Wednesday Double Feature

by on February 4, 2015 at 8:36 am
Posted In: Test


This week’s theme was a bit of a comedy of errors. I started with the intent with going for corporate marketing based around the Hudsucker Proxy but when I arrived at Scarecrow I found both of their copies out. So I went with yellow journalism and media sensationalism instead. One movie very funny and the other was most definitely not.

220px-Front_page_movie_posterThe funny one, The Front Page. was directed by  Billy Wilder and starring Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau and was the third film to be based on the play of the same name. It takes place in the press room of a Chicago courthouse on the night before a hanging where a half dozen newsmen (I’m not completely sure if it’s accurate to call them journalists) wait for the hanging to occur and battle to get the most sensationalistic scoop… even if they have to make it up! Then the prisoner escapes and hilarity ensues.

I saw the original play back when I used to usher at Trinity Repertory Theater and loved it. Unfortunately it’s been years so I don’t quite remember it well enough to tell just how straight an adaptation Wilder’s film is. But I think it makes for a good example for my on going pondering about what makes a good film adaptation of a film. I believe Wilder does a good job expanding the story from the single newsroom set of the play and moving around from the courthouse, to a newspaper office, to the train station and elsewhere throughout Chicago.

This was well paced comedy with a great performance from everybody with Jack Lemmon as a cocky star reporter who’s trying to quit the business to get married but can’t resist one last scoop and Walter Matthau as his hilariously amoral editor who will do anything for a story. As far as I’m concerned this is pretty much Matthau’s movie as he dominates every scene he is in with his fast-talking and manipulation.

220px-SweetsmellThe non funny film on my list is the film noir classic The Sweet Smell of Success directed by Alexander Mackendrick starring Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis with utterly amazing cinematography by James Wong Howe.

Burt Lancaster plays J.J Hunsecker, a powerful columnist who forces publicist Sidney Falco to attempt to break up his sister and a handsome jazz guitarist.

This is easily my favorite Lancaster performance; He plays Hunsecker as a completely driven and narcissistic demanding respect and stopping at nothing to get what he wants provided it doesn’t tarnish his reputation. Curtis is wonderfully pathetic as Falco who, doing whatever it takes to make a buck and completely dependent on Hunsucker desperate for his approval and trailing behind him like a jackal does a lion.

This is a wonderfully brutal cynical film that paints a dark picture of humanity in a dark vision of New York captured brilliantly by Howe’s camera and accentuated by the jazz soundtrack performed by the Chico Hamilton Quintet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j8w3d7QIcm8

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February Sketch Challenge: Day Three

by on February 3, 2015 at 10:38 am
Posted In: Art

Okay I think I’m getting back into my grove here.

I first saw  My Man Godfrey this November and thought it was comic gold. Both a commentary and a parody of the upper crust in the middle of the depression.

So for today’s sketch we have Godfrey standing outside of the chaos that is the Bullock family before he enters the fray to calm the situation with copious matinees.

In hind sight I would want to tighten this image quite a bit moving Godfrey about an inch to the right. I was briefly considering having Molly the maid standing right behind Godfrey with a facetious “have fun in the shark pit” look on her face but I thought that would have been a distraction from the contrast between Godfrey and the Bullocks.

mymangodrey

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February Sketch Challenge: Day Two

by on February 2, 2015 at 9:23 am
Posted In: Art

I had really mixed feelings when a drew the card for today’s Sketch, Touch of Evil. Make no mistake I loved the opening ten minute tracking shot of the car bomb scene and I loved Orson Welles‘ performance as the definitive bad cop Hank Quinlan. Though I felt the whole thing was dragged down by  Charlton Heston and Janet Leigh, utterly cardboard performances as the “dashing Mexican detective” Mike Vargas and his wife Susie, which was the most blatant example of Race-bending that I had ever seen at the time. The problem is I’ve only seen it once and at the moment I don’t remember many of the details regarding the plot.

The reason behind this is once you get past this story of police ethics, corruption and murder you quickly realize Touch of Evil is about just one thing. Orson Welles.

As Hank Quinlan, Welles dominates every scene he is to the point you forget everything else (well besides the amazing camera work.) Anyone could have played Mike and Susie just as long as they were pretty. So the only thing I could really think of for the sketch was Welles’ domination of the film.

TouchofEvil

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February Sketch Challenge: Day One

by on February 1, 2015 at 11:21 am
Posted In: Art

The October Monster sketch challenge was such a useful creative exercise that I decided to do it more often. I’d put it off for a couple of months because of playing catchup on my buffer. So now that I feel that I’m mostly caught I would start my first drawing challenge of the year. Febuary’s topic movies. For my selection for the random bag I pretty much cribbed the American Film Institute’s top 100 list with a few additions and subtractions (after all I did most of the horror films in October)

After this there are the usual rules. As usual I am expected to come up with the idea and execute it in the ball park of thirty minutes, this means if the idea isn’t one of your best you still have to own it and try to make the most of it. This means the odds of having a good sketch are about 50/50 but that’s what makes it a challenge.

Rules that are new for this month. No checking references, your sketch is based entirely on how you remember the film and if what you remember isn’t exactly accurate… that makes the drawing more interesting. Despite this there will be no improvising… so for today’s example If I were to think that Brian Cox or Mads Mikkelsen were better Hannibal Lecters that’s too bad. I have to draw Anthony Hopkins for your Silence of the Lambs picture… or at least the idea of Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter. And while we’re on the subject no cartoons that are just puns on a movie’s title. If you don’t know anything about the film no picture. To spell out exactly what I mean, after somehow avoiding reading it in school, I was well into my thirties before I learned that The Catcher in the Rye was not about baseball. Of course that won’t be an issue since I triaged the movies I wasn’t familiar with out of the list.

So anyway as you might have guessed today’s sketch was indeed from Silence of the Lambs. The scene is Clarice Starling first encounter with Lecter. I tried to go for a combination of dread having had Lecter hyped up so much for the last 15 minutes and having gone down a dark hallway with caged monsters the brief relief of seeing this small neat man (I’d almost imagine him wearing a silk scarf if the guards had let him) I tried to focus on the “nice purse and cheap shoes” aspect of Starling, nervous and worried she’s out of her depth and even more worried that Lecter can sense this. I can’t help wondering what the movie had chosen a “plainer” character actress rather than Jodie Foster .

Silenceofthelambs

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Wednesday Double Feature

by on January 28, 2015 at 9:27 am
Posted In: Test

For this week’s selection I decided to watch some films from Vincent Price’s early career, and by sheer happenstance, also the early career of Charles Bronson,.

I had grown up with Vincent Price being  carefully crafted self parody feeling kind of like a loving but very creepy favorite uncle. I had gotten a taste of just how good and scary he could be when I first saw The Abominable Dr Phibes so I wanted to see other examples of what made him the godfather of horror.

220px-Master_of_the_world_posterThe first film I watched wasn’t a horror film , though it did feature an over the top megalomaniac, was Master of the World with Price playing Jules Verne’s other mad genius, Robur the Conqueror, who tries to blast the world into abandoning war from his airship, the Albatross,

While this was fun, and Price puts on an appropriately driven performance, Master of the World felt like a low rent response to Disney’s 1954 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, and it never really managed to trigger my suspension of disbelief. Not just because the Albatross aways looked like the model in front of a blue screen that it was, but also because I kept wondering if there was any infrastructure behind the Albatross and where would Robur go once they ran out of ammunition.

Along with Price’s performance what interested me the most was the conflict between Bronson’s pragmatic American agent who would do what it took to wait for the right moment in order to stop Robur’s plans and the much more traditional  hero, played by David Frankham who wants to do what is right as soon as possible and mistakes Bronson’s pragmatism for cowardice.

The comic relief from Vito Scotti playing the ship’s cook was entertaining too.

220px-Houseofwax1The second film was one of the horror classics of the 1950s House of Wax. Price is at his best as an eccentric sculptor and proprietor of a wax museum who is driven mad and terribly scarred when he is caught in a fire caused by his business partner to destroy the wax museum for the insurance money.  He becomes a serial killer who uses his victims as models for his new wax museum encasing them in molten wax. (Bronson played his mute assistant, Igor)

I had known about this movie’s plot since high school and so I ws very much watching it in a “Rosebud was his sled” state of mind. So as I watched this I couldn’t help wondering if the director intended for this to be a mystery at all if the reveal of the wax statues being murder victims was meant to be a surprise. Price’s burn makeup didn’t really disguise him so I was not fooled when he reappears running the titular House of Wax seemingly unscathed by the fire (revealed to be a wax disguise in the end) I don’t know how much of a difference this would have made in the long run but it was a detail that I couldn’t help thinking about over and over.

All in all this was some fun over the top campy entertainment. In the end what I liked about it the most was it avoided the usual cliche of the police being useless (perhaps that became a cliche later) Anyway while they were certainly skeptical when our heroes arrive with their concerns but ultimately they put the pieces together on their own and ultimately, despite our dashing young heroes best efforts, are the ones who save the day.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoHSOVQMi8w

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