Well I hope everybody is having an enjoyable Independence Day. I’m on my way to get my fix of civic community participation in a little bit. (mostly because my muse seemed to have gone there a few hours ago.) and may or may not hang out for the rest of the day. (I’ll do the fireworks either way)
Anyway as our patriotic fix for the day (even though it’s not regarding the decleration of independence, but it is what closed the deal,) Here’s the Battle of Yorktown from Hamelton.
For this week I decided to watch some movies about some of the great lovers of history and see what happened.
The first film on my list, Fellini’s Casanova. The tells the story of famous lover Giacomo Casanova based on his own memoirs… as interpreted by Federico Fellini. The whole thing is a picaresque with Cassanova (played by Donald Sutherland) traveling through Europe being known for his reputation as a lover and seducer while being endlessly frustrated by his desire to be respected as a philosopher and alchemist.
I’m embarrassed to admit I first elf ver heard of Casanova was through the Bob Hope comedy, “Casanova’s Big Night” and never ever bothered to find out more about him beyond confirming he was a real person.
As for Fellini, I’ve never really gotten into his work. At the time I assumed it was because I was too young to appreciate his work. (I watched his Satyricon at age 13 because I thought there’d be a werewolf in it like there was in the original Roman book.) Now watching this one at the correct age of the target audience I’m no longer sure of that.
While I enjoyed a lot of the visuals most of it was just silly and what they were trying to pass off as decadence was simply ridiculous.
However, this is happening in modern day New York. So the police aren’t too happy when a man dressed in a cape and mask is about to jump from a billboard. So “Don Juan” is put away for observation by retiring psychiatrist, Jack Mickler (played by Marlon Brando) During their sessions, Don Juan tells the story of his life which reinvigorates Mickler’s love life with his wife, Marilyn ( Faye Dunaway) and in the process wonders if “Don Juan” should be “cured” at all.
This movie was… okay but it really didn’t do much for me. Depp was still in the stage of his career where he was still getting by on his looks and Brando was pretty much just phoning it in.
While reading a review by Roger Ebert on one of the films I reviewed last week he made a point about comedies being products if their cultures and were especially funny in the context of the countries they were made in and made for… From there, he listed what he regarded as the best comedies of a hand full of different countries. I decided to see if I agreed with him. I’d already seen his selection for France (Both by Jacques Tati, which I certainly agreed with… so I moved in of what he thought the two best Brittish comedies were.
The first on Mr. Ebert’s list was School for Scoundrels by Robert Hamer tells the story of Henry Palfrey (Ian Carmichael) a man who is unlucky in everything, easily walked all over by his coworkers and friends and used by con artists. He finally has one lucky break meeting the girl of his dreams but even their things don’t go well when he is easily shown up by an acquaintance, played by Terry-Thomas, who tries to seduce her away from him.
After embarrassing himself in several ways, first getting beaten in tennis and then tricked into buying the ultimate jalopy, Palfrey follows an ad for a school for “Gamesmanship” run by Dr. Potter (Alastair Sim). Here he learns new techniques “ploys” to manipulate people for their own purposes, be it business, or romance. The rest of the film is spent with Palfrey using these ploys to get back at all the people who have wronged him. Only to finally learn there is only one thing that can trump gamesmanship… Sincerity.
This was a fun but cynical film. My only personal problem with it was a few of the “ploys” reminded me of some of the more unpleasant modern pickup techniques, but other than my PC handwringing, I very much recommend it
The next film, TheLavender Hill Mob is a caper comedy, by Charles Crichton, starring starring Alec Guinness and Stanley Holloway Guinness plays Henry Holland a fussy bank clerk whose job is to supervise the smelting of gold bars and delivery accompany them to the bank. It’s a thankless job with little reward and he fantasizes about stealing one of the payloads he supervises. But he never goes about it because the bullion is impossible to move out of the company. That is until he meets a man who lives in the same boarding house Alfred Pendlebury (Halloway) an artist who owns a foundry where he creates lead models of the Eiffel tower.
Immediately Pelfrey finally knows how he can move the gold out of the country. He and Holloway get a gang together and carry out their plan of stealing the gold and smuggle it to Paris to sell…. What could possibly go wrong?
This was a well-done film with Guinness putting out his usual level of performance… I was especially impressed by the editing on the final car chase.but ultimately it didn’t do much for me.
Well, It’s that time of year again and I’ve been having a ball with my annual Folklife sketching marathon! (this year with Instagram) I’m not sure If this has been my best year or not, a combination of being late twice in a row due to unforeseen scheduling hiccups and rushing things a bit because I wanted to finish this sketchbook by the end of the day, I don’t think I ever really got into my zone.
So anyway here’s what I have so far, (the good stuff anyway… as I mentioned before half of it was garbage.) I think as always, my favorite stuff where a lot of the little-nonscheduled bands who were playing on the side of the road and the drum circle… as well as something I never thought I’d see, a Japanese Klezmer band (Jinta La Mvda) enjoy!
Due to miscalculating my budget last month.I had a bad case of the munchies and was inspired to do my next series on foreign food… okay, okay, foreign films about food, happy now?
You know that Juzo Itami’s’ Tampopo (Dandelions)… isn’t going to be a typical movie when we start with a screen view of another movie theater where people are gathering to watch the movie. One of the viewers, a Yakuza, notices us, looks directly at the camera and tells us to enjoy the film and if we make any noise he’ll come over and beat the crap out of us.
Itmami describe Tampopo as a western and like any respectable western it starts with a lone stranger, Goro, played, by Tsutomu Yamazaki , with his sidekick Gun, played by a very young Ken Watanabe, driving into town in their semi and stopping at a run down noodle store run by the eponymous character played by Nobuko Miyamoto. They decide to help her learn to make the best ramen noodles in town and revitalize the shop.
Along the way we’re shown all there is to know about making Ramen Noodles, the broth, the noodles themselves, and yes the passion. We’re also given lots of side sketches, including a ramen master explaining the right way to eat noodles, the Yakuza thug from the beginning of the film experimenting with the sexual possibilities of food with his mistress, A low level executive showing up his superior with his order at a posh french restaurant, a dying woman cooking her last meal for her family, and my personal favorite, a trope of homeless gourmets! This last bit leads to my favorite scene where one of these homeless gourmets sneaks into a kitchen with a little boy to cook a rice omelet.
This movie was hilarious, and I loved nearly everything about it. After seeing it, it is hard to keep from running to the international district to find out if real Ramen noodles are as good as this movie says.
The next film on my list, Babette’s Feast, directed by Gabriel Axel, was another I’d known about for a while but didn’t really know much about it. I knew so little about it, in fact, that I was surprised that it wasn’t a French film, but Danish.
Babette’s Feast tells the story of two aging sisters, Martine (Birgitte Federspiel) and Philippa (Bodil Kjer), living in a remote religious community on the coast of Jutland. We learn about their lives growing up with their strict father, a highly respected pastor and the leader of the community. We are told about their life and missed opportunities. Once this is established we are introduced to their maid, Babette Hersant, a French refugee played by Stéphane Audran, who they take in. Fourteen years later, Babette wins a lottery and asks the sisters if she can use it to cook dinner for the celebration of their late father’s birthday.
This film is a lovely quiet poem about the joys of good food and community. The film lovingly goes through every course treating the diner’s enjoyment as a religious experience and food as an art that should be given away. (despite this I still felt a little sorry for the turtle and the quails.)
