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Friday, October second, 2009
(spoiler alert -- there is an argument to be made that this post contains information about Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window that would make watching the movie less enjoyable for someone who has not already seen it...)
 The scene at the end of Rear Window where Stewart is fighting off Burr is really compelling for all the overall silliness of the movie -- there are things about the movie that just don't make sense. The impression you get is that Stewart is imagining things and is convincing people (women) to enter his hallucination just out of strength of character. So all movie long you have been sort of lulled into thinking it's a joke, then all that collapses in a few minutes, and you the viewer are pulled too into Stewart's hallucination. (Specifically your disbelief unravels in the scene where Kelly breaks into Burr's apartment. By the end of that scene you have forgotten any suspicion that somebody's joking around with you.) That really pulls me in to the fright and (literal) suspense in the characters' experience of the movie -- and then bang, the frame is colorful and bright again, it's back to a light comedy. The ending is probable the brightest, lightest scene in the film, and the relief/joy of being lifted back out of that paranoid moment of struggle is what the film leaves you with. Now I am watching a TCM documentary about The Thriller. Amusing stuff -- one line was that Grace Kelly is "more evidence that still waters run... weird..." If I want to stay up late, the midnight film is going to be Shadow of a Doubt!
↻...done
posted evening of October second, 2009: 4 responses
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Friday, September 25th, 2009
I hope a movie has been made of Unamuno's El marqués de LumbrÃa; this opening paragraph would be spectacular on the screen: La casona solariega de los marqueses de LumbrÃa, el palacio, que es como se le llama en la adusta ciudad de Lorenza, parecÃa un arca de silenciosos recuerdos del misterio. A pesar de hallarse habitada, casi siempre permanecÃa con las ventanas y los balcones que daban al mundo cerrados. Su fachada, en la que destacaba el gran escudo de armas del linaje de LumbrÃa, daba al MediodÃa, a la gran plaza de la Catedral, y frente a la ponderosa fábrica de ésta, pero como el sol bañaba casi todo el dÃa, y en Lorenza apenas hay dÃas nublados, todos sus huecos permanecÃan cerrados. Y ello porque el exelentÃsimo señor marqués de LumbrÃa, Don Rodrigo Suárez de Tejada, tenÃa horror a la luz del sol y al aire libre. "El polvo de la calle y la luz del sol-solÃa decir-no hacen más que deslustrar los muebles y hechar a perder las habitaciones, y luego, las moscas..." El marqués tenÃa verdadero horror a las moscas, que podÃan venir de un andrajoso mendigo, acaso de un tiñoso. El marqués temblaba ante posibles contagios de enfermedades plebeyas. Eran tan sucios los de Lorenza y su comarca...
The ancestral mansion of the Marquéses of LumbrÃa, the palace as it was called in the gloomy city of Lorenza, appeared as a chest of silent memories of the mysterious. In spite of its being in fact occupied, the windows and balconies which gave out onto the world were almost always closed. The façade, where the great coat of arms of the LumbrÃan lineage stood forth, looked south*, onto the great square of the Cathedral, whose ponderous construction it faced, but as the sun was shining all day long, and in Lorenza there are hardly any cloudy days, all of its openings remained closed. And this was because the excellent Señor Marqués of LumbrÃa, don Rodrigo Suáres de Tejada, abhorred the light of the sun and fresh air. "The dust of the street and the light of the sun -- he used to say -- do no more than dull the furniture's shine and spoil the rooms; not to mention the flies..." The Marqués was deathly afraid of flies, which might have come from a ragged, miserable beggar. The Marqués trembled at the thought of catching plebian diseases. And they were so filthy, the Lorenzans and the countryfolk...
 ...But it looks like no; several of his stories and books have been filmed but not this. *How great a dialect for "south" is "noon"? A lovely one.
posted evening of September 25th, 2009: Respond
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Sunday, September 20th, 2009
Next story in Cuentos Españoles after La fuerza de la sangre (skipping over several centuries -- did nothing happen in Spain between the early 1600's and the late 1800's?) is El libro talonario by Pedro Antonio de Alarcón. A good solid story, a narrative voice I can relate to. And I find that a couple of years ago, it was made into a short movie! The movie is well done -- it gets across the idea of the story without adhering slavishly to its plot, and brings a modern perspective to it. Take a look, it's a pleasant 20 minutes:
posted evening of September 20th, 2009: Respond
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Saturday, September 5th, 2009
This is kind of exciting to hear about: Big Dance Theater is presenting a new show called "Comme Toujours Here I Stand" based on Cléo de 5 à 7, featuring an original title song by Robyn Hitchcock -- a confluence of two of my very favorite artists! (And of an art form I'm not familiar with at all...) It will be premiering next month at The Kitchen in NYC; I'll certainly be there.
Speaking of Hitchcock, here are a couple of things I've seen in the last few days and been meaning to link to:
posted morning of September 5th, 2009: Respond
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Tuesday, August 18th, 2009
 Last night, Sylvia and I watched Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea -- very nice. You can see threads from earlier Ghibli movies in it -- Fujimoto is a lot like Howl, and the fish that he uses to retrieve Ponyo are like the gelatinous creatures who serve the Witch of the Waste -- and as Sylvia pointed out, the grumpy old lady at the retirement home is more than a little reminiscent of Sophie. Sosuke's mom made me think of Kiki grown up. (Also, maybe oddly, Ponyo's mother reminded me of the floating dream-giantess from Waltz with Bashir.) The movie is a visual tour de force in a class with Spirited Away, though I did not think the script was quite on that level of greatness; also there were some audio bits that will stick with me. HAM!
posted evening of August 18th, 2009: Respond
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Wednesday, July 29th, 2009
Last week, it was Photoshop Phriday at Something Awful, with the proprietors trying to assemble their favorite fictional animals out of real photographs. Results are mixed but some of them are just great -- check out this take on Miyazaki's Catbus:
I want to take a ride with Totoro! (And speaking of Studio Ghibli, I am on pins and needles waiting for Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea to hit the theaters...) On another page, we see in quick succession Charmander, Road Runner and Wile E., and Cat Dog.
posted evening of July 29th, 2009: 1 response
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Saturday, July 25th, 2009
They say that if you meet your double, you should kill him -- or that he will kill you. I can't remember which; but the gist of it is, that two of you is one too many.-- Double Take
I'm midway through The Double now, and still not sure how to approach reading it. It seems at times like a Woody Allen movie, exploring the humorous consequences of its main character's depression/inferiority complex; at other times I think Saramago has something enlightening to say about depression, but the (overly?) dismissive tone of his narrator makes it impossible to develop this much -- every thing he says, he cuts down. I'm pretty sure the intent of the book is neither broad comedy nor pedagogy, but I'm sort of alternating between these poles in my reading -- I'm hoping Saramago will show his hand a bit when the doubles meet.Bill of Orbis Quintus linked to an interview with screenwriter Tom McCarthy, in which he discusses among other things his most recent project, the movie Double Take (a longer article about the movie is at Art in America). Sounds great -- he says it is based on "a Borges tale about meeting his own double" -- at first I thought this was referring to "Borges and I", but this is probably wrong, unless the relationship between the source text and the movie is very loose indeed.* He's changed it around so that the movie is about Alfred Hitchcock rather than Borges, which seems to me like a excellent move -- not that I wouldn't be glad to see a movie about Borges, but throwing Hitchcock into the mix can only produce good consequences. Here is a clip: ...And yikes! another, mind-boggling, clip underneath the fold.
* (The story referenced is "The Other", from The Book of Sand.)
 (...And thinking further, I'd say the relationship between source text and movie is indeed very loose, and who knows, "Borges and I" may have been the inspiration for this. I need to see more of the movie to have any actual opinion about this, though.)
↻...done
posted afternoon of July 25th, 2009: 3 responses
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Monday, July 6th, 2009
 "It happened only yesterday, and it is already in the past," Agnès Varda says near the end of her breathtaking new autobiographical documentary, Les Plages d'Agnès. There is a constant feeling of astonishment and wonder in this film, that so much water has flowed under the bridge already, that so many people and circumstances are in the past and irretrievable. There is a strong sense of sadness but it's offset by Varda's joy in the present moment and in playing games with the past and with memory. The movie is a kick, a fling, a romp; I need to watch it another couple of times before I get enough of the content to say anything more intelligent about it. But right now I want to recommend it, because it's in the theater (at least in NYC) and is not going to be for very long, so you ought to grab the chance while it's available.
posted evening of July 6th, 2009: Respond
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Thursday, June 25th, 2009
Gabe passes along a link to a great silent short, from a French company called Eclipse Film, dated 1912:
Pretty miraculous job of restoration -- I'm not sure who did the restoration but I thank whoever it was. And thanks, Gabe!
Update: the film is taken from Flicker Alley's compilation of restored shorts, Saved From the Flames. I assume but am not sure that the restoration was done by Flicker Alley. From Lobster Films comes information that the director and star is Ernest Servaes; this was the first of three short comedies about Arthème.
posted evening of June 25th, 2009: Respond
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Friday, May 29th, 2009
 So Sylvia and I watched UP tonight, and we had a blast. It is a pretty movie, and an engaging one. I don't think I would go as far as Whit, who thinks it "contains two movies," a silly action movie for the kids and a romantic drama for the adults, and that both are successful -- to my mind the silly action movie was excellent, but the romantic drama was sappy and disposable, and had the feel of something Pixar felt obligated to do. But the silly action movie was plenty for me.
I gotta ask, why 3-D? Is this the new standard for Pixar movies, that everything is going to be in 3-D? It is fun; but watching flat Pixar animation is fun too, I'm not sure this technology adds all that much to the viewing experience.
posted evening of May 29th, 2009: Respond
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