I recently started a new custom. It consisted of being frustrated about waiting lists for certain DVDs at the Library and Scarecrow Videos the greatest video rental store in the West coast needing all the love it can get.
It started when I decided to catch up on my animated films and rented Despicable Me 2 and the Croods. At the time I had forgotten about Scarecrow’s two for one Wednesday deal so I was pleasantly surprised when I only had to pay half of what I expected.
I decided this would make for a good way to diversify my film watching diet as well as a good excuse to start doing more reviews on this site. I figured I’d take advantage of Scarecrow’s strengths and focus on little known and eccentric pieces that I would be unlikely to find in the library’s collection (and if I could the wait would be too long for it to be worth it!)
To start things off This weeks choices were “I Sell The Dead” and Kenneth Branagh‘s Magic Flute.
I Sell The Dead is a wacky bit of fluff about grave robbers and revenants in the nineteenth century. I’d first heard of it because it was the first thing I’d heard Dominic Monaghan being in in since he’d been a hobbit and of course I can never get enough of Ron Perlman. It was fun unfortunately a lot of the surprises had been spoiled for me as I’d read the comic adaptation of it a few years ago when I never expected to see it. But still enjoyable. I think my favorite scene was when our two “heroes” are cornered by one of the villains along with the ghoul they’ve tried to capture and the ghoul is just as terrified as they are.
As a fan of both Mozart and Branagh I really wanted to like Magic Flute more. I think the main problem was I kept holding it up against Bergman’s version which it has no chance against. I think the main problem is how to adapt an opera on to film. Being a completely stylized medium how does it hold up when it’s translated into something more realistic like film. This is doubly so in a piece like the Magic Flute which is a fairy tale in it’s rawest form. So I don’t think resetting it in the trenches of World War I really worked for me. That’s not to say it was bad far from it. I definitely plan to come back to it and there were some very neat bits. The Dragon done as a gas attack worked and I especially liked how the Queen of the Night made her grand entrance standing on the top of a tank.
Anyway that’s all for this week and I look forward to what tweaks my fancy as I return my selection this evening.
