I know, I know, I’ve done Rhapsody in Blue by Gershwin before. But I was looking for a safe version of it for a Youtube trailer I’ve been working on and I stumbled over the original 1927 recording.
What amazed me about it was how subtly different, it was from all of the modern versions. I don’t know if was the timbre of the clarinet, or one of those technicians vs artists things, but it came off like it’s own unique piece… and I like it.
You’d think after doing serial killers last week I’d get as far away from the topic as possible until Halloween. Instead, I double down watching films about how the media hypes serial killers.
The first film on my list Oliver Stone’sNatural Born Killers tells the story of Micky and Mallory Knox ( Woody Harrelson and Juliette Lewis) a pair of psychopaths on a killing spree. In the process, they become media icons, propped up by tabloid journalist Wayne Gale (Robert Downey Jr.) while hunted by corrupt celebrity detective Jack Scagnetti (Tom Sizemore). If you think that’s bad imagine what happens when they actually catch them.
Natural Born Killers was one of those films that are better known for the controversy than the film itself. Frankly, I think I think it’s overrated. It’s pretty much an excuse for Stone to do just about every heavy-handed, He goes back and forth between color and black and white and whatever else in between. At first one would think he’s playing with the perceptions of insanity vs the real world but it’s inconsistent. He does other things throughout the film but ultimately it’s just one big mess.
My next film, Man Bites Dog (French: C’est arrivé près de chez vous, literally “It Happened Near Your Home”) written, produced and directed by Rémy Belvaux, André Bonzel and Benoît Poelvoorde take this even farther with a film crew following the serial killer, Ben (Benoît Poelvoorde). Ben takes the crew through his day as he murders people while telling them the tricks in the trade and his views of life. Gradually the crew is drawn in.
This was funny at times, in a dark cynical way, but ultimately disappointing.
The arrival of the Karstarks game a little bit of a headache. The scene is actually taking place in Maester Luwin’s tower with Bran watching in his telescope. So ideally I should have that as a picture. However, I’d already done a picture of the interior of Luwin’s tower, and I couldn’t think of how to show any of what Bran is looking at through the window. Besides, Bran is in his basket at the moment and I wanted to save him some dignity for now.
I was hoping to show the scale of Robb showing the banners but ultimately I thought it was easier just showing the Karstarks. I rather like how Rickard Karstark turned out. He looks driven and obsessive, a potential thorn in Robb’s side even before things go south. (unintentional pun realized just as I typed it.)
“How many is it now?” Bran asked Maester Luwin as Lord Karstark and his sons rode through the gates in the outer wall. “Twelve thousand men, or near enough as makes no matter. “ Game of Thrones – Chapter 53
It’s been a while since I’ve done Tuesday Rhapsodies. I’d mostly used up all of my possibilities and got tired of scraping the barrel trying to find new ones. Having said that, after hearing so many versions of Liszt’s Second Hungarian Rhapsody, I can’t believe I never heard of an orchestral version!
So here it is courtesy of The Philharmonia Orchestra, led by Herbert Von Karajan. It looks like I’ve found a reason to start the hunt for new Rhapsodies again!
This week I watched artistic thrillers about serial killers.
ones that were stylistic enough that it’s hard to call them horror films, no
matter how hard you try.
The first film on my list. Charles Laughton’s“The Night of the Hunter,” tells the story of John, a boy who has been told by his father to hide his stollen money and give his word never to tell anyone. This is made all the harder when his father’s cellmate the Reverand Harry Powell, Robert Mitchum, a conman, murderer and definitely not a holy man, comes looking for the money.
Powell marries John’s now widowed mother, taking control of both her and the town with his preaching. Now it is a cat and mouse game for John to keep his word and to keep himself and his sister Pearl alive.
Night of the Hunter was the only film Laughton ever directed, and I see this as one of the great tragedies in the history of film. It is visually brilliant with some of the camera shots feel like illustrations. My favorite being the reveal of the fate of one of John and Pearl’s mother drifting underwater, which is as beautiful as it is horrific.
Just as great as Mitcham’s performance as the preacher. He plays Powell as charming, charismatic and driven as he gaslights his flock and relentlessly hunts John and Pearl as they escape down the river. It’s easy to say without too much hyperbole to consider fun one of film’s great monsters. Almost as good is Lilian Gish as Rachel Cooper. The woman who takes John and Pearl in and stops Powell once and for all.
The next film on my list Michael Powell‘s Peeping Tom tells the story of Mark Lewis (Carl Boehm) a voyeur Filmmaker who prefers to look at the world through his camera. Even when he’s killing prostitutes.
This was a difficult film to watch. Powell makes us identify with Mark as much as his victims. And we find ours ourselves fearing for anyone who interacts with him be it Helen Stephens (Anna Massey) his downstairs neighbor who befriends him or her blind mother (Maxine Audley) who confronts him.
Aesthetically this film was fascinating I don’t know if it was on purpose or a limitation of the technology, but the high contrast colors especially the reds were, incredibly effective.
A little side note. It feels like one heck of a coincidence that the director of the second film I watched has the same last name as the villain in the first.
I’ve always enjoyed modern folklore involving UFOs and related esoterica. Because of this, for this week’s selection, I chose films featuring the beings referred to as Men in Black. Keep in mind, when I say Men in Black, I’m not talking about agents of a shadowy secret government so popular in conspiracy theories, but the original versions where these are shadowy, mysterious, beings who are definitely not human.
The first film on my list, Alex ProyasKnowing, tells the story of a time capsule that contains a sheet of numbers written by Lucinda Embry, a disturbed young girl, fifty years ago. This is brought home by Caleb the nine-year-old son of the widowed MIT astrophysics professor John Koestler (Nicolas Cage) Koestler finds that the sheet is a list of dates and locations of the greatest disasters in the last fifty years. To make matters worse there are several dates on the art that haven’t happened yet. As he tries to get to the bottom of this he finds that he is being watched. By… People who seem to want things to continue on schedule.
. This was pretty much a by the numbers Nicolas Cage film, with Cage being paranoid and helpless for most of the Film. The disaster effects were impressive but that was pretty much all it had going for it.
The next film on my list, George Nolfi’s The Adjustment Bureau, tells the story of Congressman David Norris, (Matt Damon) an up and coming politician who, after his campaign for Senator crash and burns meets the love of his life, Elise Sellas, (Emily Blunt), inspiring him to move forward. However, he finds himself being constantly pushed away from her and his life being adjusted by a mysterious agency who controls human destiny for, what they claim, is the greater good.
Ultimately I found this film disappointing. I liked the concept, and execution was okay but ultimately, I found the bureau itself far more interesting than its protagonists and found myself wishing the story was completely about them and their operatives. Also, the ending seemed to consist of the writers forgetting all of the rules they’d written for the rest of the film.
