Wednesday Double Feature – Down The Rabbit Hole

by on May 17, 2017 at 9:53 am
Posted In: Test

This week I was inspired to go and watch dreamlike films where girls, like Alice in Wonderland, go down the rabbit hole, into an amazing, illogical fantasy dream land… Not Alice in Wonderland itself mind you… I’d seen most of those movies… and those I hadn’t seen I’d heard from good authority really weren’t worth it.

Wednesday Double Feature - Down The Rabbit Hole - TidelandI’d been hearing about Terry Gilliam’s Tideland for a while, and even though I’m a huge fan of Gilliam’s films, I’d put it off because I’d also heard that it was one of his “arty” films that took place in the real world. Turns out it takes place in the real world the way Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas takes place in the real world.

Tideland tells the story of Jeliza-Rose, played by Jodelle Ferland a young girl who lives with her Mommy and Daddy…. And we quickly realize something is wrong when the first thing we see her doing in the film is preparing Daddy’s heroin needle. When her mother dies of an overdose, her father, played by Jeff Bridges (imagine the Dude if he didn’t have the release of bowling, and decided White Russians were just not enough.) takes her to her grandmother’s house in Western Texas.

The place turns out to be an abandoned dump and her father dies of an overdose before they’re even settled in. But because she’s so used to her daddy “going on vacation” Jeliza Rose doesn’t even realize this… even when his bloated corpse starts to stink up the house. In the meantime, she slowly sinks deeper into her own fantasy life which consists of talking doll heads and talking squirrels. This is enhanced even more when she meets her neighbors, the dangerously unstable Dell, Janet McTeer, (who may or may not be Jeliza Rose’s real mother,) and her brother, brain damaged childlike Dickens played Brendan Fletcher.

This was a hard film to watch. Gilliam says himself that you’ll either hate it, love it or not understand it. While I liked it, I think I fall at the edge of the “don’t understand category and I’ll want to wait a little bit longer before I’m ready to watch it again to catch any of the nuances. In the meantime I find myself torn between the disturbing imagery and how beautifully the imagery is shot. Gilliam creates an amazing fantasy world out of the child’s eye view of a nightmare… only she doesn’t know she’s in a nightmare being completely innocent and perhaps half mad herself.

One thing’s for sure it will be a long I look at barbie dolls the same way again.

Wednesday Double Feature - Down The Rabbit Hole - Mirror MaskFor the next film on the list, I watched was MirrorMask, directed by Dave McKean with a script by Neal Gaiman produced by The Jim Henson Company! What more do you need to know? Go watch it! Oh… you do? Sigh very well…

MirrorMask tells the story of Helena Campbell (played by Stephanie Leonidas) a teenage girl, growing up in a small circus who wants to run away and join the real world. When her mother (played by Gina McKee) collapses, from what is presumed to be a brain tumor, right after the two had a flaming row, this comes dangerously close to becoming a reality and she finds herself staying at her grandmother’s dingy beachside apartment with nothing to do but draw pictures.

During this time she finds herself in a fantasy world based on her drawings that are slowly falling apart, presumably due to the actions of a dark queen, who looks suspiciously like her mother. It turns out that it is the fault of the queen’s  daughter, Helena’s own doppelgänger, the princess who has traveled to the real world, taking Helena’s place and destroying everything behind her. Now Helena has to find her way through a world of, sphinxes, giants, and riddles to find the one thing that will get her back home, the MirrorMask!

This film is amazing. Using the magic of CGI McKean is able to translate the amazing imagery of his illustrations into an incredibly convincing surreal, sepia world, and with Gaiman’s script, none of it is wasted. I was amazed when I first heard about how much of a shoe string this was made with. It convinces me that with any luck this will allow the artists back into film since it’s finally possible to make wonderful like this on a budget.

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Wednesday Double Feature – Train Stations

by on May 10, 2017 at 9:30 am
Posted In: Test

For various reasons, most likely from reading Terry Pratchett’s Raising Steam for the umpteenth time, I was thinking about trains today. But since trains seems to basic I decided to look at films about train stations and the people work around them.

For this week's double feature I watched films about train stations with the Station AgentThe other reason I was drawn to this topic was because of hearing about the film that was Peter Dinklage’s big break, The Staton Agent. Dinklage Plays Finbar McBride a quiet man who works at a model shop. Because his dwarfism tends to draw attention he is very repressed loner pretty much only interacting with his friend and boss at the holy shop. When his friend suddenly dies he finds that he has inherited a small old abandoned train depot. He moves in hoping it will give him the life of solitude he craves.

However when he gets there he finds himself meeting his neighbors Joe, a cuban american played (by Bobby Cannavale,) who runs a hot dog stand while his father recovers from an unspecified illness, who is desperate for friends, and Olivia a divorced artist (played by Patricia Clarkson) who is mourning the death of her son. Together they form  a strange little support group.

This was a nice quiet film. Dinklage does a wonderful job as Fin. For everybody who knows him primarily from his performance as Tyrion in Game of Thrones,  this restrained performance comes as a pleasant surprise. It’s a pleasure watching him gradually coming out of his seclusion and becoming part of the community. The other cool thing about it is this is not just FIn’s story and there are other, bigger, stories going on but since we’re mostly seeing everything through Fin’s eyes we only ever get a handful of snippets and we don’t ever know the whole story.

For this week's double feature I watched films about train stations with Closely Watched TrainsThe next film on my list, Closely Watched Trains (Czech: Ost?e sledované vlaky) by Ji?í Menzel tells the story of Miloš Hrma, played by Václav Necká?who is starting his career as a station dispatcher during the German occupation of Czechoslovakia. He’s looking forward to a life of getting paid for doing  nothing… or nearly nothing.

The station staff consists of a band of eccentrics, and Miloš adjusts to his new life quickly. But the war is still going on in the background, and they are instructed to closely watch certain trains in an attempt to capture potential saboteurs. But Miloš is more interested in his affair with a cute train conductor. However this is complicated by a problem with a problem with premature ejaculation…

This is was an interesting film that was really difficult to categorize beyond the category of Czechoslovakian New Wave. It goes from a pleasant sexual farce a bunch of eccentrics working in a train station, then jumps to attempted suicide due the aforementioned ejaculation problem. Then back to a sex comedy as Milos tries to find an “experienced woman” to help him through his problem… Oh yeah did I mention there was a war on?
Despite taking the war and occupation very seriously, the funniest scene is when the station’s collaborationist boss trying to explain all of the German defeats and retreats are all part of a brilliant plan to lead the Allies into a trap.

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Wednesday Double Feature – Gallows Humor in the New West

by on May 3, 2017 at 9:07 am
Posted In: Rhapsodies

For this week I wanted to look at some films fit which under a category I like to call Western Noir. Though the number one films that I thought filled that description, No Country For Old Men, I had already seen. Happily, the other two recommendations I had fit together quite nicely.  So here we have two pieces of gallows humor that tell chilling stories of adultery, betrayal, and murder…. All tragic, if the people doing all this weren’t so comically incompetent.

Wednsensday Double Feature - Gallows Humor in the New west Blood SimpleSince the rules didn’t let me do No Country For Old Men, I started my selection Coen Brothers film, with the first in their career, Blood Simple. Blood Simple tells the story about  Marty, a rich Bar Owner, played by Dan Hedaya, who hires a detective played by M. Emmett Walsh to find out if his wife, Abby (played by Coen regular Frances McDormand) is cheating on him. It turns out that she is and he then hires the Detective to kill her, and her dimwitted lover, Ray (played by John Getz) .

This leads to a fatal double cross, desperate attempts to hide the body and a climax with a desperate cat and mouse game as the detective tries to recover some incriminating evidence as well as taking care of some loose ends (like Ray and Abby, who he didn’t actually kill.)

This was an okay film, but still very much a beginner’s work from the Coen. Though it had a nice raw quality I liked. Having only ever seen Hedaya as the buffoonish Nick Tortelli from Cheers, I barely recognized him as Marty, and Walsh steals every scene he’s in as the detective.

Wednesday Double Feature Gallows Humor in the New West - Kill Me three timesFrom here we go farther west,,, all the way west to the west coast of Australia. With Kill Me Three Times. We pretty much have the same plot as blood simple. A rich motel owner suspects his wife is cheating on him and puts a hit out on her when his suspicions are confirmed. Meanwhile, his wife, who’s trying to get away from him, takes all the money in his safe on the way out. But that’s not all! A dentist is trying to fake his wife’s death for the insurance and all he need is a convenient victim to take her place… And did I mention there’s a crooked cop making things difficult for everyone?

This was… okay. The story was done in a strange Anachronic Order that didn’t have any real recognizable pattern, and was difficult to follow. Like in Blood Simple, the sheer incompetence of all of the crooks made these otherwise horrible things funny.

Otherwise, the best thing about this film was Simon Pegg as the hitman. Having the time of his life playing against type, he’s funny and terrifying at the same time.

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Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge Day Thirty One – The Bremen Town Musicians.

by on May 1, 2017 at 9:58 am
Posted In: Art

I Finished my April Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge with the Bremen Town Musicians!Technically I finished the sketch challenge yesterday. but here’s the thing. I do these sketches on 8.5 & ll sheets of bristol board and I do two sketches a sheet. Since I was left with one last sheet of bristol board with only one sketch I finished the month of April on May 1st to make a baker’s dozens. (for anyone who points out that there were only thirty days in April, and thus an even number, I had this same problem for my last Inktober sketch challenge and started this challenge on the last page of my last Inktober challenge.) So anyway. here’s the last sketch of my April Challenge, The Bremen Town Musicians.

The Bremen Town Musicians is a fun one. It’s also one of those ones where there’s really only one image to do that will tell us all we need to know about the story. This doesn’t sound like much of a challenge, but then it hit me, why would this seemingly ridiculous scene of the stack of animals scare the robbers? After that, it occurred to me I’d never seen a version of the image that was from the robbers’ point of view.

Having that smashing through my window in the middle of the night, with the right lighting would certainly frighten me.

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Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge Day Thirty The Three Little Men in The Wood

by on April 30, 2017 at 8:57 am
Posted In: Art

For today April Fairy Tale Sketch Challenge I drew the Three Little Men in the Wood by the Brothers Grimm. For the penultimate entry in this month’s sketch challenge The Three Little Men in The Wood from the Brother’s Grimm. Another one of the stories where good girl is rewarded and the bad girl is punished. I freely admit that I took liberties with this one. A lot of versions of this story just have the little men (or similar magical beings) just standing around the fire, alone in the forest. In the story, they have a house. For me the alone in the forest thing was much more dramatic… and I’m the one who’s drawing this thing.

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