Well for today’s entry, Alfred Hitchcock’s North By Northwest, I figured it was either the scene with the crop-duster or Mt. Rushmore and after a few fruitless experiments with different angles of the crossroad in the middle of nowhere that didn’t look like I was copying the movie poster I decided to go with Mt. Rushmore.
Short of having a big shot of the queen of diamonds, or Frank Sinatra holding a handful of queens of diamond card, which really doesn’t make sense in context, I really couldn’t think of a really think of what image to go with for Manchurian Canadate. I finally settled on the dream/exposition sequence where the Communist conspiracy is remembered by the brainwashed soldiers as a posh ladies flower club.
Much as this is one of my favorite John Frankenheimer films the actual conspiracy never made much sense to me. The master plan seemed like a waste of a valuable sleeper agent and could be handled by any lone gunman.
Though on the plus side, before ever seeing Sweeney Todd this was the film that cured me of associating Angela Lansbury with nothing but sweet little old ladies.
This one feels like phoning the whole thing in today. When the day’s scrap of paper told me I had to draw from Apocalypse Now, I suppose I could have drawn something with the patrol boat chugging up the river into the heart of darkness or I could have done something with a bloated Marlon Brando as the insane Kurtz. But I’ve been getting myself in a lot of trouble overthinking these things and on a low level the first thing I think of when I think of apocalypse now is the choppers.
From helicopters rising into the air with the morning sun to the sound of The Doors‘ “The End“ to helicopters attacking the Vietnamese village with rise of the Valkyries (or as my friends and I liked to call it “music to strafe villages by”) blazing on the speakers, the seem to a visual metaphor of casual and ultimately futile power. The kind of power that makes brutality easy. The attack on the village is the best example the fact that there were VC in the village hardly mattered. What did matter was there were some primo waves on that side of the river and “Charlie Don’t Surf.”
Fo this week’s lineup I decided to go with comedy remakes. Preferably modern remakes of older and dated films.
When I first hear that someone had done a remake of the Marx Brothers ‘ A Night at the Opera my curiosity was so piqued I just had to watch Brain Donors no matter what I was getting myself into.
Happily it did not dissipoint. Yes it was stupid but it’s a remake of a Marx Brothers film it’s supposed to be stupidl. Everyone played their parts extremely well especially John Turturro in the Groucho role as a literal ambulance chaser (seriously he’s chasing them on foot) with , Mel Smith, and Bob Nelson in the Chico and Harpo roles. (Good enough that I kept getting surprised whenever I heard Nelson talk.
The only real problem I had with this film is no matter how good our replacement trio were they were not the well oiled machine that the Marx Brothers had created over many years. The other problem I had was the film had it’s foot a little too far in the real world so despite all of the zaniness it didn’t capture the surreal theatrical quality of the original film.
But this is all nitpicking, i had fun.
The next on the list, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, I didn’t even know was a remake when it first came out. (And from what I’ve heard The Bedtime Story with David Niven and Marlon Brando wasn’t quite as forgettable as I heard so might have to check it out later)
Michael Caine plays a dapper conman based in the French Riviera who’s life of comfort when Steve Martin playing a small time american conman comes and messes with his turf. In an attempt to get rid of the other they make a bet to see who can take someone for fifty thousand dollars first. what happens next is a hilarious duel of double crosses.
I’m ashamed to say that while this was a perfectly well done film and Caine and Martin had great chemistry it didn’t really click for me but I’m certainly sure plenty of people will like it more than me.
For today’s sketch I drew from Shawshank Redemption. This one was a challenge. After being indecisive of what to draw from it, without cribbing the posters. Ultimately I went with the side story about senior prisoner Brooks Hatlen and his pet crow, Jake.
While Brooks story in the movie is ultimately tragic this scene in the lunch room gives us a small ray of hope. Shawshank prison may be so terrible that there’s maggots in the food. At least you can use them to feed a baby bird.
I think this would have worked better if I’d zoomed back a bit so that it was more of a scene in the crowd. Ah well. Live and learn.
For today’s sketch I drew from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.
It’s odd, despite being mostly a fan of Miloš Forman‘s work I’ve only seen this once and I don’t really remember much about it beyond Jack Nicholson‘s antics… and this.
Before seeing the movie as a whole I saw a clip of the final scene of Will Sampson as “Chief” Bromden, after smothering a lobotomized McMurphy with his pillow, pulls up the sink (something McMurphy had been trying to do most of the movie) and throws it through the hospital ward’s window and escapes.
Ultimately, I think, while McMurphy may be the catalyst of the story, Bromden is the hero and in the end, if there is any, the victory is his.
