Just a quick heads up that I just put together all of the Tuesday Rhapsodies selections into one big youtube playlist and added a permanent link up onto the menu bar… Come check it out!
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To start the holiday season I decided to go with films that were of the season but not actually seasonal. This led to a rather interesting selection of two films that have absolutely nothing in common.
In Bell, Book and Candle Kim Novak plays the leader of a group of New York based hipster witches who uses her powers to seduce Jimmy Stewart only to fall for him herself.
This was fun though I kept feeling it could have been a lot better. The witch community is hinted at enough that it seems disappointing that other than showing us a only slightly hidden apothecary and another witch’s house all we see in any detail is the night club that all of the witches hang out at. Novak is wonderful as a sultry powerful Gillian, it feels a shame that she falls into a more traditional submissive role in the end. (and her siamese cat familiar is adorable) Jimmy Stewart’s reputation as the most mundane, mayonnaise American is played up for all it’s worth. Jack Lemmon, Elsa Lanchester and Ernie Kovach fill their supporting roles wonderfully (having only ever seen Lancaster as the Bride of Frankenstein there is something wonderfully surprising seeing her play Gillian’s cuddly old aunt.
While I certainly knew of Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang starring Robert Downy Jr. And Val Kilmar. For some reason I thought it was one of Guy Ritchie‘s as opposed to Shane Black, (must have been the name) Downey plays Harry Lockhart, a middling crook who by sheer luck escaping from an extremely botched robbery finds himself in LA auditioning for a role in a detective story. From their he runs into a childhood crush and from there finds himself involved in a murder mystery from there things get weird.
This is all narrated by Downey in a very sarcastic manner getting his facts wrong and editorializing all the way thorough. Giving the film a wonderful cynical and eccentric feel.
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This week’s Rhapsody is Rhapsody for Baritone Saxophone and Wind Orchestra by Mark Watters. I’m enjoying this I don’t think I’m that familiar with the baritone saxophone (beyond Lisa Simpson). It’s almost reminding me of a bassoon but without the “wooden” quality I attribute to the Bassoon. Or perhaps it’s just a case of I’m not used to hearing the saxophone in a non jazz context and in the process I’m finding it exotic
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For this week was a bit of a puzzler what I was going for was really interesting non traditional non western versions of Hamlet but I had absolutely no luck with finding andy of the other films on my list. So finally I had to five up and settle for doing Chinese Tragedy. Specifically two Wuxia films taking place in the Tang Dynasty.
The film that started this quest was the first on my list Curse of the Black Scorpion also known as the Banquet, by Feng Xiaogang . This is a wonderfully loose and subtle take on Hamlet stripping down the Shakespeare to it’s bare essentials to the point that you barely notice many of the elements of the play unless you are especially looking for them to this respect I especially liked this films version of the Mousetrap sequence as well as the way it changes the interplay between the Polonius and Ophelia characters (Polonius lives). But what really makes this film fascinating is how it changes the role of Gertrude.
Here she was the Hamlet’s character former lover before she married his father cranking up the incestuous subtext from the original play up to eleven. From there this is all Gertrude’s film as she moves her way up the ladder using both Hamlet and Claudius as her unwitting pawns.
All in all this is a beautifully filmed plays with many of the fight scenes almost feeling like complex dance routines.
Curse of the Golden Flower (which for reasons I’m not sure of I keep calling Curse of the Golden Lotis) directed by Zhang Yimou and starring Chow Yun-fat and Gong Lis an even darker story. Dealing with family conflict, dynastic politics and civil war this a gorgeous film that deals with the royal family gathering to attend the Golden Chrysanthemum festival while everything falls apart around them. What especially fascinated me about this film was the upstairs downstairs vibe showing an army of servants behind the scenes making everything in the palace work, maintain the facade of stability and most importantly in the films bloody climax cleaning up the mess as if none of it ever happened.
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This week’s Rhapsody is Rhapsody for Orchestra by Andrzej Panufnik
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I thought doing a Thanksgiving theme considering the holiday would be a good idea, but in the end I really didn’t get into my selection. Nothing against the films themselves, perhaps I wasn’t in the mood or perhaps it was a sore spot I wasn’t aware of, Considering I haven’t really had the option for several years perhaps it’s something I’m no longer familiar with.
The first on my list, John Hughes’ Planes, Trains and Automobiles, is a buddy film starring Steve Martin and the late John Candy featuring a race to bet back home for the holidays as Murphy’s Law has a field day with them. Starting with flights being canceled due to the snow, trains breaking down and after that anything else that can possibly go wrong while at the same time two completely opposite personalities being stuck together all the way.
I’ve never been the biggest fan of John Hughes’s work but this is different enough that it’s not really an issue. Martin and Candy have pretty good chemistry with Martin playing one of the ultimate tightness and Candy playing a genuinely nice but annoying salt of the earth type. Watching the two bang heads together is half the fun watching how they react to the latest bit of bad luck is the takes care of the rest.
You’re expected to love your family… liking them is optional. Jodie Foster‘s Home For the Holidays is an ensemble piece ably led by Holly Hunter. Hunter plays a divorce single mother who is having a horrible day. On the day she is heading out to visit her Parents in Baltimore for Thanksgiving she is fired from her job and her daughter wants to stay (and have sex with) boyfriend which leaves her alone for a weekend with her eccentric mob of a family. Mostly the story serves as a way to tie together a series of vignettes of human interaction and showing off all of the outrageous cast members for all they were worth. Special credit goes to a very young Robert Downey Jr as her younger gay brother.
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