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| ehle64 |
 Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 7:49 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 7149
Location: NYC; US&A
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| Hippster -- in total agreement about The New World. I was completely enthralled by the beauty and the story. Hopefully now that the film is available for Home Viewing Toodles, more people will bear witness to the fabulous debut performance of Q'Orianka Kilcher! |
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It truly disappoints me when people do something for you via no prompt of your own and then use it as some kind of weapon against you at a later time and place. It is what it is. |
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| Marc |
| Posted: Fri May 12, 2006 8:24 pm |
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Joined: 19 May 2004
Posts: 8424
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ehle,
THE NEW WORLD is destined to find a passionate following on DVD. And, yes, Kilcher is a goddess. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 1:07 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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| At long last got my daughter to run the CD-ROM of Adam Curtis's 3-hour 2004 BBC TV documentary The Power of Nightmares : The Rise of the Politics of Fear on my computer. TIME magazine had picked it as one of the ten best movies of 2005. It traces the parallel growths of the Neo-conservatives and Islamic fundametalists, leading upto 9/11, and the subsequent monitoring and arrests of terrorists in USA and UK. The documentary maintains that Al Qaeda is not the well organized and huge outfit that it is made out to be, and that Bush and Blair have created a fear psychosis so that all the worst-scenario possibilities are accepted as real and innocent people are arrested by distorting the evidence and some are held for long periods without a trial. With such radical views, the movie is not likely to be released in the United States, although it had a brief theater run in New York a few months ago. |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 1:35 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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Ghulam wrote: At long last got my daughter to run the CD-ROM of Adam Curtis's 3-hour 2004 BBC TV documentary The Power of Nightmares : The Rise of the Politics of Fear on my computer.
Unfortunately I can't get this CD-ROM to run on my iMac, OS 9. I have a couple of friends with newer Macs - don't know if it will run on them or not. I'd be open to any suggestions. Didn't know it was 3 hrs. long! |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 1:41 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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dlhavard wrote: Gromit:
I've decided to post over here about Judy Holliday. My favorite films were 1. Born Yesterday, 2. It Should Happen To You, 3. Bells are Ringing.
It's true the voice is annoying, but she was a great actress and knew how to use it (unlike Melonie Griffith and her "baby voice" (shudder)).
Another actress with a weird, annoying voice is Joey Lauren Adams. I see from the imdb.com that she has been working lately, but I haven't seen her in anything.
She admits that her voice has been a problem for her. |
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| Ghulam |
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 1:58 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4742
Location: Upstate NY
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| Mo, I have a PC, not a Mac. I do not know what my daughter did to run the CD-ROM, but it involved several steps. |
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| mo_flixx |
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 2:37 pm |
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Joined: 30 May 2004
Posts: 12533
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I wanted to mention 2 DVD's recently seen, "Where the Truth Lies" (dir. Atom Egoyan) and "The Dying Gaul" (dir. Craig Lucas).
These films have a number of parallels: both are showbiz stories and involve love triangles.
"The Dying Gaul" stars Patricia Clarkson and Campbell Scott as an affluent Hollywood couple who seem to have just about everything - 2 perfect kids, money, gorgeous house with gt. views of the Pacific, etc.
Enter Peter Skarsgaard (sp), a promising screenwriter with an autobiographical screenplay about his relationship with his late lover. Both Clarkson and Scott are drawn to Skarsgaard - Scott (a hotshot producer at Paramount) because he is --
SPOILER
bisexual and attracted to him. Clarkson because as a sensitive writer herself she is caught up in an almost pathological curiosity about the doomed love between Skarsgaard and his late lover, Malcolm.
Lucas' movie has some holes and ultimately left me somewhat unsatisfied, but I still recommend the film.
I much preferred "Where the Truth Lies," which follows a Martin & Lewis type of comedy team from the peak of their success in the '50's to the recent past. Colin Firth plays a suave, Dean Martin type, while Kevin Bacon shines as a whacky, obnoxious Lewis type.
What draws the viewer into this story is the unsolved death of a beautiful young room service employee who had served Firth and Bacon in their Miami suite the night before her body was found in a chest of seafood on ice the next day in their suite in Atlantic City! Curiously, the police could not connect either man to the woman's death. But neither comic was ever able to recover from the scandal and the act split up.
Years later Alison Lohman, a talented reporter with a big book contract, tracks down each member of the comedy team to try to solve the death. Neither man remembers that Lohman had actually appeared as a childhood polio victim with Bacon on the telethon in Miami Beach the day before the dead body was found. And her history with Bacon is a bit more complicated than it first appears. Needless to say, Bacon (no matter how abrasive his character) has always held a special place in Lohman's heart.
Director Egoyan does a great job in capturing the period and taking full advantage of some spectacular Hollywood locations. Lohman does solve the mystery and finds a kind of closure. However, we can't help but sympathize for Firth and Bacon when we finally understand the full scope of the events which have come to shape the tragic life each man has been resigned to lead. |
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Sat May 13, 2006 7:30 pm |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4607
Location: Norman, OK
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mo and Ghulam,
Thanks for the reviews. These films sound interesting. Will have to put them on my "look-for" list. |
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"All in all, it's just another feather in the fan."
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 1:09 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12940
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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The Last Command
Certainly not to be confused with the 1955 Western about the Alamo. This is one of the greatest silent films, from 1928 and a Best Picture nominee at the very first Academy Awards. It was one of the films that won Emil Jannings the Best Actor award.* Best Picture, Production was Wings, Best Picture, Artistic Production was Sunrise, and Best Actress was Janet Gaynor. I don't think anyone would complain about that set of awards. I need to see Seventh Heaven, which picked up Best Director, and was another of the films which got Gaynor the best Actress Award. It's also considered a classic, and I don't think it's out on DVD either.
Apparently, The Last Command is only available on VHS, which is an oversight that should be corrected, since it is classic, and Jannings is excellent. He plays Grand Duke Sergius Alexander, once commander of the Russian troops on the (Russian) Western front, now reduced to playing bit parts in Hollywood. (This character is, amazingly, based on a real person, General Lodijensky, who was an extra in several films in the late silent era, although, obviously, he wasn't supreme commander.) The director is another Russian emigre, Lev Andreyev (William Powell!) who has a grudge against Sergius, since Sergius arrested him for revolutionary activities in early 1917, whipping Andreyev in the face. Andreyev sees this as a chance to humiliate the General as the General once humiliated him, but things turn out to be much more complicated than that.
Sergius is now a wreck of a man, shaking his head in a palsy obtained during the Russian revolution. But he has a medal given to him by the Tsar, an award for bravery than is one of his prized possesions. This sends us into the heart of the movie, which is a long flashback to the first two months of 1917, to Sergius Alexander at the height of his power, a man who is arrogant, but is also proud of his country and who will stand up for his men against the foolishness of his cousin, the Tsar. Although Sergius is not himself immune to unprofesssionalism (he dotes on a pretty revolutionary), he does stand up when he is ordered to stage a suicidal attack to impress the Tsar. You get the idea that if the Russian leadership had been this good, the Revolution might not have been necessary. I think Sergius may have been partly based on Grand Duke Nicholas, who did command the Russian armies, and Brusilov, who launched a famous offensive in 1916 that all but knocked Austria-Hungary out of the war (and the losses from which also helped send Russia to revolution). Unfortunately, Russia also had people like Samsonov, Rennenkampf, and Tsar Nicholas II himself, who assumed supreme command in 1915, leaving his wife and Rasputin to run the country.
Thus we get to see the February Revolution from the point of view from one of its chief victims, a man who in moments falls from the highest power to be a victim, who is betrayed by his assistant, his country and seemingly betrayed by the woman he loves, finds out she does love him, and then loses her. Is it any wonder that he is now a shell of a man?
Then we switch back to 1928, with Andreyev now in command, Sergius a minor actor in a movie forced to relive the battle that turned into a tragedy, and one of the most powerful, sentimental, and brilliant endings of any film, when in a stroke of madness, Sergius for a moment, in his fantasy, shows the greatness of the man he sometimes was.
Evelyn Brent plays Natalie Dabrova, the cold hearted revolutionary who Sergius keeps to entertain himself, and her heart gradually warms as she comes to realize that he does love Russia as much as she does, just from a completely different point of view. Thus there is dramatic tension between her caring for Sergius and her devotion to the revolution as she tries to balance the two. It took me a while to warm to her performance, who ultimately is an actress. At one point she is the revolutionary trying to seduce Sergius so she can assassinate him (until she comes to realize how much he loves Russia), and later she is the revolutionary pretending to be tormenting Sergius while she is trying to save his life. She had a pretty long film career although I don't think she ever became a major actress.
There are all sorts of nice bits here. I like the scene where the extras are being fitted with Russian uniforms, which looks remarkably like soldiers being fitted with uniforms by the Army. I like the scene where Sergius and his staff exit one by one from the train while being surrounded by mutinous, homicidal citizens. The ending scenes are classic. The subtext is powerful, too. You see all these angry citizens revolting for their freedom who only eight months later would be sold into slavery by another revolution. Andreyev also would have a tale of betrayal and loss to tell, and he and Sergius have a lot more in common than would first appear.
I'd recommend this on a double bill with Battleship Potemkin. Potemkin is deservedly considered one of the greatest films ever made, and this film, which shows the Russian Revolution from a different point of view,** is in its own right a great film. Both films (and Sunrise and Wings) are essential viewing. When silents went out, they went out at the top.
*The other, The Way of All Flesh was also nominated for Best Picture, and is a famous lost film. The next year Jannings starred in another Best Picture nominee, The Patriot, which is also lost. Jannings later starred in German Films under the Third Reich, and that combined with these being very late silent films is probably why they have have been lost. Now, of course, film buffs really, really wish they hadn't been.
**Potemkin is actually about the 1905 revolution, but Eisenstein clearly directed it with the 1917 Revolution in mind. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 2:19 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12940
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Some thoughts from The Last Command.
William Powell had been in a lot of films before this, but this seems to be his first major role. You can already see some of his signature moves from later years, for example, the threatening look from under his eyebrows. I understand now how he was cast as Florenz Ziegfeld. I see some tics he used later in My Man Godfrey. Powell was a great actor and these work; it's just amusing to see them in a film from 1928.
Evelyn Brent looks great in furs when we first see her, and she looks smashing in black toward the end of the flashback. But what happened to the furs? It's February in Byelorussia. she's going to freeze her boobies off!
I'm really glad actors don't wear pencil thin moustaches these days. One of William Powell's assistants looks disturbingly like Powell the Menshevik, and if I didn't know in advance Powell was the director (of the film within the film), I would have been really confused. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 3:50 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12940
Location: Norman, Oklahoma
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Next up is The Divorcee, starring Norma Shearer, which won her a Best Actress partly for political reasons, although I liked her as an actress. I have to go through the finale of Grey's Anatomy first.
I'm going through the period 1927-32, when films were transitioning from silent to sound. Sound films were at a disadvantage in these years, because the early sound films were hampered by noisy cameras and static camera movements. Films didn't really adjust to sound until a few years later, with Mutiny on the Bounty and It Happened One Night (which still has some troubles with transition scenes.)
Silent films were getting better when The Jazz Singer turned things around (and threw films back 15 years). Wings, Sunrise and The Last Command (and The Gold Rush, The Wind and The General and The Navigator) are films of a medium at its maturity, while In Old Arizona, Min and Bill, The Broadway Melody and The Hollywood Review of 1929 are films adjusting to a new medium. The silent films naturally come off better, but we have equally talented people trying to adjust to a new method of making films. Omigod we're going to have to think about dialog! Whatever are we going to do? |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Joe Vitus |
| Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 5:24 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 14498
Location: Houston
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Quote: I liked her as an actress.
Which of her two expressions did you like best?
Great review of The Last Command. I'd like to see it. |
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| Syd |
| Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 10:05 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 12940
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Joe Vitus wrote: Quote: I liked her as an actress.
Which of her two expressions did you like best?
The dewy-eyed romantic one. |
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Rocky Laocoon foretold of Troy's doom, only to find snaky water. They pulled him in and Rocky can't swim. Now Rocky wishes he were an otter! |
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| Nancy |
| Posted: Sun May 14, 2006 10:57 am |
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Joined: 20 May 2004
Posts: 4607
Location: Norman, OK
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Joe Vitus wrote: Great review of The Last Command. I'd like to see it.
You should, Joe. I think you'd like it. Jannings is very,very good. |
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"All in all, it's just another feather in the fan."
Isaacism, 2009 |
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| lady wakasa |
| Posted: Mon May 15, 2006 10:53 am |
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Joined: 21 May 2004
Posts: 5911
Location: Beyond the Blue Horizon
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Syd wrote: Next up is The Divorcee, starring Norma Shearer, which won her a Best Actress partly for political reasons, although I liked her as an actress. I have to go through the finale of Grey's Anatomy first.
I'm going through the period 1927-32, when films were transitioning from silent to sound. Sound films were at a disadvantage in these years, because the early sound films were hampered by noisy cameras and static camera movements. Films didn't really adjust to sound until a few years later, with Mutiny on the Bounty and It Happened One Night (which still has some troubles with transition scenes.)
Silent films were getting better when The Jazz Singer turned things around (and threw films back 15 years). Wings, Sunrise and The Last Command (and The Gold Rush, The Wind and The General and The Navigator) are films of a medium at its maturity, while In Old Arizona, Min and Bill, The Broadway Melody and The Hollywood Review of 1929 are films adjusting to a new medium. The silent films naturally come off better, but we have equally talented people trying to adjust to a new method of making films. Omigod we're going to have to think about dialog! Whatever are we going to do?
Syd, everything you're watching sounds great.
You should look for the early Lubitsch / Lubitschesque musicals (Love Me Tonight, The Merry Widow, The Love Parade, One Hour With You, The Smiling Lieutenant, Monte Carlo). It was interesting that a few people met the sound challenge with musicals, and did them very well. Although most of the first sound movies really were technical crap, these musicals are an obvious exception.
Heck, Trouble in Paradise will do, and it's not a musical. |
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