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Normally, when you see a black man or a woman president, an asteroid is about to hit the Statue of Liberty. -- Jon Stewart, Oscars 08 Reply
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The Brainy Pirate's Mast Full Post View | List View
my thoughts on culture, etc.--from a Christian-academic-fan perspective....
- A Quote and a Link
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Lisa Rosen has a nice article on some of the best bit-part casting of this past year (registration may be required to read the article):
- Brian Dierker 'Into the Wild'
- Peter Friedman 'The Savages'
- Garret Dillahunt 'The Assassination of Jesse James . . .'
- Gene Jones 'No Country for Old Men'
- Alessandro Nivola 'Grace Is Gone'
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And a quick quote from Josh Levin at Slate from his review of Meet the Spartans:
"...the movie is about an hour long and probably took about six hours to make..."I recall my college friend Scott Morlock complaining about having to sing songs that take longer to perform than they did to write. That comment has been one of the best pieces of aesthetic judgment I have ever heard.
Tags: review-quotes, film Thursday January 31, 2008 - 03:05pm (EST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Re-View: All That Jazz
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Brian and I caught Bob Fosse's semi-autobiographical film on cable the other day. Brian had never seen it and seemed to enjoy it. I'd seen it several times, but had felt disappointed by it on my last viewing. This time, however, the film was better than I had remembered.
The film is basically a story of the director's own death, inspired by a heart-attack he had had while working on the show Chicago, and the last hour or so is a sort-of deathbed fantasia, complete with songs, dance numbers and even a TV Special filmed in front of a studio audience. I had never thought of the film as lyrical, but when viewed as a love story, the ending shot of the Fosse character moving towards his true love, Angelique, becomes almost romantic.
I've always been a sucker for films where all the people in a person's life show up at the end, like the ending of 8 1/2, which is one of my favorite film moments and which still fills me with joy. But I hadn't realized how much he had used Fellini's film as a model until I recognized that Fosse shot of the nurse in the same way that Fellini shot Claudia Cardinale.
I also hadn't realized how much complicity there was among his cast in his death (he is in the middle of staging a show when he has his heart attack). There seems to be no one either able or willing to make him stop his bad habits: smoking, boozing and screwing around (as the film so eloquently summarizes for us). The producers know that should he die, they will make a profit, but his dancers seem too enraptured by his charisma and love for life to stand up for him, especially since so many of them need the job just to make ends meet. (From what I know of Fosse's own life, this seems to be another autobiographical element. How Gwen Verdon and Ann Reinking continued to work with him I cannot understand.)
The film paints a bleak picture of Broadway life, much bleaker than I had remembered: greedy producers, naively desperate cast and crew, and a general refusal to be honest about how bad the situation is. Fosse's character realizes too late that what he has to live for is not his hedonism, but his daughter. Unlike Fellini's character, who learns to love everyone in his life, Fosse's character realizes that he's loved all the wrong people in all the wrong ways.Tags: film, re-views Thursday January 31, 2008 - 12:07pm (EST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Zacharek on Reiner and The Bucket List
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Not quite as blunt as Ebert's famous review of North, but good all the same. In fact, I don't know which quote I prefer: the directness of
Reiner couldn't have made the moment any cheaper if he'd tried.
or the careful set-up and vicious reversal of
When Carter and Edward climb to the top of an Egyptian landmark for a quiet, intense conversation, their noble heads bathed in golden sunlight, the movie achieves a kind of perverse nirvana: Rarely have I seen such serene poo.
Ouch!
Tags: review-quotes, stephanie-zacharek Tuesday December 25, 2007 - 04:36pm (EST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - Slate on PT Anderson
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In preparation for the release of There Will Be Blood, Dennis Lim has a nice piece on Paul Thomas Anderson and his "maximalist" style of film-making over at Slate, including YouTube clips of scenes from his other films!
We may not be living in a golden age of American movies, but a new New Hollywood of sorts has emerged—a cluster of adventurous directors in their 30s and 40s who have figured out how to get personal films made with Hollywood or Indiewood money: Steven Soderbergh, David Fincher, Quentin Tarantino, Richard Linklater, Todd Haynes, Sofia Coppola, Alexander Payne. Many of them have a specialty. Fincher is a visual virtuoso, Linklater a verbal stylist. Payne is good with character, Coppola with moods and music. Tarantino has the encyclopedic geek smarts, Soderbergh the taste for reinvention. With Paul Thomas Anderson, all of the above apply. His thing is that he can do it all.
Lim discusses Anderson's willingness to be sincerely emotional, his use of music, and the important differences between Anderson and his oft-cited models, Altman and Kubrick. Lim hints at something I've often thought, that Anderson is much more humanistic (in the sense of humane-ness) than most of his colleagues and predecessors.
I'm looking forward to seeing the film -- crazy ending and all!Tags: film, review-quotes Tuesday December 25, 2007 - 04:32pm (EST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments - The Great Crooners
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I believe I've lamented before in this space about the loss of the great male pop/rock singers of the 1970s: men who truly sang, full voice and full throttle. Now, having heard 3 weeks' worth of schmaltzy Christmas music from the 50s and 60s, I want to expand my lament.
It's not that I particularly like that style of music. But it strikes me as very curious how these men, with their creamy voices and supple vibrato, were accepted in their time as fully masculine. Growing up in the 70s, I never heard Perry Como or Andy Williams accused of being effeminate. Nat King Cole? Hardly. Frank Sinatra? Preposterous!
But whom do we have today? Michael Buble? Josh Groban? Sure, they have fans, but they're hardly considered "hip" (much less "hop"). Think of how Clay Aiken was treated during American Idol -- he was the throwback, retro contestant, popular among older crowds and teenaged girls. Would he ever be taken seriously as a "man"? (Whatever that term means nowadays.)
What has happened in our culture that has caused this style of singing to become dubious, so that the men who have the voices to sing them are considered soft?Tags: cultural-criticism, music, pop-culture Monday December 24, 2007 - 02:25pm (EST) Permanent Link | 0 Comments
