I finally saw The Dark Knight Rises; my post on it will go up later today. I find I'm actually kinda glad I waited. For one thing, I got a better idea of its quality, not that I read a lot of reviews on it. Also - and with all due respect to my fellow film bloggers - when it comes to movies like this, we're like lemmings. We not only have to see it opening weekend, if not opening day, but we have to get our reviews on it up as soon as possible, never mind the fact that hundreds of other writers are writing about the exact same movie at more or less the same time. I am absolutely no different; I succumb to this mentality just as much as the next blogger. But sometimes a more measured approach is called for.
I've made a guest appearance on a blog called Eternity of Dream as part of a collective group post called "New York in Genres." It's all about New York-based movies set in different genres.
Everyone really liked me putting Jean Seberg in my re-casted version of Pulp Fiction, so here's a review from Courtney of an actual Seberg movie, Breathless.
Jacqueline talks about the old Joan Crawford film Mildred Pierce with an emphasis on the cinematography.
Speaking of the Caped Crusader, Leonard Maltin takes a look back at the old Batman serials.
And here's an interesting think piece on blacks in sci-fi films.
Pandora's Box
seen online via YouTube
7.29.12
I have a comic book which re-interprets the Pandora myth: basically, the "real" Pandora was a prostitute who gets hired by a wealthy Greek landowner in a revenge scheme against his male ex-lover. At the landowner's urging, she marries the ex-lover but cheats on him with his brother (though she doesn't have sex with either of them), sowing dissension between the two and setting them at war with each other as a result. The box element comes in later, through one of Pandora's clients, the poet Hesiod. She tells him the story of the landowner and the brothers while they're in bed. They get caught by his wife and he blames Pandora for tempting him. When he eventually writes her story (re-interpreted into a tale of the gods), he vilifies her, creating the concept of the box containing all the world's evils. The whole thing's actually played up for laughs and it's quite funny.
The underlying message here, as in the original myth, remains the same: women are man's scapegoats for everything bad in the world - which is why I found this a somewhat odd metaphor to use for the silent German film Pandora's Box, since so many men in the story are eager to do just about anything for Louise Brooks' character. She kills her insanely jealous, much older husband, though it could be argued that it was self-defense, given the unusual circumstances, but at her trial she escapes sentencing thanks to a diversion provided by her pals. Talk about devotion! She spends the second half of the film on the run with them, including her husband's son from a previous marriage, who, of course, is in love with her.
This one was melodramatic, but strangely compelling. Brooks keeps the whole thing watchable. She's not what I would call my type - too skinny, for one thing - but she has a certain glamor, a certain presence, accentuated by the clothes she wears and, of course, that Vulcan hairdo of hers. It's easy to see why she became so memorable.
When Norma Desmond says "We didn't need dialogue, we had faces!" in Sunset Boulevard, I didn't fully grasp the depth of her meaning when I first saw it, but now I believe I do. Silent movie stars had to convey their emotions, their character, with their faces - sometimes it was overwrought, but other times, like in Pandora, it's more subtle, and as a result, more magnetic. Many great actors say all the acting is done in the eyes, anyway. Combined with the right camerawork, a certain look can be iconic in a way that you rarely see in "talkies," and certainly less so in modern Hollywood movies, which pummel you into submission with frenetic imagery. No subtlety at all.
The Great Recasting Blogathon is an event in which post-1965 films are re-cast with pre-1965 actors, hosted by In the Mood and Frankly, My Dear. For a complete listing of participating blogs, visit the links at both sites.
In the spring of 1960, Samuel Fuller was stuck. For a little over a year, he had been working on a screenplay about a middle-aged boxer who agrees to take a dive for a gangster for money, only to double-cross him. Fuller was interested in exploring the world of boxing, but he wasn't satisfied with what he had to that point, and for several months had put the unfinished screenplay on the shelf, returning instead to the script for what would eventually become Underworld USA.
Then Fuller received an invitation to the Cannes Film Festival from his friend, writer Romain Gary. Fuller was reluctant to go at first; he was still bitter about the French reaction to his 1957 war film China Gate. However, Gary, the French Consul-General in Los Angeles at the time, claimed to be able to smooth things out with the right people if need be, and ultimately, Fuller agreed, choosing to keep a low profile while in Cannes.
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| Samuel Fuller |
This was the year Jean-Luc Godard's Breathless debuted to a rapturous Cannes audience, and as Fuller watched it, he was amazed to see his influence in this young French director's work - for example, there was a clear visual homage to his Barbara Stanwyck Western Forty Guns. Fuller had heard inklings here and there about a recent resurgence in French cinema, but it wasn't until seeing Godard's film, with its use of hand-held cameras and of course, jump cuts, that he began to feel as if these techniques could be applied in his own work.
A meeting was arranged between the two filmmakers. Godard couldn't have been more excited to meet Fuller, one of his idols, and the two talked for hours. Eventually, Fuller mentioned his boxing screenplay and Godard offered a few suggestions, including the addition of a young female lead. Suddenly re-energized, Fuller brought in Gary to help him with the rewrite, spending an extra week in Cannes holed up in their hotel. Fuller returned to America while Gary remained in Europe.
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| Rod Steiger |
Fuller envisioned Rod Steiger as Butch, his boxer character, ever since seeing him in the title role in Al Capone (1959), and approached him with the current draft of his screenplay. Steiger had been alternating between television and film for much of his career, and was eager for another showcase role on the big screen such as this. With both a leading man and a script - now retitled Pulp Fiction in an homage to his younger years as a pulp novelist - Fuller went to Columbia Pictures to set up a deal to produce and direct.
Fuller set up a screen test for Godard's Breathless star Jean Seberg with an eye towards getting her to play Mia, the moll character Fuller added after his initial conversations with the French filmmaker. Fuller had met her briefly at Cannes and was quite taken by her. Seberg was greatly trepidatious about returning to Hollywood, having struck out in her film debut, Otto Preminger's Saint Joan (1957) and not faring much better in her subsequent films, hence the move to France. Fuller informed her, however, that the part of Mia was written with her in mind. With Godard's encouragement, Seberg agreed to fly out to LA.
Gary, back in LA by now, also attended the screen test, which Seberg passed with flying colors. She even offered a couple of suggestions for the character which Fuller and Gary readily took to. Gary and Seberg began spending more time together during the production of Pulp, and a relationship formed between the two of them.
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| Jean Seberg |
In Pulp, Mia is the kept girl of Marsellus Wallace, the small-time gangster who gets Butch to take a dive. She has a sub-plot all her own, in which she's watched over by a pair of Wallace's henchmen while Wallace is out of town, but gets excessively drunk at a nightclub and nearly dies. Fuller brought in journeyman actor John Dall, whom he admired from his turn in Gun Crazy, and Brock Peters, who had small but memorable parts in the black musicals Carmen Jones and Porgy and Bess, as the henchmen Vincent and Jules.
For the part of Wallace, Fuller had in mind someone tall and imposing. Gary happened to remember the Gregory Peck war film Pork Chop Hill (1959) and seeing the 6'4" Woody Strode in a small part. Fuller liked the suggestion and brought the actor into the cast as well.
Post-production took longer than usual for a Fuller film, mostly due to the editing process, and as a result, he was not able to bring it to Cannes like he had hoped. Godard flew in to look at a rough cut and make a few suggestions here and there. Eventually, Pulp was released in the
fall of 1961 to middling reviews. As much as Fuller tried to bring the
French New Wave sensibility to his film, the American audiences of the
day were less than receptive. The French received it more warmly, though, especially Seberg's performance. It would take another six years before that style would be successfully wedded with American cinema, in Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde.
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| Jean-Luc Godard |
Fuller's relationship with Godard and the French New Wave would continue, however. Years later he would make cameo appearances in Godard's Pierrot le Fou and Brigitte et Brigitte, directed by another Fuller acolyte, Luc Moullet. Further in life, Fuller would move to France. Gary and Seberg, meanwhile, would get married in 1962 and have a son. He took up directing and made a pair of movies with Seberg, but their relationship grew sour and they divorced in 1970.
Quentin Tarantino's remake in
1994, ironically, did make it to Cannes and won the Palme D'Or as a
result. His version is particularly notable, not only for the increased
level of violence, but for the addition of the non-linear storytelling
format, which has been compared to Stanley Kubrick's The Killing
(1956). Indeed, it is more of a re-imagining than a straight remake (the henchmen Jules and Vincent are expanded upon, for instance), one
which Fuller has said is truer to his original vision than his actual
product turned out to be, hampered as he was by his attempts to make a
French New Wave film.
Mallrats
from my VHS collection
Maybe if I had grown up in the suburbs, I would've hung out at malls more. As it is, they never meant anything more to me than a place for one-stop shopping. The Queens Center Mall is no different from most indoor malls, and I can probably count the number of things I've bought there on one hand, not counting food. I once worked at a Tower Records which was part of a strip mall out on Long Island - not quite the same thing as an indoor mall. It was across the street from a more traditional indoor mall. I'd go there for lunch.
The thing about most suburban, big-box, indoor malls that's truly insidious is the way they're usually set up: great big parking lot in front to encourage lots and lots of car traffic and little in the way of a safe place to walk for pedestrians. I remember reading somewhere once that all that parking space is meant to accommodate Christmas shoppers. If true, well, that's some ass-backward thinking.
The mall near where I live is a textbook example. First off, it's right next to a constantly-busy eight-lane highway that you have to be fleet-footed to cross (yes, there is a traffic light; I don't have to play Frogger with the traffic). Because the cars go by so fast on the highway, walking on the sidewalk can be a little unnerving, and indeed, there are always very few pedestrians on the sidewalks. The parking lot is huge. In recent years, they put up a stop sign in this one spot next to a Best Buy to let pedestrians cross the road leading to the main mall entrance, but it hardly provides one with much of a sense of security. And the sidewalk surrounding the mall proper is so small it's ridiculous, especially given the vast swaths of territory allotted to cars. There are buses that go to the mall, but none of them stop close to the main entrance, so when you get off the bus, you're forced to schlep for another five-to-ten minutes all the way to the nearest entrance. Tough noogies if you're carrying shopping bags.
In Columbus, the rise of suburban malls, a symptom of city-killing urban sprawl, led to the decline of the mall in the downtown area, one that was fairly popular for a long time. Recently they tore it down and put up a park. (Here's a City Mouse strip I did about it.) I remember walking around in it once before they took it down. It was eerie. There were empty storefronts almost everywhere, and it had a kind of haunted feel - there should have been people there, but there weren't.
And as for those suburban malls... Once I took a bus to the northern part of town, almost near the county border, just to see this one mall I was curious about. I was let out next to a wide street with cars everywhere and started walking in the direction of the mall, and as I walked, I remember thinking how peculiar it was that I was the only pedestrian around, even though it was the middle of the day. There was no shortage of cars on the street, though. This was when I first began to fully understand the consequences of sprawl. The mall itself was nothing special. I never went back there.
There's also a mall to the east of Columbus which, I have to admit, is really nice. There's the traditional big-box building to one side, but there are also areas that are done up like villages or small towns. The buildings are smaller, there are benches and fountains, the walking space is beautiful, comfortable and pleasing to the eye - and most importantly, it's separate from the parking space. At Christmas time, it's even better. This mall has a movie theater, so I took the bus there often, but I usually found other excuses to go there, such as actual shopping - I bought a jacket there once.
I don't believe malls are inherently bad; it's just the application of them that's the problem, especially when they're a contributing factor in sprawl. When sprawl happens, the population of a city is decentralized and gets spread out further, usually requiring more car travel, which leads to greater dependence on oil, which leads to less self-sustainability. That's a problem we gotta fix.
I passed on seeing Mallrats the first time it came out because I believed all the negative reviews about it. Eventually I bought it on VHS and to my surprise, discovered that I liked it a lot more than I expected, but by that time, I was already sold on Kevin Smith as a filmmaker. (There's your lesson for the day, kids: reviewers can be a guide to evaluating movies, but ultimately, you have to decide for yourself if a given movie's worth seeing or not.) The comic book-related humor helped, of course - strange that a character like Jason Lee's Brodie, presented as a typical geek outsider, can now be considered mainstream. Yes, it's unfortunate that Stan Lee failed to mention Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko when talking about his comics, but I suspect he knows better now. And as for those stupid optical-illusion images, I could never see a sailboat or anything else in them either! I think they were just a scam!
Life goes on. I had wondered for awhile whether or not I had overreacted to refunding my Dark Knight Rises ticket, since the Aurora massacre obviously wasn't stopping other people from seeing it. That in itself didn't surprise me. I was on vacation from my video store job when 9-11 happened, and when I came back, my co-workers told me the video store for the two or three days immediately afterward was packed. Movies are still a means to escape for many people, in spite of everything, and I think it's generally understood that the odds of another shooting happening so soon after the first one are very slim. Not that I believe it'll happen, of course, but I'd still rather wait. In the meantime...
I was gonna see the Singin' in the Rain re-release, but my plans changed, but that's okay - I'd rather read about first-timers Alan and Sarah describing it.
When Ryan did this shtick on Twitter, I thought he was just being funny (and he was). Now I know why he did it. (For the record, I agree with him. Too much nitpicking can be a pain after awhile.)
This was funnier before DKR came out, perhaps, but it's still worth reading. (NOT Aurora-related.)
Page applies her special brand of snark to a rare recent movie, Roman Polanski's The Ghost Writer.
She calls herself Caftan Woman. Why? Cuz she wears a caftan, duh. Here she writes about silent short films.
Notable film critic Glenn Kenny on fanboy culture in general and comic book culture in specific.
Proof that the younger generation still cares about classic movies.
This guy does some sweet woodcuts of classic movie stars.
I bought my ticket for The Dark Knight Rises yesterday, thinking it would be the best way to avoid getting sold out. Today, just a few minutes ago, I had it refunded, something I don't think I've ever done before in my life. I'm not ready to see it. Not today, not this weekend, not for awhile... and if you've seen the news, you know why.
I feel angry. Angry and deeply, deeply disappointed. It's still very early at this point, so we don't know if this was the work of a crazed Bat-fan who'd seen one too many movies (or read too many negative reviews of the film), or a political nut who believes everything Rush Limbaugh tells him, or what, but the result is still the same: what was shaping up to be the biggest celebration in the film world this year is now its greatest catastrophe. And the repercussions from this will be myriad, especially in this, an election year.
Will the Aurora massacre mean no more midnight premieres? Possibly, at least in the short term. My understanding is that the alleged shooter entered the theater through a fire exit, so he likely didn't pay a ticket and tried to enter through the front carrying a gun and tear gas and what not. (Tear gas? Really? Where did he think he was, Vietnam?) The fact remains, though, that this is far from a common occurrence at midnight premieres. It's not like there was a spree of shootings in theaters nationwide last night. That's something to keep in mind for the future, though it certainly would not surprise me if the studios put a temporary moratorium on the practice for awhile.
How will this impact the casual theater-going experience? Here in New York, security's getting beefed up at theaters for this weekend's screenings. Beyond that? The theatrical experience had already taken a beating in recent years - cellphone talkers, texters, screaming babies - and now this. I don't believe Aurora will be the final straw, and neither do others, but you can bet there'll be calls for changes of some sort in the days and weeks to come.
It's tempting to blame the overkill of 21st century pop culture media - the feeding frenzy of hype and marketing that makes everyone cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs over a movie, any movie. But what we all have to try to remember in the weeks to come is that the movies (and pop culture in general) don't create psycho-killers. People like that, whatever bad stuff in their heads causes them to go on a killing rampage was placed there long before the world ever heard of Christopher Nolan or Christian Bale.
I can't think of anything more to say right now. I'll see the movie in a few weeks. Maybe.
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Related:
Batman
The Dark Knight Rises
Beasts of the Southern Wild
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY
7.17.12
New York, for better or for worse, is my home, the place that shaped who I am, but it's always been difficult for me to be fully attached to it. I'm not one of those types who crow about how it's the greatest city in the world and this and that, though there are, of course, lots of things about this city that are unique and spectacular. Without going into a laundry list of things I hate about it, though (not the point of this post), let me just say that I recognize and appreciate the advantages of living here, but that's still not quite enough for me to embrace it.
I wish it were. When I moved to Columbus, I fully believed it was for good. Circumstances forced me to return to New York, but for a moment, it was possible for me to imagine that Columbus could feel like home one day. Only for a moment, though.
My point is that it's hard (though not impossible) for me to imagine being so devoted to a place that I wouldn't want to live anywhere else, even if I were in danger of losing it. I call New York home, yet I was able to leave it so easily - and would do so again if I had the chance. So "home" must have a different connotation for me. I think perhaps it has to do with self-identity than with a specific location, although in recent years, I've taken it upon myself to re-discover Queens, the part of New York I live in, and as a result, I appreciate it more.
The denizens of "The Bathtub," the fictitious Southern Delta island community in Beasts of the Southern Wild, are threatened by a Hurricane Katrina-like storm, but a small group of them insist on staying and riding it out rather than evacuating to higher ground. These people don't have much to begin with - they live in ramshackle shacks with what looks like the bare minimum amount of modern amenities, yet as we see in the movie, they know how to have a good time and they revel in each other's company. This little world may not seem like much, but for them it's everything, and even in the face of catastrophe, they find a way to adapt, because for them, the alternative - leaving the Bathtub behind - is not an option.
When 9/11 happened, even during the darkest of the early days and weeks, I don't think I ever believed that New York would turn into Belfast or Kosovo - and except for the occasional scare now and then, it hasn't even come close to that. If it did, though, if I honestly believed that staying here was a greater danger than leaving, I feel fairly confident that I'd leave. The hard part would be leaving friends, and possibly family, behind. If spending a year living in another part of the world taught me anything, though, it's that it is possible to have the courage to leave the familiar behind and start over again someplace different.
But that's just me. While the actions of the Bathtub residents strike me as stubborn, even nonsensical on the face of it, Beasts made me understand, to a certain extent, why they choose to stay. No one wants to be forcibly removed from a place they've built their lives around, be it the result of acts of God or acts of man. And even the most dilapidated and run-down of areas can be home for somebody.
I mentioned this before when I wrote about Being Elmo, but it bears repeating: movie theaters in black neighborhoods really need to make more of an effort to screen films like Beasts. One look at the little girl in this movie (who is amazing) and you know all those middle-aged churchgoing women who still have family down home in South Carolina and Mississippi and Alabama will instantly fall in love with her. It's not right that movies like Beasts, Elmo, or Pariah should be limited to the art-house theaters, which - let's be honest - black people do not attend in large numbers. Ava DuVernay and AFFRM have made great strides at changing that, but they can't handle it all - and these days, it's more common to see giant multiplexes devoting a screen or two to an indie film, especially in big cities.
This is a tell-your-friends kinda movie. That's why I'm telling you.
