pictures, however, was on Star Wars. In particular, the sword fighting, but also in terms of plot elements and characterizations.

Yojimbo was an enormous commercial success and led to the almost as good sequel Sanjuro. Also great, but not quite as much fun. Both are anchored by Torshiro Mifune's bravura performance as the man with no name. Nearing 40, the athletic action sequences were very hard on him. However, he rose to the occasion and delivers an impressive physical performance.

The commentary on my version is by a film professor who painstakingly teases out all the political sub-texts in the script. There are many. But this is not a film that needs or wants such scrutiny. It was intended to be a terrific action picture and that's the way it is best watched.