I’m really torn about showing this… I stumbled over it on Arby’s Twitter feed.
Now, I’m not much of a fan of Arby’s in general and I’m hardly the one who would want to endorse them…
But, but, but…
Really cool Discworld art!
I mostly based this week’s selection on my first pic, which I thought would be an interesting indie piece, and based on what I had heard about was an indie companion to films like Cool World and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Regrettably, I had seen both of those films and I had to match my first pic, Who Wants to Kill Jesse? With something… So I went with Czech Comedies
Who Wants to Kill Jessie, directed by Jesse tells the story of Rose, a researcher who is perfecting a way to cure people of bad dreams (so they can be better workers) What she doesn’t realize is while her process removes dreams from people’s minds, it manifests them in the real world. Meanwhile her husband, Harry is working on “anti-gravitational gloves” inspired by a comic called Who Wants to Kill Jessie? Starring a gorgeous mad scientist who is chased by a cowboy and a super hero who is trying to steal her gloves.
Rose injects Harry with her formula, to stop him from dreaming about women who are not her bringing Jessie and her two pursuers into the real world… Hilarity ensues.
This was not what I expected. Because most of the Czech films I had seen in the past I was expecting something avant-garde with animated figures done in an underground style interacting with the real world.
Instead, this was mostly silly though not in a bad way. It was mostly slapstick with usual cliches like henpecked husbands. The “cartoon characters’ were real actors who speak in word balloons, which actually worked well in a surreal kind of way.
The second film on my list, Up and Down, tells about two criminals smuggling illegal immigrants into the country. When dropping off their last batch, during some confusion a baby is left behind. They sell the child to an illegal adoption center, eventually falling into the hands of a desperate couple.
Meanwhile, a college professor finds he has a brain tumor that must be operated on. He wants to make amends with his estranged son who is living in Australia.
They said this movie was a comedy and while I didn’t have a problem with it but beyond the fanaticism of two football hooligans, I failed to find any humor in it. Perhaps it was a cultural thing. The multiple stories didn’t really have much to do with each other. Still, all the bits were interesting even if they didn’t seem to connect.
A very Happy Birthday to Mr. Charlie Parker! Let’s Celebrate with his version of Perdido!
For this week’s selection, I picked a pair of melodramas that had the word “Heaven” in it.
The first film on my list, All THat Heaven Allows, directed by Douglas Sirk starring Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. Wyman plays Cary Scot, a well to do, but lonely widow living in a generic New England town. Her life consists of two college age children and some friends in her country club including some men who are interested in her but it does not provide any satisfaction.
In the meantime, she meets Ron Kirby (Hudson) her gardener. A strapping idealist who immediately draws her into his simple life style the two quickly fall in love. But just how long will the opinions of friends and family allow two people or different classes and ages stay together?
This film did an interesting job of looking under the rock of nineteen fifties realism and small town hypocrisy. I was especially drawn in by the Sirk’s use of the bright palette that technicolor provided him. A lot of this doesn’t age very well where a lot of things happening here feel very anachronistic to modern eyes.
My next film Far From Heaven, directed by Todd Haynes, and starring Julianne Moore, Dennis Quaid and Dennis Haysbert. Moore plays Cathy Whitaker a woman who seems to be the perfect fifties housewife. Her life begins to fall a part when her husband, Frank (Quaid) starts going to gay bars (and gets caught) and takes his frustration out on her. As the strain of her marriage begins to overwhelm her she is drawn to Raymond (Haysbert )a handsome, and black, gardener.
This was a gorgeous film it’s interesting comparing how Haynes is doing his tribute to Sirk here. Sirk creates his palette based on the limitations of technicolor (in a way I found myself reminded of artists like N.C, Wyeth and Howard Pyle who had similar issues compensating for the limits of printing technology at the time. Haynes is mostly imitating Sirk’s style but has access to much better technology, so while is using the same bright color but it has a bit more range and subtly.
While these were both well done I’m afraid I really am not the target audience for this genre. So while I was certainly able to appreciate the craft, watching these was a bit of a chore. But certainly, don’t let my personal taste deter anyone.
I’ve been on a Saul Bass kick for a while, falling love with his incredible opening sequences and stunning posters. One of the posters I liked the best was one from an adaptation of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan by Otto Preminger. Based of this I thought that films about Joan of Arc would be a good theme for the week.
So anyway, as I said, Saint Joan is an adaptation of the Shaw play of the same name, from a screenplay by Graham Greene. I’d read the play years ago. I don’t remember much of it beyond the anachronistic behavior of the characters and the play ending with the dead Joan appearing to King Charles VII in his bedroom.
In this version the film begins at this point with flashbacks to the beginning of Joan’s career and then moving forward to her trial and execution.
This was pretty good, taking full advantage of Shaw’s witty dialogue and Premiger creating an interesting theatrical quality throughout the film. Any problems I have with it mostly come from Shaw. I’m not completely sure what Shaw was going for here. Many of his plays try to make a satirical point. Here I’m mostly certain he was doing the material straight. Of course from my perspective I’d need a degree on the subject to recognize any of Shaw’s dog whistles.
The next film on my list was Carl Theodor Dreyer’s The Passion of Joan of Arc. This is a pretty straight adaptation of a transcript of Joan’s trial as the judges try to trick her into saying things that will discredit her claims. The film is a study of one’s woman’s faith and personal strength and the inevitable tragedy when all of this fails.
This really isn’t really a film for every one. It has an extremely expressionistic style and consists almost entirely of closeups. I mostly enjoyed it as a study of some wonderful faces and expressions.
I while watching one of my favorite film theory youtube channels the other day when It spent a minute talking about British New Wave. Since I’d never even heard of British New Wave (at least not under that name) I thought this would make for a good theme to base this week’s selection on.
The first film on my selection, Karel Reisz’s Saturday Night and Sunday Morning, based on the novel of the same name by Alan Sillitoe, tells the story Arthur Seaton, a machinist working in a bicycle factory in Nottingham, played by Albert Finney. Arthur is jaded by all of the people around him who he thinks have either wasted their lives, or have been burnt out, and refuses to be like them.
He goes about this by going to a lot of pubs to drink on Saturday nights and having an affair with a coworker’s wife.
This was an interesting film. The strong Midlands accents made it a little hard to follow, but it does a good job of showing lower-class life in 1960 Britain and doesn’t shirk from controversial issues, like abortion.
What makes this film work though is the fantastic performance from Finny playing Arthur as an arrogant bastard and a compulsive liar.
The next on my list, Lindsay Anderson‘s if… starts out with what looks like a brutal expose on British public schools but then it seems to change its mind half way through and gets REALLY weird.
It’s a new term at College house and all the students are from new students terrified about what’s going to happen to them to the jaded veterans like Mick Travis played by Malcolm McDowell starting out his film Career. From here we watch day to day life at the school, with its petty rivalries, bullying, and classist pecking order. Until the whole thing explodes… almost literally.
This was a fun film. McDowell’s performance as a high school rebel gives us a taste of what he would do as Alex in Kubrick’s Clockwork Orange. It goes back and forth from humor to horror to flat out surrealism. Part of me kept comparing it to Harry Potter… Though if Hogwarts was anything like College House, Voldemort would have run away in terror.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z9JL8Dae_yQ
