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  • 29 Mar

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    Review: Blancanieves

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    20130329-213249.jpg

    (4.5/5)

    On paper, the Spanish film Blancanieves seems to piggyback on two recent trends – homage to silent cinema (if this plus The Artist can be considered a trend), and films about Snow White, following two Hollywood takes on the tale. Lest that suggest, however, that Blancanieves is a derivative tail-follower, nothing could be farther from the truth. This is a grand film, with director Pablo Berger showing both a solid knowledge of and a deep love for European cinema of the 1920s.

    Pulling not only from the tale of Snow White, but also from sister fairy tale Cinderella (and even a little from Beauty and the Beast), the film follows young Carmen through her horrid childhood after her matador father is paralyzed in a bullfighting accident and her sinister stepmother (played by Maribel Verdu, of Pan’s Labyrinth) takes over, forcing Carmen to work like a slave and psychologically torturing her at every turn. As the film switches from Cinderella to Snow White for inspiration, the jealous stepmother wants a now-grown Carmen dead, but the young woman escapes, albeit with an amnesia-causing head injury, and falls in with a group of traveling circus dwarves. This eventually leads to Carmen becoming a matador herself.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 31 Jan

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    Shorts Program: Paperman

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    Who would’ve guessed that in 2012, Disney Animation’s films would arguably beat out Pixar’s contributions? Many found Wreck-It Ralph‘s retro gamer charm superior to Brave‘s Scottish princess story, and I can certainly say that as charming as I found the Brave-preceding short La Luna, I was much more blown away (pun intended) by Disney’s black and white romance Paperman, which played before Ralph. The Academy agrees, nominating Paperman as Best Animated Short. I’d probably go even further and call it the best animated film, short OR feature, I saw all year. It’s not surprising to learn that director John Kahrs was a Pixar animator in arguably their heyday (1998-2007) before moving over to Disney Animation – perhaps he and other animators are bringing Disney Animation itself into another renaissance.

    Paperman is certainly a step in that direction, and Disney has been kind enough to put it online for all of us to enjoy. So, enjoy!

  • 31 Jan

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    Favorite Older Films I Saw in 2012

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    Always an awkward post title, but I can never seem to manage to figure out a good way to sum up the kind of list I’m presenting here. My list of Top 2012 Films is included in the Row Three group post back here, but now I want to focus on the films I enjoyed the most this year which were released prior to 2012. I should stress that this is hardly an objective list, were such a thing even possible – it’s just what I liked the best and felt most desirous to share out of my first-time watches this year, excluding 2012 releases.

    What older films did you love the best in 2012?

    GIRL SHY (1924)
    FOR HEAVEN’S SAKE (1926)
    WHY WORRY (1923)

    GirlShy

    I’d seen Harold Lloyd’s best-known film Safety Last before, but I really consider 2012 my crash course in his comedy, with a trio of films I saw in close succession and really convinced me for sure that he belongs in the silent comedian pantheon. Girl Shy is, in fact, my favorite new-to-me film I’ve seen all year, and thanks to its sweet romance and breathtaking final chase scene, I actually liked it more than I do Safety Last. For Heaven’s Sake, with Lloyd as a millionaire bringing in street thugs and miscreants to fill up an inner-city mission’s pews to impress the preacher’s lovely daughter, is a ton of fun, too, full of insane gags and stunts. I liked Why Worry, with Lloyd as a hypochondriac who gets mixed up in the Mexican Civil War, the least of the three, but it’s still a solid film and a whole lot of fun. With these three under my belt, chalk me up a definite Lloyd fan.

    THE VIRGIN SPRING (1960)

    virginspring

    Sometimes Ingmar Bergman films are a bit tough for me to get into – I can appreciate their austere humanism, but they often feel remote and uninvolving to me. The Virgin Spring grabbed me immediately and didn’t let me go until I collapsed at the end breathless, like the grieving father in the story. A young girl is violated by a group of men who later unknowingly seek shelter in her father’s home, whereupon he finds out what happened and exacts retribution. But nothing is so simple in Bergman’s world, and this is a deeply thoughtful and starkly beautiful film, questioning a God who allows tragedy to happen and yet also accepting that personal vengeance may not be the best way either.

    THE DRIVER (1978)

    The-Driver

    Clearly a prototype for 2011′s Drive (a recent favorite of mine), The Driver stars Ryan O’Neal as a laconic getaway driver who’s being hunted by an arrogant cop (Bruce Dern) who wants to collar him simply because he’s never been caught. In between them are a gambling woman who may be playing both sides and a bunch of thugs who are no match for the Driver. It’s a mystery to me why this film isn’t always mentioned in the same breath with great car chase movies like Bullitt and The French Connection, because the chases here are every bit as good. Mix in the Le Samourai-esque lead character, and this film was made for me.

    SOLARIS (1972)

    Solaris

    First of all, it took me several days to get through this meditative sci-fi film musing on love and loss. I’m not proud of that, but it can certainly be blamed on my pregnancy-related tiredness at the time rather than the film itself, although the film itself is definitely on the slow side. I actually liked the pacing and thought it worked well for the kind of heady, evocative sci-fi this is. That said, because of the viewing conditions, I had difficulty holding it all in my head at once or feeling like I had a solid grasp of it by the end. I’m already looking forward to a rewatch, upon which time I think I will appreciate it even more.

    THE PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC (1928)

    passion-of-joan-of-arc

    I know Mike Rot (and probably others) are going to tell me that even Top Five placement is not high enough for this film, and that’s probably right. The movie is an intriguing combination of austerity (sparse set design) and raw emotion (Marie Falconetti’s extraordinary face, usually seen in close-ups). I’ve seen a couple of other Dreyer films, and I generally find them a bit difficult to relate to stylistically, and I have to say I felt kind of the same tension here. I do think some rewatches will move it much higher on my list, though – it feels like the kind of film I will grow into. Also, the print on HuluPlus does not have a music track with it, and I don’t think that helped my experience.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 21 Dec

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    Filmography 2012: Looking Back at the Year That Was

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    We’ve already posted one 2012 retrospective video this year, and it was a good one, but this is the one I’ve been waiting for. This is the third Filmography video the YouTube user Genrocks has posted, one for each year since 2010, and they are easily among the best mashups I’ve ever seen. This one doesn’t disappoint, bringing together hundreds of clips from all sorts of different movies, from the very big (Avengers) to the very small (Beasts of the Southern Wild) and even the rather obscure (Norwegian Wood). Not only that, she uses bits of dialogue to create a narrative that ties everything together thematically and provide transitions between sections of the video. This is what mashup art is about – taking existing material and putting it together in such a way that it becomes something new, and Gen is very good at it.

    And just as important – watching her videos makes me fall in love with the movies all over again. The full list of films and music used is here.

  • 16 Nov

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    Check Out Awesome G-Rated Artwork from Justin White

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    What if movies and TV shows that are decidedly not G-rated were rethought as cartoons? That’s exactly what this set of illustrations from artist Justin White explores, with some pretty awesome results. The range of films (and a few TV shows) included is staggering – everything from Reservoir Dogs and Drive (technically maybe not quite G-rated) to Psycho and Creature from the Black Lagoon…with time for Troll 2 and The Room along the way. And of course, the art itself is pretty great as well – I especially like the Fleischer-type look he’s given the older films.

    The artwork will be on display starting tonight (November 16th) at Gallery 1988 on Melrose Ave in Los Angeles, and will be available for sale there. After the gallery opening, any unsold pieces will be posted on Gallery 1988′s site for sale. In the meantime, you can check out a few of my favorites after the jump, and a WHOLE LOT more at Justin White G-Rated.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 09 Nov

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    AFI Fest Day 3: In Another Country and Shorts Program 3

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    Sunday evening was SUPPOSED to be Hong Sang-Soo’s In Another Country and the Shining conspiracy theory documentary Room 237, but again, timing didn’t work to our advantage (nor did the popularity of The Shining) and flexibility was the order of the day.

    In Another Country

    The last three AFI Fests have all included films from South Korean filmmaker Hong Sang-soo, and it’s a trend I certainly hope continues, because though he’s virtually unknown here aside from avid festivalgoers, his films are consistently delightful and refreshing. In Another Country has a framing device of a young Korean girl writing three versions of a story, each involving a Frenchwoman (Isabelle Huppert) visiting the same Korean seaside town; each time she’s a slightly different character in different circumstances, but with many similar experiences. Hong’s previous film The Day He Arrives was also interested in repetition with variation, but In Another Country feels more finished and polished than that film did. It’s also more broadly funny, with Hong exploiting the language barrier for all its worth (all the characters speak English with each other, as neither French nor Korean is a shared language), but never cheaply or meanly. It’s an utterly charming film that uses character interactions and conversations to drive its ever-so-slight plot (or plots), and Hong’s mastery of conversation-driven scripting is second-to-none.

    Also, having Huppert on board is never a bad thing. She brings a slight melancholy to her three characters, each of whom is in Korea for a different but not necessarily happy reason, and inquiring curiosity about the folk around her (though some of that curiosity might be a front, trying to distract herself from her unhappiness). Even though we’re only with each one of her characters for about twenty minutes, it’s impossible not to be drawn right into her story each time. Meanwhile, the Korean actor who plays the lifeguard matches her in charisma, his upbeat cheerfulness and interest in her overcoming the linguistic and cultural barriers between them. Not a whole lot happens in the film beyond a lot of eating, drinking, and conversation, but it’s never less than enthralling.

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  • 06 Nov

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    AFI Fest Day 2: Shorts Program 6 and Holy Motors

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    Saturday at the Fest was supposed to include two shorts programs sandwiching Leos Carax’s highly-buzzed Holy Motors, but fate had slightly different plans, as it often does during festivals. More on that later on in the post. First off, I suspect a look at Holy Motors will be more interesting to most than a recap of a bunch of shorts, so let’s start with that.

    Holy Motors

    [mild spoilers]

    I knew next to nothing about this film going in aside from some general buzz out of Cannes and TIFF regarding its strangeness and something about it being about cinema itself. Most of the time when a film gets labeled as being “about cinema,” it’s something like Hugo or The Artist or even Blancanieves – a film that either references specific films, is set in the world of film, or uses very specific techniques tied to certain eras or movements in film history. That’s generally not the case with Holy Motors (though there are a few specific references to be found), but I wouldn’t argue with the general classification. Holy Motors is about the art of the scene, the joy and sadness found in performance, and as the film itself puts it, “the beauty of the act.”

    Frequent Carax actor Denis Lavant plays M. Oscar, who is driven around in a limo by Edith Scob (best known from her masked role in Eyes Without a Face), keeping various “appointments.” It’s unclear who set these appointments or precisely what their purpose is, but each one requires elaborate makeup and costuming which Oscar applies himself as they drive, and involves acting out a scene – anything from a beggar woman on a street to a mo-cap alien sex scene to an intimate deathbed conversation. He shuttles from one to another, fully immersed in each, but quickly moving to the next. What is going on? Are these film scenes? Are they being recorded? Who has written the scenes or hired him to do this, and why? Who is the audience? We aren’t told, which leads to a strange and intriguing combination of fascination and irritation with the film. Its mysteries are beguiling, but unyielding.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 04 Nov

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    AFI Fest Day 1: Après Mai and Wrong

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    After the premiere of Hitchcock kicked off this year’s AFI Fest on Thursday night, the festival started for real Friday afternoon with quite a spate of highly anticipated films, including many of the most buzzed about films from Cannes, TIFF, Sundance, and other major fests. Most of the films I’m catching are ones that have already been reviewed on Row Three from other fests, so rather than do full reviews, I’m just going to write day by day recaps with my take on each film and the festival experience in general.

    All AFI Fest screenings are free and you can reserve tickets online at www.afi.com/afifest. Keep checking even if the screening you want is sold out, as they continue to release tickets as the show time nears, and every screening also has a rush line if you don’t get a ticket in advance.

    Après mai (Something in the Air)

    I put the original French title Après mai (After May) in the title of this post, even though the film is known here by its English title Something in the Air, because for one thing it’s shorter, but also because it’s much more fitting. The film begins near Paris in 1971, three years after the fateful demonstrations and riots of May 1968 that symbolized and foreshadowed political revolt throughout Europe in the late 1960s. The main characters are high school students in 1971, likely a few years too young to have taken part in the 1968 uprisings, but growing up in a very politically charged environment and desiring to take up the mantle of activism themselves. The first section of the film sees these youngsters fired up, printing inflammatory pamphlets, demonstrating in the streets (an action quickly squelched by baton-wielding police), graffiting their school and tossing Molotov cocktails at guards who threaten them with legal action.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 27 Oct

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    Saturday Morning Toons: The Tell-Tale Heart (1953)

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    As we near Halloween, what better way to prepare than with one of the most effectively creepy and disturbing cartoons of the classic era. The fact that The Tell-Tale Heart was made at all during the classic era is amazing, but UPA was one of the most adventurous and forward-thinking animation producers in the 1950s, both in terms of content and animation style, and this short is a great example of that. As in the Edgar Allan Poe short story upon which the film is based, the narrator tells of his slow descent toward madness (though he denies, perhaps a bit too vehemently, that he is mad) thanks to his obsession with getting rid of the dead eye of the old man for whom he works.

    The animation style is striking, mostly made up of still drawings with only slight movement, or only the movement of light or the camera to lend a sense of motion. The angles are abstract, as is the action when it comes – a murder depicted with a flurry of blankets and distorted shapes. It’s almost avant-garde, and supported by James Mason’s chilling and eventually frantic voice-over, the cartoon is unlike just about anything else that studio-era animation units ever produced. Sixty years later, it still has the power to chill today.

  • 13 Oct

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    Saturday Morning Toons: Jeepers Creepers (1939)

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    Keeping with our creepy cartoon vibes for the month of October, here’s an early Looney Tunes entry featuring Porky Pig as a cop dispatched to investigate an old house that may be haunted. And in fact, it is, with a very groovy ghost who gets great kicks out of scaring the pants off poor Porky. There are a lot of great visual and timing gags, with the kind of broad and loose animation style typical of director Robert Clampett.

    Back in the 1930s, Porky Pig was one of Warner Bros. leading animated characters. Bugs Bunny and Daffy Duck, the two characters most associated with Looney Tunes from a modern-day perspective, were introduced as foils for Porky just a couple of years before Jeepers Creepers was released, and wouldn’t evolve into their most recognizable forms until the early 1940s. Once Bugs and Daffy came into their own, Porky was largely relegated to supporting roles (cf. Drip Along Daffy and Duck Dodgers in the 24 1/2 Century). He never lost his trademark stutter, though, immortalized in the Looney Tunes/Merrie Melodies “That’s All Folks!” sign off.

    This is the original black and white version of Jeepers Creepers, with the full blackface ending intact. It has also been frequently shown on television in a colorized version with the ending censored, either by fading or irising out early or trying to dull the offensive blackface gag by putting the ghost in purple-face instead. There are numerous examples of racist moments in Warner cartoons – the infamous Censored Eleven are so heavily reliant on racist stereotypes that they generally aren’t shown at all, whereas cartoons like Jeepers Creepers have only small offensive portions easily edited out for television broadcast. Personally, I’m all in favor of showing these cartoons in their original form with proper historical context, if only to better understand and learn from our past, even the negative parts. Of course, the majority of this cartoon is simply a hilarious ghost story.

  • 06 Oct

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    Saturday Morning Toons: The Mad Doctor (1933)

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    Here we are again in October, so I’m giving this column over to horror-themed cartoons. As you might expect, horror cartoons, at least from the studio era, tend to undercut the horror with comedy and end up being pretty innocuous overall. Still, there are some that have a surprisingly high creep factor, and today’s short is one of those – and even more surprisingly, it’s from Walt Disney, known even back in the ’30s for being more cute and cuddly than many of the other animation houses. That said, when Walt wanted to scare, he certainly knew how to do it – check out the witch transformation scene in Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. But that’s getting off-track.

    The Mad Doctor (1933) finds Pluto being abducted by the titular Mad Doctor, who wants to experiment by placing Pluto’s head on a chicken’s body. Mickey runs after him to save him, but is blocked at every turn by skeletons, bats, and eventually his own life-threatening situation. Despite the inevitable happy resolution, the cartoon actually packs in a lot of genuinely creepy visuals, many of them NOT undercut by comedy. The film was actually deemed so scary in 1933 that some theatres refused to show it to their young patrons. It shares some gags with an earlier Mickey Mouse cartoon, 1929′s The Haunted House, but The Mad Doctor takes advantage of better sound technology to back up its visuals for an overall more satisfying experience. The Mad Doctor himself doesn’t appear in any other cartoons (except a brief cameo in a much, much later Roger Rabbit short), but has become a major villain in the Disney video games Mickey Mania, Epic Mickey, and Epic Mickey 2.

  • 04 Oct

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    Shorts Program: Happy Birthday, Buster Keaton!

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    As my classic film buddies on Twitter were so kind to remind me, today would have been Buster Keaton’s 117th birthday, and what better time to break out a classic Keaton short than that? Not that you ever really need an excuse, but hey, when one presents itself…

    You might expect the still above, with Buster riding toward the camera on a locomotive’s cowcatcher, to come from his best-known feature, The General – but look closer. He’s not wearing his Johnny Reb Civil War outfit from that film, but his familiar porkpie hat and a regular suit. Nope, this is from the 1921 short film The Goat, a film which has much in common with his well-known short Cops, but for my money, this one is even more hilarious and manic. Here, a down-on-his-luck Buster is mistaken for an escaped criminal and spends the rest of the film on the run from every cop he can find. It doesn’t have the sheer volume of cops in the chase that Cops does, but it’s totally non-stop and has an above average number of both incredible stunts and hilarious sight gags. It’s one of my favorite Keaton shorts, so enjoy and celebrate this man who’s been entertaining us for 95 years.

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