July 25, 2008
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Film Diaries - Libby, Documentaries
1 Comment
2008
Director: Alex Gibney
Viewed: July 24, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print
My only previous experience with director Alex Gibney was Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, a slick, illuminating feature with an unfortunately tittering tone. Enron slimmed down Bethany McLean and Peter Elkin’s dense chronicle of capitalism amok until it was undetectable. With Gonzo, Gibney seems to find material that works much better with his momentous and yet slightly mocking angle of attack. In this biographic sketch of “freak of letters” Hunter S. Thomspon, Gibney seems uncannily attuned to the grunting poetics of Thompson’s typewriter, if a bit superficially dazzled by the man’s insights. Johnny Depp assists with ripe narration of the journalist’s words, which spatter into the film accompanied by crude, quirky visuals (occasionally far too literalist). Gibney mostly shies from anything mournful; even Thompson’s suicide is addressed with a minimum of schmaltz. The portrait that emerges depicts a cowboy of social consciousness, the second coming of Mark Twain soured by aimlessness and self-doubt. Gonzo offers no trenchant revelations, and the relentless “It’s Happening Again” political flourishes undercut its subtler intentions. Still, the films serves as a sort of flamboyant, seductive crash course that will inspire newcomers—including myself—to seek out Thompson’s work.
July 21, 2008
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Reviews, Film Diaries - Libby, Film Diaries - Roland, Action, Science Fiction, Film Diaries - Beth, Film Diaries - Mark
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2008
Director: Christopher Nolan
Viewed: July 20, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print
Indulge me for a moment, as I’m going get effusive right off the bat (pun intended). With The Dark Knight, writer-director Christopher Nolan sets upon the “comic book film” with sledgehammer and napalm, and delivers the sort of sorely needed genre reconstruction that occurs once in a generation. Here we have, at long last, a film that winnows away the limitations of comics, distills their strengths, and emerges as a work wholly cinematic in character, leaving its ancestral medium far behind. The Dark Knight is a noir action epic of the grandest, bleakest, most exhilarating sort. It is not a flawless film, nor is it a masterpiece. However, it is a wonder to behold. It is a film so ambitious, so dizzying in its lofty heights and abyssal depths, I suspect that it was only the appealing Batman branding that permitted Nolan to create it at all. This is Hollywood film-making as bloodless revolution. As Heath Ledger’s terrifying Joker observes, “You’ve changed things. There’s no going back.”
Read the rest…
July 21, 2008
Andrew
3-Minute Intros, Kid Stuff, Fantasy, Musicals
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Screened: July 18, 2008
Format: DVD - Warner Broethers (2005)
Selected By: Beth
What more can be said of Victor Fleming’s 1939 musical fantasy triumph, The Wizard of Oz, that hasn’t already been said before? It is the kind of film that proudly embodies the best features of cinema. It plucks out the affirming fable in L. Frank Baum’s original turn-of-the-century fantasy, wraps it in Broadway melody, and then adds movie-making opulence at its most wondrous. It is a glorious, shameless kind of film, one that succeeds and endures because of its fierce ambition to be a unprecedented work of imagination. What film before Oz contained such human warmth, such otherworldly delight, such grotesque terror, all in one package, and then had the audacity to add catchy show tunes?
At this point, perhaps we should just journey down the list of rumors and legends that swirl around the film. Most notoriously, no, the film does not capture an on-set Munchkin or stagehand suicide. Yes, actor Buddy Epson was slated to play the Tin Man, but was replaced by Jack Haley after the aluminum dust in his role’s makeup severely poisoned him. Yes, a second-hand coat purchased for Professor Marvel’s costume turned out to have been owned by Oz author L. Frank Baum. Yes, MGM originally wanted W.C. Fields to play the Wizard, and yes, the studio originally intended for the Cowardly Lion to be a live lion with a dubbed voice. Yes, many of Margaret Hamilton’s scenes as the Wicked Witch of the West were cut from the final film because they were deemed to frightening.
Yes, Terry the Dog, who plays Toto, was paid more than twice the rate received by the actors who portrayed the Munchkins. Yes, the original silver slippers of Baum’s novel were changed to ruby slippers to better show off the Technicolor film process. And, of course, yes, there are eerie synchronicities between this 1939 film and Pink Floyd’s 1973 concept album, Dark Side of the Moon. Since awareness of the phenomenon first surfaced on Usenet in the 1990s, it has been dismissed by the band and album engineer Alan Parsons, but this has not dissuaded film and Floyd devotees from exploring this odd coincidence.
July 21, 2008
Andrew
Film Diaries - Eric
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2008
Director: Christopher Nolan
Viewed: July 18, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print
Best. Batman. Ever.
July 21, 2008
Andrew
Film Diaries - Andrew, Film Diaries - Libby
No Comments
2007
Director: Anton Corbijn
Viewed: July 21, 2008
Format: DVD - Weinstein (2008)
July 21, 2008
Teresa
Film Diaries - Teresa
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2007
Director: Juan Carlos Fresnadillo
Viewed: July 20, 2008
Format: Television - HBO
July 21, 2008
Teresa
Film Diaries - Teresa
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2007
Director: Julie Taymor
Viewed: July 20, 2008
Format: DVD - Sony (2008)
July 21, 2008
Teresa
Film Diaries - Teresa
No Comments
2008
Director: Christopher Nolan
Viewed: July 18, 2008
Format: Theatrical Print
