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Friday, March 2, 2007
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Hedwig and I spent an evening watching the restored version of David Lean's film, Lawrence of Arabia. It's available on DVD. But, as Roger Ebert points out in his essay on Lawrence of Arabia in his book The Great Movies, the viewer spends a lot of time looking at great sweeps of desert landscapes, sometimes trying to see if there's a little dot on the horizon -- a person far in the distance. Details of that kind can be lost on the small screen. Ebert recommends, wisely, finding a way to see a 70mm version projected in a theater. That is indeed the ideal way to view it.
To solve the DVD-viewing problem, we didn't bother with a tv screen of any size, small or large. We watched the movie using my basement projection system -- one large white wall becomes the screen. I use a projector of the type used to show bullet-point slides or other visuals from a computer at conventions and meetings. Back the projector far enough to fill the wall with the image, play the DVD on the computer, and turn on the speakers.
Lawrence of Arabia, we learned when we looked it up on the IMDB, was shot in a 2:20 to 1 ratio. The image we saw was 4 feet high; that means it was also 8.8 feet wide -- almost three yards. We were sitting closer than one might in a movie theater -- possibly 10 feet back. The image was high up, starting right under the ceiling. We could see everything there was to see.
What a magnificent visual delight of a movie! colors, shapes, movement, music -- and of course unforgettable characters and events. Read Roger Ebert's essay on it in his book The Great Movies, whether you've seen it or not. And then find a way to see it again, now that the restored version is available. What an amazing four-hour trip it is!
5:24:07 PM 
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Saturday, December 30, 2006
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I just saw Wimbledon, starring Paul Bettany as Peter Colt, a tennis player in his thirties who is trying to come to terms with being near the end of his career, having been ranked eleventh some years before, but now ranked 119th. It's a fine British romantic comedy with a deft light touch, involving two championship tennis players. It's a fine British sports movie about two tennis players who meet at Wimbledon and fall in love, complicating their tennis play. Take your pick -- but it's both, and (for once) both types of movie blend together very well, with neither being shorted. This is a movie that is much finer than its trailers.
I love the romantic comedy story, with the movie's careful attention to not letting it get soppy or sentimentally overdone, taking care to undercut such incipient tendencies before they can run away with the film, yet leaving us with both the romance and the comedy. The script is excellent; we are at once drawn in and want to see what will happen, on the court and off. Most important: Paul Bettany, a fine dramatic actor, is unexpectedly delightful as a romantic comedy lead, and you really, really want to know what will happen next! A single game lost at Wimbledon is a total defeat: a loss eliminates a competitor from further play. With life imitating art in odd ways in the film, the stakes are nicely high, the plot is not predictable, and the leading man is capable and modest, funny and self deprecating -- in short, perfect.
As a movie about championship tennis players at Wimbledon, the the film succeeds in pleasing both those who don't follow or know much about tennis -- I'm one of those -- and those who do, including some top world-class tennis players. John McEnroe and Chris Evert play two television commentators on the matches we see, and other tennis stars have cameos as interviewers or appear as the opponents in the segments showing actual tennis play. And expert tennis eyes have scrutinized the tennis scenes to make sure they show us neither more nor less than they should. Excellent job all around.
Kirsten Dunst is convincing as a brash young American player, and Sam Neil is her American father, American not only in his accent but his body language. The magnificent Bernard Hill and an ensemble of superb actors play Peter Colt's family. Watch this film, please. You'll be glad you did.
4:38:22 PM
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Fans of the Sharpe Chronicles will be glad to see Sean Bean return for the first time in 8 years as Richard Sharpe. In 1817, Wellington sends Sharpe, a veteran who has already seen action in India in 1803, back to India to unravel an intrigue. Darragh O'Malley returns as Harper, and the adventure, loosely based on several of Bernard Cornwell's Sharpe novels set in India, is back with lots of action and intrigue. The acting and production are excellent; this one was filmed on location in India. Well worth seeing. If you haven't seen the other 14 filmed adventures, you'll enjoy them too, adapted from Cornwell's twenty novels about Sharpe.
4:22:17 PM
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Thursday, December 21, 2006
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By all means find and watch The Interpreter, with Sean Penn and Nicole Kidman.
In this movie, both actors have apparently grown into both their looks and their acting styles in the roles they have here -- or are allowed to do so by the film itself -- and their roles are intelligent, complex, and fulfilled by the actor both physically and as one creating a role and 'selling' the lines -- convincing us not only that they are that character, and that it is inevitable that that character would say that, in just that way, at that time, but that what they are saying is important enough for us to be listening to and watching, even if the words being used seem trivial at the moment and the situation seems slight at first glance.
The story and the situation are top notch. It's a thriller that's not treated as a thriller, in the sense of lots of killing and bloodshed -- it's like the Inside Man in that respect. Director Sydney Pollack, in his commentary, likens the structure of the film to that of an opera, in which occasionally the lead characters sing arias about their feelings or situations. In this film, both Kidman and Penn have acting 'arias,' in which they have several pages of dialogue or even of monologue, as part of the ongoing thriller action, not as asides or commentaries to the viewer... and they bring them off!
There is a depth of emotion conveyed by Sean Penn that I have almost never seen on the screen -- and yet he does it without overdoing or overreaching or becoming corny in any way. He's got great material to work with, and a superb actor in Kidman to play off (and many other very fine actors in the film) -- but he still has to do it for us, and he does... astounding.
I've always admired Sydney Pollack's work, and this is a film (from an original film script someone gave to him) that has been worked on by Pollack and the writers so that the original 'spine' of the story is in place, and the film has been presented and acted to a fare-thee-well. There isn't a dull, slow, or wasted moment, plenty of suspense, and yet there is little of the traditional thriller about it.
The characters played by Kidman and Penn are very different people in every way, yet each is intelligent and recognizes the intelligence of the other, even though at first they don't really like or trust each other (why should they?). Penn's character, from the Secret Service, is one who is used to being in charge, and he finds himself baffled in unusual ways (obviously not those of physical force) by Kidman's UN interpreter, who is not American, does not have the reactions he expects, and is smarter (and in particular, way more articulate) than the average suspect... He has been worn down by having people all around him over the years who are not as smart as he is, or possibly not as quick, even if they get there after a while and function quite competently. He gets his blunted edges honed sharply when he meets Kidman's character. Watching how his character changes and develops by the events in the film and by Kidman's character is one of the particular pleasures of the film.
In this film, I warmed to both Kidman and Penn, something I haven't done in the past, despite my deep respect for Sean Penn's ability; I haven't watched Kidman at work much before this. I think they were fortunate to be able to work with this script and this director, who saw and used their talents in a way that apparently others haven't.
Watch all the little featurettes that are on the disc, which are much better than the usual run of such extras.
5:38:52 PM
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I just saw a truly great film on DVD, really fine, in the top rank: Beowulf & Grendel. It's so well-done, on every level.
This film shows us an era we don't see much about, some of the darkest of the Dark Ages, and was filmed entirely in Iceland (it's a British / Canadian / Iceland co-production). It gives a really good idea (as much as can be given at this distance of time, and a great effort was made to get this right) of what life was like then, including worship of the old gods being replaced, for better or worse, and slowly, by early efforts at conversion to Christianity. It has its moments of high humor, battle, fighting, and much else -- but the thing I saw in every frame was the amazingly fine photography of an amazing landscape, not like anything I've seen before even in photographs...
The film is in English but you do have to listen closely to what is said, as (rightly enough for the film, since the characters are meant to come from various distant places) people have different accents. Gerard Butler plays Beowulf, a Geat, and his Glaswegian vowels shine through as they are intended to do. Stellan Skarsgaard is King Hrothgar, who sends for Beowulf to come and rid him and his hall and lands of Grendel, and there are various British and Irish accents in it as well (Ciaran Hinds is one of Beowulf's men, a fighter and a storyteller, but not the teller of our story). None of that takes away from the amazingly beautiful photography of the amazingly beautiful but harsh land and sea...
And the story doesn't just recount episodes in the saga of a hero (although it does that too); it has a point to make, not preaching, it's just there, part of the story, somewhere between subplot and subtext. The story in this film is brought into focus for us, without distortion, and we get to see it plain for what seems to me the first time... It's a great film, an overused but accurate word in this case, and I wish it had been recognized more widely (especially here) as one.
5:19:20 PM
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Saturday, October 21, 2006
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Captain Corelli's Mandolin (2001) - dir. John Madden; Nicholas Cage, Penelope Cruz, John Hurt, Christian Bale, Irene Papas
Captain Corelli's Mandolin is a love story, set on the Greek island of Cephalonia during the overwhelming events of World War II. It is based on the novel Corelli's Mandolin, by Louis de Bernières, which is a novel of the war as it happened devastatingly on Cephalonia, told through the lives of several fictonal characters, but historically accurate in its depiction of the war and its effects.
Every movie that attempts to portray a book, or bases itself on a book, especially a long and complex book, is the result of a struggle to deal with all the complexities and events of a much longer tale than a feature-length movie can tell. This is a superb movie, reflecting key events and characters of the novel, and showing and expressing much of what is there, and deepening some aspects, changing, collapsing or deleting whole story threads in order to make a feature-length movie. Captain Corelli's Mandolin does an excellent job of this, sifting and refining,and not losing its focus on the relationship between Pelagia (Penelope Cruz) and Corelli (Nicholas Cage), with Pelagia's father (John Hurt), her fiance Mandras (Christian Bale), and Mandras's mother (Irene Papas) as major supporting players. Both book and movie keep you wondering if Pelagia and Corelli will find a way to get together. Fittingly enough, given their different emphases, the movie answers one way, and the book another. Go see this fine movie.
10:52:46 AM
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Friday, September 1, 2006
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OK, I have just three things to tell you, cinema fans:
1. See The Illusionist.
2. See The Illusionist.
3. See The Illusionist.
See Edward Norton! See Paul Giamatti! See the first-rate cast, script, direction, production.... Wow!!!
I just got back. Superb! Excellent! First-rate! Don't miss it!!!!!!
9:30:36 PM
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Wednesday, July 19, 2006
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Let me start out by saying that Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle is one of my all-time favorite marvelous terrific films, viewable over and over. And I say film, advisedly. It does not fall into any particular genre (anime, animation, fantasy), although it partakes of all of these. It belongs right up there with great feature films of all time. It's not an accident that Miyazaki's earlier Spirited Away won the best animated feature Oscar in its year, 2003. There is no substitute for seeing them yourself, if you haven't, or seeing them again, if you have (they both bear re-watching very well).
I bought the original book of Howl's Moving Castle just because I've approached the movie from every other possible angle, including the Studio Ghibli book on the art of the film, which contains the entire filmscript as well as the pictures.
As one would have to do to translate a book into a feature-length movie (one film contains script/story material of roughly one short story, so a novel of necessity has to be changed, pared down, maybe characters combined or omitted, some scenes ditto, and maybe even new material put into the place of old material which has been deleted), Miyazaki has begun with characters and situations present in the novel (a wizard Howl with a moving castle, a Sophie who is changed into an old lady, the Witch of the Waste casting a spell out of jealousy, Calcifer, the hat shop, the gushing stepmother, the attractive sister Lettie) and lifted them out of the more complex novel (Sophie has two sisters in the novel, and there are many other differences and complications -- including that Markl is a young man of 15 named Michael and a rival at one point with Howl for Lettie's attentions, and Howl has a sister back in 'our world' -- Wales, in fact -- who has a family herself. Howl's name in Wales is Howell Jenkins; and many other differences).
I note that Christian Bale (who does the English-language voice of Howl) is Welsh, although in the featurette about the English-language voiceovers, they chose him (Bale, himself a wizard of a thousand accents, gives Howl's voice as a US voice without any regionalization) as an actor who could present an unusual character (unusual to the US -- a hero without being a he-man, one who calls himself a coward during the film, although he's actually quite brave when confronted, and says his strategy for dealing with problems is to run away) to the US audience convincingly. They picked him, they said, after seeing his success in Batman Begins -- who, I note, is another widely-accepted American 'hero' who overcomes his fears in order to battle fiercely.
My point is: Miyazaki has transformed and streamlined the story to concentrate on Howl and Sophie, with Howl's castle and Calcifer, and changed somewhat the role of the Witch of the Waste, and created the Madam Sulieman character out of other characters, and made the war over the missing Prince a major factor in the film, showing Howl's character development and role as a lone struggler against the war's depredations. If there can be said to be a Miyazaki original 'message' or 'theme' in the film, it's the one about the pointlessness and destructiveness of war, and how the war has no real reason that justifies the war itself. In the book as well as the film Sophie does find a way to set Calcifer free and give back Howl's heart, and Calcifer does return afterwards because he likes them (and because it's starting to rain). And Sophie and Howl do get together.
But let me say this: the book is a much more lightweight confection than the film, shelved in the 'teens' section of the bookstore when I bought my copy, clever and inventive, but not terribly deep, nor intended to be. It's filled with literary allusions and references that are well-handled and integrated into the plot, and also many plot twists and reversals that seem to my eye more busy than substantive, although they all have to do with and lead to the final unravelling of what's been going on. And while Sophie has to solve the basic mystery of the Howl-Calcifer relationship in the book, too, she stumbles along there from minor calamity to minor calamity, not learning much about herself while doing so, until at the end of the book things are cleared up all at once (not without a struggle). By contrast, Miyazaki's film has transformed the materials and characters of this book into a brilliant, moving, beautiful film with amazing depths, the work of a true genius. Beautifully crafted, beautifully produced, both visually and in terms of story and character. Amazing, astounding, incomparable.
Go see it.
8:00:34 AM
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Wednesday, July 12, 2006
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A list of links to free updates on how things stand -- some movies, movie trailers and books (your library has the books or can get them for you to read):
Votergate 2004
Watch this film free on the web: Votergate, the movie
Also: check out this book, Fooled Again, by Mark Crispin Miller, (NY: Basic Books, 2005) talks about ALL the ways that an election can be (and was) stolen in 2004.
Q. Why should you care?
A. Because, while 'your side' may have come out on top this time, what happens next time when they do something that's outrageous to you, and you want to vote them out?
Global Warming:
See the trailer for An Inconvenient Truth -- Documentary of Al Gore's campaign to wake up the American people to the extent of global warming and its dangers, and change what we're doing to cause it before it's too late.
Alternative energy for cars:
Watch the trailer for Who Killed The Electric Car?
Politics and protest:
Watch the trailer for the movie The U.S. vs. John Lennon -- How the U.S. tried to deport John Lennon
Also: check out this book on the subject, Gimme Some Truth: the John Lennon FBI files by Jon Wiener. Read the Intro here.
Where are we, and how did we get here?
Watch the trailer of the movie made by one filmmaker who tried to find out the basis for income tax. America: Freedom to Fascism.
The need for and power of an independent press:
Watch the trailer for Good Night and Good Luck.
Fables for Our Time:
Watch the trailer for X-Men: The Last Stand (X3).
[People widely recognize the underlying theme of prejudice against gays. But also consider this: imagine that the government is going to try to apply a 'cure' to the unruly freedom of its citizens to live their own lives in privacy without being "tracked": an implanted ID chip and/or an ID card with fingeprint or retinal information.]
What's it like in the war?
Watch the trailer for The War Tapes.
And what's this about Guantanamo?
Watch the trailer for Road to Guantanamo.
9:01:38 AM
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© Copyright
2007
Penny G. Mattern.
Last update:
3/2/07; 5:25:30 PM.
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