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mogwai-movie-house · 2 years

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Every Known Instance of A Remake Being Better Than The Original

1. The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) ★★★★★★★★★☆

The 1922 silent with Douglas Fairbanks was a great success but it is the effervescent Errol Flynn remake which became the blueprint for all future depictions of the myth, and essentially what everyone thinks about when you mention the name.

2. The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

The 12th attempt was the charm, and Basil Rathbone, in the role he was born to play, slips on the deerstalker and strides effortlessly into cinematic history as the perfect Holmes and the blueprint for every attempt that followed.

3. The Fly (1986) ★★★★★★★★★★

Cronenberg replaced the cheap special effects and wooden acting of the original with a serious treatment of the premise, unforgettable shocks and genuine emotional depth, in what seemed in the 1980s to be a devastating AIDS allegory hidden in a monster movie. It's a perfect film, in that I can think of no possible way it could be improved, and it (barely) contains Jeff Goldblum's single finest performance ever.

4. The Thing (1982) ★★★★★★★★★★

As with The Fly, John Carpenter immeasurably improved on the original B-movie by adding fantastic effects, flawless performances and chilling believability.

5. The Maltese Falcon (1941) ★★★★★★★★★★

There was nothing particularly *wrong* with the original from 1931, except that it suffered the misfortune of being so completely overshadowed by the absolute perfection of John Huston's remake that no-one even remembers it exists.

6. Red Dragon (2002) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

So nice to see the story without the shoulder pads and designer stubble and other Miami Vice-like nonsense of 1986's "Manhunter". Red Dragon is better acted, better told, and a better movie experience all round. Also, and let's be clear about this, anyone but Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter is not Hannibal Lecter.

7. Twelve Monkeys (1995) ★★★★★★★★★☆

Much more fleshed-out, emotionally powerful and better made in every way than the short film which inspired it, 1962's La Jetée.

8. The Sound of Music (1965) ★★★★★★★★★☆

Musical version of the obscure 1956 German movie 'Die Trapp-Familie' resulted in immortal songs and a perennial classic.

9. Dirty Rotten Scoundrels (1988) ★★★★★★★★☆☆

The original 'Bedtime Story', starring David Niven and Marlon Brando(!), is worth checking out the once for the novelty but the remake 20 years later is far, far, funnier and one of Steve Martin's very best.

10. A Fistful of Dollars (1964) ★★★★★★★★★☆

Where you stand on this is a matter of taste, but no-one would dispute this remake of the Japanese samurai movie 'Yojimbo' resulted in one of the greatest westerns ever made.

11. Heat (1995) ★★★★★★★★★☆

Michael Mann's own remake of an earlier made-for-TV film called 'L.A Takedown' which everyone agrees eclipses the first attempt.

12. The Three Musketeers (1948) ★★★★★★★★★☆

The 14th film version of the classic tale ended up in Gene Kelly's hands the most fun, although the Richard Lester version from 1973 is probably close to its equal.

13. The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) ★★★★★★★★★★

The silent version with Lon Chaney is rightly considered a groundbreaking work, but is in every way an inferior cinematic experience to this sublime piece of poetry, and Charles Laughton's Quasimodo blows Chaney out of the water, too, along with pretty much every other actor that has ever lived.

14. The Cat and the Canary (1939) ★★★★★★★★★★

The original "reading of the will in a spooky mansion" story was made twice before in 1927 and 1930, but the third time they hit the jackpot, creating perhaps the best ever horror comedy and up there with the cream of the 'Road' movies as Bob Hope's funniest film. Great eerie atmosphere, non-stop one liners and at least one genuine scare to make you jump. Somehow it all just works.

15. His Girl Friday (1940) ★★★★★★★★★★

Ben Hecht's newspaper reporter comedy 'The Front Page' has been remade a bunch of times from 1931 onwards, but Howard Hawk's idea to change the sex of one of the leads and add a romantic angle resulted in easily the best version. The fastest, funniest dialogue of all time and Cary Grant at his zenith. A perfect film in every way, which age repeatedly fails to wither.

16. El Dorado (1967) ★★★★★★★★★☆

John Wayne and Howard Hawks enjoyed making 1959's "Rio Bravo" so much they got back together eight years later and unofficially made it all over again. The later film greatly benefits from actors Robert Mitchum and James Caan replacing crooner Dean Martin and teenybopper idol Ricky Nelson in the original, streamlining and buffing up everything that was good about the first to create maybe the most enjoyable western of all time.

17. The Picture of Dorian Gray (1945) ★★★★★★★★★☆

The seventh cinematic version of Oscar Wilde's haunting novel, but by far the best. There's something deeply poetic and indefinably otherworldly about it that has seldom, if ever, been matched.

18. The Departed (2006) ★★★★★★★★★☆

Martin Scorcese's take on the 2002 Hong Kong crime thriller 'Infernal Affairs' ended up as his best movie in 10 years and - not that I place inordinate stock in such things - a 'Best Picture' oscar.

19. Some Like It Hot (1959) ★★★★★★★★★☆

Most surprisingly this most perfect of comedies was a remake of the obscure French film 'Fanfare Of Love', which has a grand total of 1 reviews on IMDB.

20. Farewell, My Lovely (1975) ★★★★★★★☆☆☆

Robert Mitchum was admittedly a little long in the tooth to play Marlowe in 1975 but nails it all the same. Previously filmed as 'Murder My Sweet' in 1944.

#film recommendations #classic movies

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themovieblogonline · 11 days

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The Greatest Hits Review: Lucy Boynton Leads Excellent Cast

The Greatest Hits is a film that bravely mixes genres, serving its audience a romantic fantasy cocktail with a twist of time-travel. Directed, produced, and penned by Ned Benson, the movie tries to navigate the tumultuous waters of love, loss, and the what-ifs that haunt our memories. With a cast led by Lucy Boynton, Justin H. Min, David Corenswet, and Austin Crute, the film delivers a mixture of heartfelt performances and moments of genuine intrigue. However, while it hits many right notes, it also misses enough to make its overall execution feel somewhat off-key. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riDLqQ0Q15c At the heart of The Greatest Hits is Harriet (played by Boynton), a young woman entangled in the strings of her past and the present. After discovering that she can travel back in time through songs linked with her memories, she embarks on a journey not just through her romantic history but through the painful process of dealing with loss and grief. Boynton brings a necessary vulnerability and depth to Harriet, capturing the audience's sympathy with her nuanced portrayal of a woman torn between moving on and holding on. The premise of the film is its strongest suit. The idea that music can literally transport someone through time is both innovative and deeply poetic. Especially considering how songs often serve as emotional bookmarks in our lives. However, the execution of this fascinating concept stumbles into the realm of the predictable at times. As Harriet revisits her past with her late boyfriend David (Justin H. Min), attempting to avert his tragic fate, the narrative occasionally falls prey to the cliches that often plague time-travel love stories. That said, Justin H. Min delivers a compelling performance as David, harmonizing well with Boynton’s Harriet and providing some of the film's most tender moments. Their chemistry is palpable, effectively drawing viewers into their doomed romance and making the stakes of Harriet's temporal journey feel genuinely significant. In contrast, the present-day storyline involving Harriet and her new love interest Max (David Corenswet) is less compelling. Corenswet does an adequate job, but the character of Max is underdeveloped. This makes it difficult for the audience to invest in this burgeoning romance as deeply as Harriet's past with David. This imbalance between the past and present storylines is one of the film's notable weaknesses, detracting from its overall impact. Supporting performances by Austin Crute as Morris Martin, Harriet's best friend, and Retta as Dr. Evelyn Bartlett, a scientist who aids Harriet in understanding her time-traveling ability, add layers of humor and intrigue to the narrative. Crute, in particular, brings a much-needed lightness and charm to the proceedings. Meanwhile Retta’s performance lends the film a dose of gravitas and scientific credibility that it desperately needs. The film fluctuates between moments of beauty and ordinariness. Director Ned Benson and his team craft some genuinely beautiful scenes that make excellent use of lighting and composition. Most notably during the time-travel sequences. However, these instances of visual flair are inconsistent. Many parts of the film lack the same level of artistic inspiration. One of the movie's central themes is the exploration of whether it is possible—or even desirable—to change the past. The Greatest Hits deserves credit for not offering easy answers to these questions. It presents a nuanced take on the nature of grief and the process of moving forward. Yet, the film sometimes feels too heavy-handed in its approach. Certain scenes and dialogues feeling more like moral lectures than organic parts of the narrative. The soundtrack, unsurprisingly, plays a pivotal role in the film. Each song is carefully chosen. They don't just serve as a plot device for Harriet's time travels but also evoking the deep emotional currents that run through the story. The music becomes a character in its own right. They drive the story and are some of the film’s most powerful moments. Overall: The Greatest Hits is a film with lofty ambitions and a compelling premise that only partially realizes its potential. The performances by Lucy Boynton and Justin H. Min are standout aspects, bringing depth and emotional resonance to their roles. However, the film struggles with pacing and an imbalance between its dual storylines. This leaves its exploration of love, loss, and the possibility of redoing the past feeling somewhat incomplete. It's a journey that offers moments of genuine beauty and emotion. Read the full article

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cyarskaren52 · 5 months

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THE YEAR IN REVIEW

20 Best Movies of 2023

From historical tragedies to raucous raunch-coms, Oppenheimer to Barbie — these were the films that made us think the movies are alive, well, and possibly better than ever

BY DAVID FEAR

DECEMBER 4, 2023

HAD YOU TOLD us at the beginning of 2023 that an internet joke about summer-movie counterprogramming would give birth to a major pop-cultural phenomenon; that both a lo-fi Canadian horror flick and a $200 million epic from the greatest living American filmmaker would provide twin poles of cinematic ingenuity; that Marvel Studios would run into what’s possibly its own endgame in terms of keeping its successful cinematic universe afloat; that dual strikes from both the WGA and the Screen Actors Guild would nearly crater Hollywood entertainment as we know it; and that Taylor Swift would be the one to save the motion picture industry (not to mention the music industry, the NFL, and Western civilization as a whole), we might have questioned whether your crystal ball was on the fritz.

At the end of a long, unpredictable and thoroughly upended year at the movies, however, we know now that the double mantras for 2023 were: anything goes; and there is no such thing as a sure thing. This was a year in which disruption seemed to be the only constant, streamers continued to terraform the landscape of theatrical distribution (though they aren’t so stable either), and salvation seemed to come from some unlikely places. To go from “Barbenheimer? Seriously?” to “Barbenheimer! Seriously!!!” was a journey and then some. The hope is that even though the industry was reluctantly forced to recognize that, I dunno, people should be properly paid for their work and having software programs substituting for real people would be problematic (understatement alert!), the long, stalled summer of ’23 and the slightly delayed awards season will lead to genuine progress. Business as usual is no longer an option.

Not that all this sturm und drang and the feeling that things are very much still in a transactional phase stopped great movies from coming out. Both big studios and hipper, scrappier distributors hit the equivalent of home runs, critically and commercially. Festivals like Sundance, Cannes, and Venice delivered more than their share of spirit-raising, faith-restoring highlights. There were movies that harkened back to that ol’ time religion feel of Hollywood in its heyday, and those that reminded you that sometimes all you need is a phone, some actors, and a vision to make it work. Our top 20 movies for 2023 run the gamut in terms of genre, scope, running time, and subject matter. The only thing all of these have in common is that they reminded us of how thrilling it is to feel a sense of communion between the artists who make films and those of us who watch them. The circle remains unbroken in that respect. (A quick note: We’re going by official theatrical release dates and not qualifying runs, which is why you will see titles like The Quiet Girl and Return to Seoul here, and will not see, say, Perfect Days and The Taste of Things — two great movies that officially bow in the first half of 2024 and will likely be on next year’s best-of list. Also, some additional 2023 shout-outs go out to: American Symphony, Earth Mama, Infinity Pool, May December, Menus-Plaisirs — Les Troisgos, Reality, R.M.N., Smoking Causes Coughing, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, A Thousand and One.)

‘Oppenheimer’

UNIVERSAL PICTURES

Christopher Nolan’s sprawling biopic on the Man Who Would Be Destroyer of Worlds benefits from a depth-charge of a performance by Cillian Murphy, a meticulous sound design that prizes both dead silence and deafening booms, and a cast featuring every third actor with a SAG card. (The fact that it was also one half of the most unlikely cinematic coupling in the history of the movies didn’t hurt, either.) Yet so much of it works because of the characteristic rigor that Nolan, one of the last name-above-the-title auteurs standing, brings to the filmmaking; even when the competing timelines and set pieces start to mash up against each other, there’s a genuine thrill to watching the Inception director try to get inside the mind of this towering, often inscrutable 20th-century figurehead. It’s a movie that brings to mind the difficult era-spanning epics of yesteryear, from Reds to The Right Stuff, as well as a movie made by adults for adults, yet done with the sweep and majesty we now associate with movies made for kids and teens. Read the full review here.

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‘The Boy and the Heron’

TIFF

Hayao Miyazaki’s latest — and possibly last — gives us surreal imagery, cuddly-to-creepy creatures, excitement, sorrow, space, silence, and emotional currents that run leagues deep. It’s a Miyazaki film, in other words, but one particularly suffused with wisdom, boundless empathy and grief. A tween named Mahito (voiced by Soma Santoki) moves to the countryside with his widower father, right after his mother has perished in a hospital fire in Tokyo. While he’s getting accustomed to his new surroundings, the boy meets a mysterious and somewhat aggressive heron, who seems to be harboring a secret. Or maybe it’s simply the key to a secret world, where Mahito can start to process his trauma. “Create a world without malice, and full of beauty,” one character tells our hero — a profound statement that sums up not just this potential swan song but Miyazaki’s entire career. If this is indeed it, the animation godhead is going out on a high note. Read the full review here.

‘Bottoms’

PATTI PERRET/ORION PICTURES RELEASE

P.J. (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (The Bear’s Ayo Edebiri) are at the bottom of the high-school social-order food chain. Then these best friends accidentally start an afterschool fight club, partially to get out of a jam and partially to pick up hot cherleaders who wouldn’t otherwise give them the time of day. Guess who’s suddenly the most popular seniors on campus? Filmmaker Emma Seligman follows up her nerve-shredding character study Shiva Baby with a a wild, anarchic raunchcom fueled by overworked libidos, bloody knuckles and pure chaos energy. It’s both a perfect showcase for a next-gen comic duo and the Heathers that Gen Z deserves. Read full review here.

‘You Hurt My Feelings’

JEONG PARK/A24

The cringe-comedy equivalent of Scorsese and De Niro — albeit with a slightly lower body count — director Nicole Holofcener and Julia Louis-Dreyfus reunite for this Upper West Side farce about an author who overhears her husband (Tobias Menzies) saying he doesn’t care for her new in-progress book. He’s been white-lying to her in order to be supportive; she feels she can no longer trust him. It’s the perfect setup for JLD to flex her chops, and for the O.G. Sundance filmmaker to turn good people behaving badly into painful, witty, and painfully-witty bullseyes. May these two make a million more movies together. Read the full review here.

‘Passages’

MUBI

All hail Franz Rogowski, the man behind the all-consuming black hole at the center of director Ira Sachs’ gloriously messy love-triangle romance. The German actor plays Tomas Freiburg, a filmmaker who’s a charismatic box of bon-bons with biohazard stickers plastered with biohazard stickers. He’s just struck up an impromptu relationship with Agathe (Blue Is the Warmest Color‘s Adèle Exarchopoulos), a young woman he meets at a nightclub during his latest project’s wrap party. Soon, he’s moving in with her… much to the consternation of his husband, Martin (Ben Whishaw). Sachs is an indie-film veteran who’s no stranger to turning the spotlight on dysfunctional relationships and/or showcasing raw, explicit sex scenes, and this drama has plenty of the latter. But it’s ultimately about being an artist, and the way that gives someone license to assume, rightly or wrongly, that the world revolves around them. Read the full review here.

‘Skinamarink’

The oddest and most welcome up-from-the-underground success story of 2023, Kyle Edward Ball’s ghost story adapts the grainy, lo-fi look of found-footage horror and the cut-and-paste vocabulary of experimental movies to stunning effect — it’s the rare genre flick that fans of both Paranormal Activity and Maya Deren can love. A four-year-old boy (Lucas Paul) finds himself alone in his house late at night, seemingly by himself; his mother, father, and older sister (Dali Rose Tetreault) disappear one by one, as do many of the doors and windows leading to the outside world. Odd images of dolls and chairs affixed to the ceiling suggest something wicked this way comes, and that’s before an unknown voice whispers for the boy to pick up a knife. Anyone with longstanding abandonment issues may want to have their therapist on speed-dial before they dip into this waking nightmare. But you don’t need a firsthand knowledge of trauma to appreciate the way the Canadian filmmaker so deftly channels the free-form fear and anxieties of childhood. Appreciate, and feel extremelyunnerved by.

‘Beau Is Afraid’

TAKASHI SEIDA/A24

Meet Beau (Joaquin Phoenix), your typical 21st-century schizoid man. He’s just found out his mother has died, which means he has to travel from his Bosch painting of a downtown neighborhood to the family mansion by the sea. Such Freudian journeys are easier said than done. Ari Aster (Hereditary, Midsommar) returns with a long, dark comedy of the soul, following his Oedipal wreck of an everyman into a fairy-tale world of grieving suburbanites, PTSD-suffering soldiers, traveling theater troupes, and a truly monstrous maternal figure. There are so many baroque touches and visionary flourishes on display that it’s tempting to dub Aster’s self-incriminating masterwork the Citizen Kane of mommy-issues movies. It’s truly a sui generisnightmare all its own. Read the full review here.

‘Return to Seoul’

SONY PICTURE CLASSICS

The idea that Park Ji-min, a visual artist who works with plastics, had never acted before filmmaker Davy Chou cast her in his identity-crisis drama is, frankly, almost as astonishing as what she’s doing onscreen. There’s a lot going on in his tale of a young woman sifting through her past in search of answers, and this newbie actor is responsible for 99 percent of it. Playing a Korean-born, French-bred millennial who’s come back to her native country in search of her birth parents, Park lets you ride shotgun as her character Frédérique spends her days trying to connect with her biological mom and dad, and nights indulging in the sort of free-for-all hedonism that characterizes the interzone between teendom and responsible adulthood. It’s a perfect complement to Chou’s stylish storytelling, which leaves you woozy and punch-drunk by proxy. Such a gem, this one. Read the full review here.

‘All of Us Strangers’

PARISA TAGHIZADEH/SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

A writer (Andrew Scott) meets a handsome, young man (handsome, young Paul Mescal) who lives in his apartment building. Sparks immediately fly, but the emotionally closed-off scribe is reluctant to see where a potential hook-up might lead. Several days later, he ventures from London back to the house he grew up in, where he finds his Mum (Claire Foy) and Dad (Jamie Bell) welcoming him with open arms. The fact that his parents appear to be the same age as he is, however, suggests something else is going on here. Writer-director Andrew Haigh’s extraordinary ode to memory, family, and the rocky terrain of unfinished business in regards to both turns a what-if scenario into a quietly shattering look at one man’s reluctance to love. You can never truly go home again, they say. And yet, as this delicate, devastating tearjerker reminds you, the good, the bad, and the ugly of home never truly leaves you, either.

‘American Fiction’

CLAIRE FOLGER/ORION PICTURES RELEASE

Frustrated by the lack of interest in his “important” novels, author Thelonious “Monk” Ellison (Jeffrey Wright) decides to write the most cliché-filled book about Black life imaginable under a pseudonym. Cue: the literary event of the season. If Emmy-winning writer Cord Jefferson’s directorial debut was simply a satire in the tradition of, say, Bamboozled or Paul Beatty’s The Sellout, it would still be scathing, sharp, and funny as hell. But he’s also threaded a character study and a tender family drama within the broad comic strokes and cutting barbs about the publishing world, and captured the push-pull dynamics of siblings in a way that feels beautifully, painfully spot-on. Plus, he’s handed Jeffrey Wright a gift of a role, which the actor responds to by doing some of the best work of his career.

‘Barbie’

WARNER BROS

It’s tough to sell a decades-old doll andactively make you question why you’d still buy a toy that comes with so much baggage. (Metaphorically speaking, of course — literal baggage sold separately.) Filmmaker Greta Gerwig knew this going in to this big-screen take on the pinkest of I.P.s. So did her cowriter Noah Baumbach, producer and star Margot Robbie, the Ken-for-all-seasons Ryan Gosling, and everyone else involved with what, you’d assumed, would have been a feature-length commercial. Such tongue-in-cheek self-awareness still does not prepare you for what turns out to be a saga of self-realization, filtered through both the spirit of free play and the sense that it’s not all fun and games in the real world — a doll’s story that continually drifts into the territory of A Doll’s House. Rather than turn away from the baggage, Gerwig & co. unpack it, while still delivering a deliriously big, broad, mega-box office bonanza. Our minds are still reeling. Behold, the most subversive blockbuster of the 21st century. Read the full review here.

‘All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt’

JACLYN MARTINEZ/SUNDANCE INSTITUTE

You more or less pray that a directorial debut like the one from poet-turned-filmmaker Raven Jackson comes along every so often — the sort of out-of-the-gate announcement of a new talent that makes you feel like you’ve just been hit and hugged at the exact same time. Both a free-form look at a young Black woman (played by Kaylee Nicole Johnson as a child and Charleen McClure as a twentysomething) growing up in a Mississippi town circa the early 1970s and a tribute to the strong female figures that helped shape Jackson’s perspective, this coming-of-age story announces right from the start that you are not just watching a movie. You’re experiencing an immersive portrait of a life and a landscape intertwined, and one in which its creator’s voice retains its power as its translates from words on a page to sound and vision on a screen. Read the full review here.

‘The Delinquents’

It’s the “perfect” crime: A bank employee (Daniel Elías) steals a duffel bag’s worth of money from his job. He then asks a co-worker (Esteban Bigliardi) to hold on to it. His plan is to turn himself in, do a brief prison sentence, retrieve the cash, and then happily retire. After all, isn’t that better than working a soul-crushing gig for the next 25 years for the exact same payoff? His friend reluctantly agrees. Eventually, he stashes the loot deep in the countryside. And what happens after that turns Argentine writer-director Rodrigo Moreno’s debut feature into something way more thought-provoking, playful, and philosophical than your average heist movie. Does one live to work or work to live? What is your freedom worth to you? And where can I find a vinyl copy of the soundtrack, featuring the kick-ass Seventies South American rock band Pappo’s Blues? Read the full review here.

‘Anatomy of a Fall’

Filmmaker Justine Triet drops us into a mystery involving a German writer (Sandra Hüller, having a very good year — see also The Zone of Interest), a remote house in the French Alps, and a corpse. The dead man is her husband (Samuel Theis). The main suspect is the author herself. Whether her spouse fell or was pushed from the top floor of their dwelling becomes a matter for the courts to decide, at which point we begin to find out more and more about the couple’s highly mercurial history. A colleague described this as “Marriage Story but as a thriller,” which tracks — especially once an audio recording of an argument turns into a scathing, screaming, take-no-prisoners set piece. Bonus points for the most passive-aggressive use of 50 Cent’s “P.I.M.P” ever. Read the full review here.

‘The Quiet Girl’

BREAK OUT PICTURES

A shy, withdrawn 12-year-old girl (Catherine Clinch) is sent to live with an older couple (Carrie Crawley and Andrew Bennett) on a farm for the summer. Her parents are neglectful at best and borderline abusive at worst; it takes a while for this lass to open up to these new guardians. Her caretakers have a tragedy in their past as well, and there’s a sense that the three of them need each other more than words can communicate. Director Colm Bairéad’s beautiful yet devastating story of the need for nurturing swept Ireland’s version of the Oscars last year, and it’s a great reminder that when you have a performer as emotionally open and expressive as Clinch, silence can indeed speak volumes. Rarely has a movie been this graceful in breaking your heart in two. Read the full review here.

‘Showing Up’

ALLYSON RIGGS/A24

In which Kelly Reichardt shows you why word work is a key part of “artwork.” Longtime collaborator/muse Michelle Williams is a Portland-based sculptor desperately trying to finish some final pieces for an upcoming gallery exhibit; everything from a wounded bird to her flighty landlord (Hong Chau, killing it as usual) seems to be conspiring against her, however. It’s a character study that, like so many of Reichardt’s best films (Old Joy, Wendy & Lucy, First Cow), makes you revise your opinion of the people at the center of these funky, oft-kilter portraits of off-balance lives. And it’s also a bone-dry comedy about the ways that the constant piling up of quotidian bullshit can send someone into a slow-burn meltdown. But it’s first and foremost a testimony not only to the labor involved in being creative but to those genuine artists — like Reichardt and Williams — who can make something this deep and complicated seem like the most naturally, casually brilliant masterwork around. Read the full review here.

‘Poor Things’

ATSUSHI NISHIJIMA/SEARCHLIGHT PICTURES

Or: Frankenstein, but make it funnier, racier, and more feminist. Yorgos Lanthimos’ take on the Prometheus myth imagines a young woman named Bella Baxter — take a bow, Emma Stone — who’s resurrected from the dead by Willem Dafoe’s scarred scientist. Given the brain of a baby, Bella is forced to relearn everything from speaking to social graces. Then she discovers the joys of sex, and what follows is both a harsh education and well-earned empowerment. Reteaming with The Favourite screenwriter Tony McNamara, Lanthimos and his star gin up a throwback comedy of manners that revolves around a particularly repressive era’s attitudes toward women. The fairer sex may be married, imprisoned, fetishized, objectified, forced into motherhood, and treated like property. But they mustn’t feel physical pleasure. That way lies madness… for men. And thanks to Stone, we watch as the fallen angel stands up, dusts herself off and spreads her wings wide on her own sexed-up, pro-science terms. We’re all the richer for it.

‘Killers of the Flower Moon’

MELINDA SUE GORDON/APPLE TV+

Yes, the word “masterpiece” is overused a lot. But what else can you call a work that finds our greatest living American filmmaker Martin Scorsese turning a sprawling, three-and-a-half-hour drama involving power, corruption and our nation’s toxic past into an intimate story, without sacrificing its depth or scope? Less a straight adaptation of David Grann’s nonfiction bestseller than a complement to it, this throwback drama about a murder epidemic in the oil-rich Osage Nation circa the early 1920s narrows its focus on the love story between Ernest Burkhart (Leonardo DiCaprio) and his wife Mollie (the extraordinary Lily Gladstone). She’s watched her mother and sisters perish via both a mysterious “wasting illness” and outright murder; the fear is that her husband and his big-shot uncle (Robert De Niro) are after her family’s wealth and land rights, and she’s next. It’s the closest thing Scorsese has made to a Western, and the extra emphasis on the clash between Jazz Age modernity and traditional Osage culture — as well as the threat of 20th century white supremacy — makes this a partial corrective to decades of movie mythology. Stunning, on every level. Read our full review here.

‘The Zone of Interest’

CINETEC

Jonathan Glazer‘s take on Martin Amis’s 2014 novel is a portrait of hell from the periphery. An S.S. officer (Christian Friedel) and his family live in the housing area surrounding Auschwitz; they throw pool parties and take afternoon tea with friends while chimneys belch black smoke in the distance. Glazer strips away the imagery we now associate with Holocaust dramas and puts his high-formalism style to perfect use, presenting an absolutely chilling look at how normalization works — at some point, you simply stop hearing the barking dogs, gunshots, and human suffering happening right outside your own backyard. This is what the banality around the banality of evil looks like. And Sandra Hüller, playing the officer’s raging wife, once again convinces you that she’s one of the most fearless international actors working today.

‘Past Lives’

TWENTY YEARS RIGHTS/A24

Once upon a time in Seoul, two kids — Na Young and Hae Sung — were the best of friends. Then her family immigrated to Canada, so whatever mutual childhood crush they harbored for each other is cut short. Years later, the now-grown Na Young (Greta Lee), who goes by Nora, reconnects with Hae Sung (Teo Yoo) over social media. She lives in New York. He’s still in South Korea. Eventually, communication stops. Life goes on. Nora gets married to a fellow writer (John Magaro). And then Hae finally makes good on his promise to come visit America. She offers to play tour guide. Every sightseeing excursion and catch-up exchange feels loaded. The feelings haven’t gone away. Neither of them know what’s going to happen next.

A playwright with a genuine feel for nuance and crafting characters so achingly real and recognizable that you feel like you’ve known them forever, writer-director Celine Song has a talent for letting things be left unsaid, and letting this central trio express themselves through unfinished sentences, casual asides, and glances; every hesitation and pause suggest short stories unto themselves. And with her first movie (drawn from her own autobiographical experiences), she already proves she can make the sort of intimate, character-driven romantic drama that never overplays its hand yet will gladly lubricate your tear ducts. It also makes you realize that Lee has been chronically underused as an actor — she’s never been given a chance like this to display her chops before, and takes full advantage of exploring this very complicated woman’s conflicted feelings. Most importantly, Past Lives takes what appears to be a simple story of unrequited love and gives it the depth, the feeling, and the emotional scope of something that feels so much larger than just a film. When we first saw this minor-key masterpiece back in January, we felt like we’d already seen the best movie of the year. All these months later, that feeling still remains. Read our full review here.

IN THIS ARTICLE:

A24,

Ari Aster,

Barbie,

Christopher Nolan,

Cillian Murphy,

Emily Blunt,

Emma Stone,

Greta Gerwig,

Greta Lee,

Ira Sachs,

Jeffrey Wright,

Julia Louis-Dreyfus,

Leonardo DiCaprio,

Lily Gladstone,

Margot Robbie,

Martin Scorsese,

Michelle Williams,

Paul Mescal,

Robert De Niro,

Robert Downey Jr.,

Ryan Gosling,

Yorgos Lanthimos

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#year in review #2023 #2023 in films #2023 reads #2023 grammys #2023 art #2023 not a race #movies

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hectormcfilm · 7 months

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Lord of the rings: Fellowship of the ring

Similar to the Batman week my local cinema has played all three Lord of the Rings films over the weekend and I will start by saying how lucky I feel to be able to watch these films I grew up with on the cinema screen.

Lord of the Rings is considered one of if not the best trilogies of all time and I definitely stand by this sentiment, this first film has some issues but is overall still exceptional. To begin with the makeup and production design is stellar, every new location feels so mystical and unique, really adding to the worldbuilding and making every area feel fresh and creative. All the creature designs are intimidating or disgusting, achieving their goals of scaring or intimidating the audience perfectly and the makeup and prosthetics used for the orcs and urakhai are still amazing and genuinely couldn't be better. The music has always been iconic and is still amazing, elevating so many scenes, especially all the establishing and landscape shots.

One of my favourite details in this film is the sound of the Ringwraiths, the mix of the high pitched screeching noises combined with the reverberated and deep grunts of their horses creates an honestly terrifying atmosphere.

The special effects and CGI are mixed, since the film came out 20 years ago there are some very dated effects and some awkward moments however certain creatures like the Balrog still look awesome and technically impressive. If I had one negative for this film it would be the editing, certain moments of action can be hard to follow due to shaky camera and fast editing, some of the cross fades used throughout the film can create an almost comical effect in dramatic scenes and some shots like Sam drowning last for too long.

However the main strong point of this film is the characters, there are so many great characters established in this film from Gandalf's charisma and mystery, Frodo and Sam's bravery and determination in the face of this new adventure to my favourite character in the whole trilogy, Aragorn. Aragorn stands for me as one of the greatest characters in film history due to his complete bravery and determination, his heroism shines through in every scene and Viggo Mortensen's performance excels. To add on, I see Aragorn as the best representation of masculinity and the ideals men should strive for in media, his bravery and devotion combined with his compassion and genuine love for those around him are aspirational. Finally, Aragorn delivers my favourite line in this entire film, "I would've followed you to the end, into the very fires of Mordor,"

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trendingactivity · 11 months

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Johnny Depp Celebrates His 60th Birthday: A Life Full of Iconic Performances

Introduction

Welcome to our article on Johnny Depp's 60th birthday celebration! In this piece, we will delve into the life and career of this renowned actor, highlighting his iconic performances, personal milestones, and lasting impact on the entertainment industry. As we explore the fascinating journey of Johnny Depp, we aim to provide you with a comprehensive and engaging narrative that showcases his immense talent, versatility, and enduring popularity. Join us as we celebrate the remarkable achievements of this legendary actor.

Early Life and Career Beginnings

Johnny Depp was born on June 9, 1963, in Owensboro, Kentucky, USA. From a young age, his passion for the arts and acting became apparent, leading him to pursue a career in Hollywood. After dropping out of high school, Depp embarked on a musical journey, playing in various bands before venturing into the world of acting. His early acting gigs included roles in television series such as "21 Jump Street," where he gained initial recognition and showcased his acting prowess.

The Rise to Stardom

Depp's breakthrough came in the early 1990s when he collaborated with visionary director Tim Burton in the gothic fantasy film "Edward Scissorhands." His portrayal of the enigmatic Edward captivated audiences and established him as a unique talent in the industry. This successful partnership with Burton continued, resulting in numerous critically acclaimed movies such as "Ed Wood," "Sleepy Hollow," and "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory."

Versatility and Unforgettable Roles

One of the key factors that set Johnny Depp apart is his ability to immerse himself in a wide range of characters, bringing them to life with captivating authenticity. From the eccentric pirate Captain Jack Sparrow in the blockbuster "Pirates of the Caribbean" series to the mysterious Mad Hatter in "Alice in Wonderland," Depp's performances have enthralled audiences worldwide. His unique approach to character interpretation, coupled with his impeccable acting skills, has cemented his status as one of the greatest actors of our time.

Impact on Pop Culture

Johnny Depp's impact extends far beyond his acting prowess. His embodiment of complex and intriguing characters has inspired countless fans and influenced popular culture in various ways. From Halloween costumes to fan conventions, Depp's characters have become iconic symbols that resonate with people of all ages. His portrayal of Captain Jack Sparrow, in particular, has become synonymous with adventure, wit, and endlessly quotable lines, leaving an indelible mark on cinematic history.

Personal Life and Philanthropy

Beyond his on-screen achievements, Johnny Depp is known for his philanthropic endeavors and dedication to various charitable causes. He has been actively involved in organizations such as the Children's Hospice and Palliative Care Coalition and the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Depp's commitment to making a positive impact on the world showcases his compassionate nature and genuine desire to help those in need.

Conclusion

Johnny Depp's 60th birthday marks a significant milestone in the life of an exceptional actor who has graced the silver screen with unforgettable performances. From his humble beginnings to his rise as a Hollywood icon, Depp's journey has captivated audiences and left an enduring legacy. As we celebrate his remarkable career, let us honor Johnny Depp

#johnny deep

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letterboxd · 3 years

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Work Horse.

Taking on a rare leading role in his decades-spanning career, national treasure Tim Blake Nelson speaks with Mitchell Beaupre about demystifying heroes, reinventing genres and something called a quiche Western.

“This film is unapologetic about all the tropes that it’s deploying in service of telling the story... You’ve got a satchel full of cash. You’ve got gunslinging, physical violence, and feeding somebody to the pigs.” —Tim Blake Nelson

Described by Letterboxd members as “a national treasure” who “makes everything better”, Tim Blake Nelson is a journeyman actor who has tapped into practically every side of the industry since making his feature debut in Nora Ephron’s This Is My Life back in 1992. Whether you are a Marvel fanatic, a history buff or a parent trying to get through the day, the actor’s distinctive presence is a charming sight that’s always welcome on the screen.

Tim Blake Nelson is one of those rare actors who unites all filmgoers, a man genuinely impossible not to love, which certainly seems to be the case for Hollywood. Checking off working relationships with directors ranging from Terrence Malick and Ang Lee to Hal Hartley and Guillermo Del Toro, Nelson has covered the boards, even crossing over into directing and writing, both in films and on the stage.

Yet, despite being a renowned talent who can take a smaller supporting role in a massive Steven Spielberg blockbuster starring Tom Cruise and carry the film, Nelson-as-leading-man sightings have been few and far between. In fact, it’s quite a struggle to find a film with Nelson in a leading role, as even playing the titular role for directors who understand his greatness still results in him only appearing in the opening section of an anthology feature.

At last, the leading role Nelson fans were in need of has arrived in the form of Old Henry, a new Western from writer/director Potsy Ponciroli. Nelson plays the eponymous Henry, a widowed farmer with a mysterious past who makes a meager living with his son (Gavin Lewis), doing his best to leave his old life behind and hide away from the world. Things get complicated when Henry stumbles upon a satchel of cash and a wounded stranger (Scott Haze), bringing them both into his home. Soon, a dangerous posse led by an intimidating Stephen Dorff comes calling, setting the stage for an old-fashioned throwdown in this twisty Western siege thriller.

Premiering at the Venice Film Festival, Old Henry has been warmly received on Letterboxd. “Old Henry feels like the culmination of Tim Blake Nelson’s twenty-plus-year career, but from another dimension, where he’s highly regarded as a leading man”, writes Noah, speaking not only to the strength of Nelson’s performance, but also to the fact that this leading role shouldn’t be such a rarity. Todd awards Nelson the prize for “Best Facial Hair in a 2021 film”, before applauding the actor for pouring “every emotion in his body to play Henry”.

Letterboxd’s East Coast editor Mitchell Beaupre saddled up for a chat with Nelson about the intentional hokiness of the Westerns that made him fall in love with filmmaking, how the Coen brothers put other directors on notice, and the fatherly joy of keeping it all in the family.

I’ve seen a lot of interviews with you discussing your career as an actor, a writer, and a director. You always speak with such reverence for the art. Where does that passion come from for you? What made you want to pursue this field? Tim Blake Nelson: It’s funny, doing these interviews for Old Henry has been reminding me of my introduction to filmmaking as an art. I’ve realized that I had never quite located it, but it really started with the Sergio Leone Westerns, which I would see on television when I was growing up in Oklahoma in the ’70s. Before that, going to the cinema was always invariably a treat, no matter what the film, but I would just be following the story and the dialogue.

The Sergio Leone movies were the first ones that exposed subjectivity in telling stories on film to me. That was where I became aware of the difference between a closeup and an extreme closeup, or how you could build tension through a combination of the angle on a character with the editorial rhythm, with the lens size, with the music in addition to the dialogue and the story.

How old were you when this shift in your understanding of cinema was happening? I think it was across the ages of ten and eighteen, where I suddenly realized that this was an auteur here, Leone. There was a guy behind all these movies I was seeing—and in Oklahoma, you could see a Sergio Leone movie every weekend. This was a man making deliberate and intelligent decisions in everything that I was seeing.

I started noticing that a character was in a duster that goes all the way down to his boots, even though that’s not necessarily accurate to the Old West. That’s something else. Also, why is he wearing it in the desert? Would that have been very practical? And look at that cigar Clint Eastwood is smoking. It’s not smooth, it looks like it was a piece of tree root. Then later I learned it’s a particular kind of Italian cigar, but somehow it was defining this genre of Western. I marveled at that, and found it unbelievably thrilling to discover. I loved the stories and the dialogue and the intentional hokiness of it all. All of it was conspiring to teach me to venerate this form.

Sergio Leone, his daughters, and Clint Eastwood on the set of ‘The Good, the Bad and the Ugly’ (1966).

The connection there is interesting between the Leone Westerns to where Old Henry is at now. You’ve talked before about how the Western genre is one that is reinvented over and over throughout the years— Oh, you do your homework!

I try my best! What would you say defines the current era of Westerns that we’re seeing, and how the genre is being reinvented? Well, Joel and Ethan [Coen] did a lot of mischief, in a good way, with The Ballad of Buster Scruggs. Genres are always about genres, in addition to their story. So, I would say that Buster Scruggs is the quintessential postmodern Western, if you look at it as one movie instead of as an anthology, because it celebrates the history of the form. The magic of that movie is that it engages you in each story while also being a meditation on death. That’s what connects each one of those tales, and then it’s also a meditation on storytelling to boot. In the final chapter, you have a character talking about why we love stories, and he’s telling it to a bunch of people who you’ll learn are all dead.

The stories are a way of delaying the inevitable mortality. I mean, look at that. It’s such an accomplishment. With that movie, I think Joel and Ethan put filmmakers on notice that Westerns had better always be also about Westerns, because whether you like it or not, they are. I think they probably came to understand that when they were making True Grit, although knowing the two of them they probably understood it already.

Do you feel there’s a direct correlation between a movie like Buster Scruggs and Old Henry, in this era of postmodern, revisionist Westerns? How it impacts a movie like Old Henry is that you have Potsy embracing the Western-ness of the movie. This film is unapologetic about all the tropes that it’s deploying in service of telling the story. You’ve got the cantankerous old man hiding a past, who’s a maverick who wants to keep the law and the bad guys off his property. He wants to be left alone. You’ve got a satchel full of cash. You’ve got gunslinging, physical violence, and feeding somebody to the pigs. Yet, it’s all accomplished without irony in a very straightforward way that is utterly confident, and in love with the genre.

I think ultimately that’s why the movie works, because it’s very front-footed. It’s not hiding from you. It’s not deceiving you and trying to tell you it’s something that it isn’t. It’s a good, straightforward Western.

Tim Blake Nelson as the titular singer in ‘The Ballad of Buster Scruggs’ (2018).

That’s a bit different from those Leone Westerns, with all of their anachronisms. I remember when the movie Silverado came out when I was growing up, and people were calling it a “quiche Western”, which was funny. That was what they would call it in Oklahoma because it had a bunch of movie stars in it, who weren’t known for being in Westerns. It was the Sergio Leone crowd calling it that. I went and saw it, wondering, “Well, if it’s a quiche Western, then why is everybody talking about it?” I saw it, and I loved it. Those folks putting it down like that were wrong. It’s actually a straightforward, hard-boiled, hardcore unapologetic Western. You don’t like some of the movie stars in it, but get over it. The reason that movie works is because it’s straight-ahead and well-told, and I think that movie holds up.

Old Henry is the same kind of animal. It’s more in the tradition of Sergio Leone—or, actually, I would say more in the tradition of Unforgiven. That was a big influence on Potsy.

Unforgiven was marvelous in the way it demystified that old black hat/white hat mentality of Westerns, opening up a more multi-dimensional understanding. You’re no stranger to that. A series like Watchmen takes that approach with superheroes, who in a sense hold the position now that Western heroes used to hold culturally. Do you find there’s more of a demand these days to challenge those archetypes who used to be put on pedestals—be they superheroes, cowboys, police—and provide a deeper analysis? Absolutely, yes. At the same time, I think the demystified Western hero goes back to John Wayne in The Searchers. I think it really started with that character, one of the greatest characters ever in a Western. There’s One-Eyed Jacks, with Marlon Brando, which was made just after The Searchers, and again embracing this concept of an extremely complicated man. I don’t think you get the Sergio Leone movies without that.

I always think of McCabe & Mrs. Miller as a Western that was doing something totally different than anything I had seen before. That’s another one, with that final image with the character smoking opium, going into oblivion after the demise of Warren Beatty’s very flawed character, after you’ve watched what it has taken to really build that town. You have a director, Robert Altman, making the deliberate choice to shoot in order so that they can build the town while they’re shooting the movie, and you really get the cost of it. I think there’s a lot of history to get to a place where a movie like Unforgiven can happen. Then Clint comes along and, as he often does, moves it forward even more.

Gavin Lewis as Henry’s son Wyatt in ‘Old Henry’.

That’s a film that tackles legacy, as does Old Henry, which at its core is ultimately about the relationship between a father and his son. You got to work on this film with your own son, coincidentally named Henry, who was part of the art department. What is that experience like, getting to share your passion with your son on a project together? Well, I think something that is true for the character of Henry and for myself, and perhaps all of us, is that we all want our kids to have better lives than ours. I want that to be true in every respect. Mostly, I want them to be more fulfilled than I have been. My kids look at me when I say that and say, “Thanks a lot Dad for raising that bar”, because they see that I have a pretty good life. Which I do, but I still think they can be more fulfilled than I am, and I want that for them. One of the great privileges of this movie was to watch my son—who was the on-set decorator—work his ass off.

Those are the words of an incredibly proud father. He’s a work horse, and he’s learning about filmmaking, and I think on his current trajectory he will go beyond where I’ve gone as a filmmaker, directing more movies than I’ve been able to direct. Do a better job at it, too. He’s also a singer-songwriter, and I think he can have a venerable career doing that if he wants, but he wants to make movies too, and I hope that’s going to happen for him. It was a thrill to watch him do the work, the twelve- and fourteen-hour days, and after every take resetting and making sure everything was right. It felt like an accomplishment to see him take on that responsibility and do the real work every day.

Related content

SJ Holiday’s lists of Essential Neo-Westerns and Essential Modern Westerns

The Best Neo-Westerns of the 21st Century, according to JS Lewis

Our interview with Slow West director John Maclean

Follow Mitchell on Letterboxd

‘Old Henry’ is in US theaters now and on VOD from Friday, October 8.

#tim blake nelson #old henry #western #westerns #western movies #sergio leone #clint eastwood #stephen dorff #letterboxd #mitchell beaupre #coen brothers #coen bros #buster scruggs #joel coen #ethan coen

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dailyniallnews · 3 years

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Niall Horan Concert at Empty Royal Albert Hall Sells 125,000 Tickets Across 151 Countries - Variety

It’s a mild Saturday evening in early November and South Kensington is a scene of hushed tranquillity. Like the rest of the U.K., this plush corner of West London is back in pandemic-enforced lockdown. A man walks his dog in an otherwise empty street. A gabble of Deliveroo drivers loiter silently outside a takeaway. There’s nothing here to write home about.

But inside the Royal Albert Hall, there’s a hive of activity. Tonight, ex-One Direction member Niall Horan is performing at the stately venue, which normally hosts everything from the BAFTA Awards to the BBC Proms, for an audience-less live-stream that will be beamed around the globe to four different time zones. It’s an hour before showtime. There’s lots to be done.

Inside the main auditorium, roadies and crew members buzz around the circular stage that’s been placed where the crowd would normally stand. Downstairs to the backstage area, past the grand piano that will form the centrepiece of the gig’s opener, touring staff are just getting the hang of the Albert Hall’s labyrinthine layout. “I’ve been here a day and I’m only just getting my bearings,” says Milly, a production assistant.

In a concrete cellar that looks like the sort of place only usually visited by maintenance workers, director Paul Dugdale sits in front of a bank of screens, making last-minute notes. The waft of hot dinners floats down the corridor as you pass through the catering room, crammed with crew members. Tonight requires the sort of perfect execution that’s just not possible on an empty stomach.

The concert is the latest co-venture between Driift, a live events company, and “Gangs of London” producer Pulse Films. Their union was initiated back in March as Rick Salmon, a partner at the music management and ticketing agency ATC, saw his artists’ touring plans shelved for the foreseeable. “It was an idea born out of necessity,” says Salmon, taking a seat in a downstairs screening room. “How can we get our artists performing again but doing it in an exciting way?”

It was a period of artists embarking on more rudimentary broadcasting from home. There must be a better way than that, Salmon thought. “It felt like digital busking,” he says.

The singer-songwriter Laura Marling was one such artist on Salmon’s books who had seen her schedule evaporate. Reflecting upon their options one Sunday, Salmon and his business partner Brian Message came up with an idea: a live stream but done properly, in a beautiful venue, shot by a proper director, with tickets sold. He spoke with Sam Bridger, head of music film at Pulse, who immediately got on board. A new medium was born.

“We can’t claim any credit for the concept of a live stream,” explains Salmon, “but we can definitely lay claim to be the first people to put on a full production ticketed live stream event with no audience.”

From Pulse’s perspective, the opportunity to collaborate on a game-changing experience was enticing. “Because there’s no audience, it’s the catalyst for a whole host of creative options,” says Bridger, taking a seat next to Salmon. “Directors wouldn’t ever openly admit it, but [the placement of] audiences can be kind of annoying because you can’t put your camera where you want to put your camera. You’re literally giving the greatest live directing minds a free ticket to create what they want and put the camera where they want.”

The second major attraction, says Bridger, was not being constrained by a stage, meaning directors can move through rooms if they so wish. It’s a visual device they employed during Dermot Kennedy’s live stream from the Natural History Museum, when the Irish artist took off from the stage and began wandering around the museum’s cavernous interior.

“There’s genuine thought about, ‘How do we hold the audience’s attention for 60 minutes?’” he says. “What’s very exciting for everyone involved is the combination of live jeopardy and production values, which feels new. It’s not a live concert: the way to think about it is that, this evening, the Royal Albert Hall is a TV studio, not a concert hall.”

As Bridger heads to the gallery for final prep, Salmon explains that tonight is their biggest live-stream yet. Horan is a huge draw, having made a seamless transition from boyband star to grown-up rock-pop artist with hits like “Slow Hands” and “Nice to Meet Ya” under his belt. They have sold 125,000 tickets at £16 a pop in 151 countries across the globe. “151 countries!” Salmon marvels. “You’d never come close to that on a tour.”

Salmon says the data suggests that two-to-three people are watching each stream sold. “There’s going to be nearly 400,000 watching today, which is a phenomenal figure. That’s six Wembley Stadiums in one. The scale of it is really exciting.” All of their gigs so far have been profitable, he divulges, generating a genuine revenue stream for artists.

Tonight’s proceeds are being donated by Horan to charitable causes that will see the money directed to touring crew who’ve been left high and dry by the cancellation of live music. In the U.K., a second month-long national lockdown through to Dec. 2 has especially lowered morale about the industry revving back to life in the near future.

The show begins and we creep up to the gods to get a peek, out of the eyeline of Pulse’s numerous cameras. It’s a slick pop show, with Horan’s natural charisma filling the vacuum where there would usually be the screams of a frenzied crowd. Playing at the iconic Albert Hall was Horan’s idea, reveals Salmon. “Niall wanted to come here because, in his mind, this is the most prestigious venue in music and that really resonated with him,” he says.

Salmon says no-audience live streams are here to stay, even beyond the return of audiences. “Without a doubt,” he affirms. “In the early days, it was, ‘Is this just a lockdown thing?’ but very quickly it has been established that this is a new format. It will be a format that can sit between tours, in album campaigns — an additional tool that can be used by an artist to communicate. We realized that the freedom you get from not having the audience in the room completely changes the viewer experience at home. It feels like an era of establishing a new creative format.”

As the show ends and Horan hugs his crew, waving into the cameras to those watching at home, you feel that Salmon might be right. Hopefully, one day soon, an adoring crowd will fill the seats of this grand old building once again. But, out of this odd moment in time, something exciting has emerged from the standstill.

#niall horan #article #09nov20 #rah live stream

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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years

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Music is so good for the soul, and during these hard times we must all help each other to find moments of joy.

- Dame Vera Lynn (1917-2020)

Dame Vera Lynn, the beloved British singer, died 103 years old on 18 June 2020. Surprise at her death is swiftly replaced by the sad realisation that it marks the end of a chapter in British history. Many of those who grew up with her music have died during the Covid-19 pandemic. How poignant that her death should come on the day that President Macron arrived in the UK to mark the 80th anniversary of General De Gaulle’s rallying cry to the Free French and to give the Légion d’Honneur to London, the city that weathered the blitz in 1940.

From the battlefields of France, the Netherlands, Italy and North Africa to the Far East, whenever soldiers gathered around a radio set or gramophone, the smooth vocal tones of Vera Lynn were sure to be heard.

It is impossible to gauge whether the outcome of the war was swayed by songs like ‘There'll Always Be an England’, ‘We'll Meet Again’, ‘(There'll Be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover"‘ and ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square’.

But for countless men in uniform, the lyrics and the slim, wholesome young blonde woman who sang them seemed to offer a vision of what they were fighting for.

To modern ears, the words might sound corny but at a time when Britain stood proudly against the Germans, their patriotic appeal was irresistible.

Vera Lynn epitomised an archetypical, essentially decent Britishness, practical and fair-minded - notions which shone through the songs she sang.

Even her version of the German soldiers' favourite song, ‘Lili Marlene,’ managed to sound like a patriotic lament, a far cry from the darker sexual undercurrents implicit in the versions by Marlene Dietrich and Lale Andersen - ironically both of them anti-Nazis who became the German forces' sweethearts.

Vera Lynn's most famous song remains We'll Meet Again, recorded in 1939.

Lynn’s wartime popularity was boosted because of the song. The song’s appeal to love and stoicism - "Keep smiling through/Just like you always do/ Till the blue skies/Drive the black clouds far away" -- made it the perfect war-time anthem. It proved powerfully uplifting for departing soldiers, and it has endured as the defining song of the British campaign. The song re-entered the UK charts at No 55 amid the 75th anniversary celebrations of VE Day.

As she wrote later in her 1975 memoir, Vocal Refrain: “Ordinary English people don’t, on the whole, find it easy to expose their feelings even to those closest to them.” We’ll Meet Again would go “at least a little way towards doing it for them”.

In later years, the song, with its reminders of home and exhortations of courage, has become an indispensable part of national commemorations. And, with its swooping and strangely haunting melody, it has entered into popular culture. It forms an ironic accompaniment to the explosion of atom bombs in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964); it is deployed with alienating effect in the Pink Floyd song Vera (The Wall, 1982); and it provides the eerie aural backdrop to the Tower of Terror ride in Walt Disney World, California.

But when Lynn began singing it at the age of 22, she had little idea that she would be singing it for the rest of her life.

Indeed the song found favour again this year when Queen Elizabeth II, in a rare public address to the nation, urged Britons to remain strong during the coronavirus lockdown.

"We should take comfort that while we may have more still to endure, better days will return: we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again," the monarch said.

Vera Lynn was born in London's East End on March 20, 1917 as Vera Margaret Welch.

She began singing in local clubs at age seven and joined a child dance troupe, Madame Harris' Kracker Cabaret Kids, at 11. By 15, she was a teenage sensation as a vocalist with the Howard Baker Orchestra.

She adopted her grandmother's maiden name Lynn as her stage name, making her first radio broadcast in 1935 with the Joe Loss Orchestra.

She worked with another of the great names of the pre-war period, Ambrose, whose clarinettist and tenor sax player, Harry Lewis, she was to marry. The couple had one child, a daughter.

In war-time, Vera Lynn came into her own, hosting a BBC radio programme, "Sincerely Yours", appearing in a forces stage revue, and making three films.

So what did Vera Lynn have that propelled her to stardom during the war, when she became the “forces’ sweetheart”? Youth primarily. She was in her early 20s when war broke out – Elsie Carlisle, the iconic singer at this time, was in her 40s and recorded very little during the war, while Gracie Fields, who was astonishingly popular in the 1930s, had the temerity to marry an Italian and sat most of the war out in North America.

The country was aching for a new female singing star and Vera Lynn – youthful, toothily wholesome rather than glamorous, and with an innate modesty that suited an austere and dangerous age that had no time for displays of ego – fitted the bill. She had a powerful, bell-like voice – at times she almost recites the words and employs oodles of vibrato to underscore the emotion of her songs – that was perfect for a singalong. It is when the audience joins in with her songs that you get a lump in the throat.

She came to represent so much, especially to the service personnel she entertained tirelessly during the second world war. She visited Burma, Egypt and India to give concerts for troops stationed there, an act of courage that should not be underestimated. These were difficult, dangerous journeys and not for nothing was she later awarded the Burma Star. She symbolised resilience and indefatigability, embodying a strength of character that transcended mere art. Nazism had no chance against this winsome, optimistic, joyful yet tender young woman.

Lynn gave up singing after the war but was persuaded out of retirement in 1947 and began a whole new international career, with appearances in the United States in 1948.

She became the first British artiste to have a US number one with "Auf Wiedersehen, Sweetheart", her most successful record, in 1952. However Vera Lynn's career foundered in the rock and roll era and she cut back on public appearances.

Artistically, it must have been infuriating to be forever associated with the wartime struggle and she did attempt to move on, recording a few Beatles numbers in the 1960s and even making a country disc in 1977. But nothing could shift the way she was seen by the public: a symbol, quintessentially British, of that unimaginably long, bleak, ultimately triumphant wartime struggle; an icon frozen in time.

She accepted her status as a living museum of wartime music and culture with customary good grace. “I never thought the ‘forces’ sweetheart’ tag would stay with me,” she told the Radio Times in 2014, “but it has, hasn’t it? I thought it would last for the war period, then I’d just be another singer. Of course I’ve never minded that everybody always connects me with that time. It was so important.”

For decades, she was a beloved figure at celebrations to mark the anniversaries of the June 6, 1944, D-Day landings in France or VE Day, the end of the war in Europe on May 8, 1945.

Her last public performance came in 2005, at the 60th anniversary celebrations for VE Day in Trafalgar Square. She performed a snatch of We’ll Meet Again, and told the crowd: “These boys gave their lives and some came home badly injured and for some families life would never be the same. We should always remember, we should never forget and we should teach the children to remember.”

She was awarded an OBE in 1969, and made a dame in 1975, for her charity work. She has given her name to her own breast cancer and child cerebral palsy charities, and has also worked with charities for military servicepeople, including Forces Literary Organisation Worldwide (Flow)

In 2009, at the age of 92, she became the oldest living artist to make it to No 1 on the British album charts, with a greatest hits compilation outselling the Arctic Monkeys.

During the build-up to her 100th birthday in 2017, Dame Vera said she found it "humbling" that people still enjoyed her songs.

The Queen wrote to her: "You cheered and uplifted us all in the war and after the war, and I am sure that this evening the blue birds of Dover will be flying over to wish you a happy anniversary."

Her songs spoke to people caught up in war, trying to respond to its emotional extremes as best they could. They encapsulate fellowship and battling through, not jingoism, for all the flag-waving that accompanied her appearances at commemorative events. “We’ll meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.” The lyrics could not be more banal, yet her genuine spirit invested them with deep humanity. As HM Queen Elizabeth II herself understood, what keeps us going in times of war and pandemic is the thought that we will be reunited with our loved ones, when the blue skies drive the dark clouds far away.

RIP Dame Vera Lynn

We’ll meet again....

#vera lynn #quote #life and death #second world war #music #singer #britain #femme #icon #history #forces sweetheart

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latenightcinephile · 3 years

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#709: 'Doctor Zhivago', dir. David Lean, 1965.

There's not necessarily a lot of in-depth analysis to do with a film like Doctor Zhivago, because David Lean was never really a flashy director who imbued his films with a lot of polyvocality. Lean has six films on this list, and all of them are solid, workmanlike pieces of filmmaking - many of them are melodramas, and many of them are literary adaptations of massive works of fiction. Doctor Zhivago, despite being set fifty years before it was made, is based on Pasternak's 700-page novel of 1957, which also makes it one of the shortest turn-around times between source material and adaptation in Lean's career.

I suspect that, were it not for their runtimes (Doctor Zhivago clocks in at about 200 minutes), these films would be excellent sources for teaching film students how to undertake textual analysis, because this one in particular shows Lean at his most streamlined. He doesn't try to do anything flashy, but he has an innate and honed understanding of how to create meaning with great economy, and he employs this talent rigorously throughout.

While the majority of the reviews of Doctor Zhivago were glowing about the performances of the actors, the film was criticised both for its runtime and for the way in which it reduces the historical context of the novel to mere backdrop. Zhivago (Omah Sharif), a doctor-poet during the October Revolution of 1917 and the ensuing civil wars, is in a happy relationship with his wife, Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin), but his path keeps crossing that of Lara (Julie Christie). The intense emotional bond between them, enhanced by Zhivago's increasing history with Lara (he is tangentially involved with, or present for, most of the turning points in Lara's life), makes their coupling inevitable, and also means that at various points Zhivago must betray his love for Tonya or for Lara, before eventually abandoning them both to protect his ideals. Contemporary critics noted that the true tragedy of the novel is that Zhivago agrees with the revolutionary politics but can't stomach the means by which those ends are attained. For Lean, it seems, the tragedy of the story is that the revolution puts Zhivago in a position where he must betray his love or his values - he cannot have both - and his attempts to have both are the moments where he is in the greatest peril. Lean's films are always about the human emotions at the heart of the stories, and so it's perhaps not surprising that the politics in Doctor Zhivago are somewhat empty of impact, even though they're shown in a stunning way.

Fittingly for a melodrama, at no point in this film are the human emotions higher than when a character must depart, seemingly forever. Lara is the principal 'leaving' character: she receives the same filmic treatment twice, once when her time as a nurse attending with Zhivago is over, immediately after Zhivago has first expressed his love for her, and once when Lara must flee with her daughter under the protection of her former abuser, Komarovsky (Rod Steiger). Both times, Zhivago is framed in close-up watching her leave, the camera lingering on Sharif's tear-filled eyes as the carriage Lara is in grows steadily more distant.

I've written before on the topic of 'bullshit colour theory', and this film is an excellent example of how meaning can be created through repetition alone, rather than through any inherent meaning in a particular symbol. Periods of happiness with Lara are frequently accompanied by yellow flowers - the sunflowers in the field hospital; daffodils in the fields of Varykino; even a yellow flower in a picture by Katya, Lara's daughter, prominently displayed in Lara's home. In addition, Lara's musical theme occurs on the soundtrack a lot, but in these moments it's played on the balalaika, an instrument associated with Zhivago. Finally, while sunshine is obviously associated with moments of happiness, Lara's sunshine is that rich golden-orange colour of sunsets and winter suns. In the first of Lara's departures, all three of these symbols occur simultaneously, drenching the film in excessive imagery that becomes the viewer's main memory of Lara - not an unimpressive feat considering we mostly see her in the snowy depths of despair.

As the political situation gets progressively worse, Lean also removes colour from the rest of the film, until the dominant colours are black, white and red. Red, which under bullshit colour theory would represent love, is instead associated with rebellion - but in those moments where Zhivago is actually forced into rebellion that colour is also absent, meaning that Zhivago becomes equally unmoored from both of the structuring principles of his life. (Love and politics are polar opposites in the film: Strelnikov (Tom Courtenay) tells Zhivago "The personal life is dead in Russia. History killed it.")

Interestingly, Lean mostly achieves this effect through lighting: while we don't see much of Zhivago and Tonya's house before the revolution occurs, it's clear that it has not been painted black in the intervening time. Lean has just changed the natural light for artificial light, robbing the dark colours of their nuances. Towards the end of the good times in any one place, we steadily see fewer scenes shot during the day, as well, making the film feel like it's naturally tending towards disaster.

There's a lot of other things I could delve into in Doctor Zhivago, but in hindsight it all seems to merge together into a seamless and uniform sense of confident ability. David Lean knows how to make a film that does exactly what he wants it to do. He's made the filmic relationship between Zhivago and Lara so intense that everything else pales a little when neither of them are on the screen. Is this a bit troublesome when the novel is set in a period of crucial political history? Maybe. Is it troublesome when there's a framing device you're meant to care about as much as the central plot? Maybe. But I would be genuinely surprised if Lean didn't look at those elements and say to himself, 'Right, but where's the story?'

#1001 movies #David Lean #Doctor Zhivago #epic

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wonderfulworldofmichaelford · 3 years

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Psycho Analysis is a series that looks at villains across various media in the hopes of coming to something of a consensus on the overall quality of the character. Are they performed well? Do they enrich the narrative? Are their motives fleshed out? Are they voiced by Tim Curry and thus a sex icon?

There are a lot of important questions that I look into, but ultimately, Psycho Analysis boils down to asking one simple little question: How bad can a character be?

Thankfully, there’s one villain who decided to answer that question for me... in song form.

Psycho Analysis: The Once-ler

(WARNING! This analysis contains SPOILERS!)

Yeah, I’m finally talking about everyone’s favorite greedy bastard who, back in some of the darkest days of Tumblr history, ended up being the premier sexyman on the website. People were thirsting over this twiggy weirdo, acting as if he were God’s gift to women and shipping him with alternate versions of himself. Much like the movie he’s from, he is now incredibly hard to take seriously.

But hey, speaking of alternate versions of himself, I’m going to be covering him from the original book and the animated short film as well. Might as well just knock it all out of the park at once, right? Now let’s see how ba-a-a-ad this guy can be.

Motivation/Goals: The Once-ler is all about biggering. He’s making thneeds (things that everyone needs) and he is gonna stop at nothing to craft these things. Not even the power of the Lorax, Danny DeVito or otherwise, is going to stay his hand from getting that sweet, soft Truffula fluff to make his wares. This is ultimately a little unrealistic, at least for the Illumination version; if Danny DeVito asked me not to do something, I’d listen, no questions asked.

Performance: In the animated special, Bob Holt does double duty, as he is portraying both Once-ler and the title character. It works really well for what they’re going for, and the double casting is interesting because it highlights the ultimate role of the Lorax as the Once-ler’s conscience given form.

In the film, Ed Helms portrays the Once-ler, and he’s fine. He’s certainly better casting than Audrey, but that’s not particularly saying much considering that’s a non-singing Taylor Swift (when Cats is able to utilize Taylor Swift better than your musical, you know there’s trouble). I don’t know, Ed Helms is fun and all, but I’m just not sure his take on the Once-ler is all too compelling overall.

Final Fate: In the original book and the special, the Once-ler wins… but even he realizes it’s a terrible, pointless victory, and all he has achieved is ruin, his family leaving him, his business ultimately collapsing, and the environment permanently damaged. He’s left as a miserable, jaded hermit, broken by the bleak consequences his greedy actions have sown upon the world and only able to tell his story and pass on the last Truffula seed in the hopes that maybe, maybe someday the trees can regrow and the Lorax will return. The Illumination version follows this but then tacks on a happy ending where the Lorax and Once-ler reunite because as we know ambiguity and bittersweet endings cannot exist in children’s films.

Best Scene: Obviously it’s the scene where he shakes his ass to seduce Jack Frost, in one of the greatest gay romances ever put to film.

Joking aside, it is undoubtedly his villain song. It has become such a meme, but real talk? “How Bad Can I Be” slaps. This is a really good song, probably too good for the movie but you know what, I’ll take it.

youtube

Best Quote: HOW BA-A-A-AD CAN I BE? Yes, I’m using a line from his villain song. Sue me.

Final Thoughts & Score: What can one really say about the movie version of the Once-ler that hasn’t already been run into the ground? Well, how about… He’s not too bad, honestly? Like, yes, he has next to nothing to do with his book counterpart and they really go way too far into trying to make a capitalist pig sympathetic… but the animated special from the 70s did that too. I think the Once-ler honestly works better when there is a dash of complexity to him and he isn’t just a simple-minded Captain Planet villain.

Of course, the issue here is that the 70s version took a simpler approach, kind of less is more. The 70s Once-ler brings up some valid points to the Lorax about his work, and the Lorax can’t help but agree that there’s no easy answer while also stressing that the environmental devastation is still really, really bad. It works, it feels complex, and it arguably helps the ultimate point that we need to protect the environment better than even the book did (and I love the book, don’t get me wrong, but its take on the Once-ler is a bit too simple for its own good; it almost runs into the Femme Fatale problem by being a bit too much of a strawman). The movie version has a bit too much going on, especially with his family. His family are much more blatantly evil, greedy, and manipulative, but they’re relegated to the background for much of the film and don’t effect things all that much. The whole narrative would have been infinitely stronger if they were the greater scope villains behind Once-ler and were who needed to be defeated and maybe taught a lesson, but instead they are ignored in favor of someone I’ll address very shortly.

All of this leaves movie Once-ler feeling extremely disjointed, but not irredeemably so. As I said before, his villain song is unironically awesome, and as lame as it is compared to the more haunting, contemplative ending of the book and the special, I’m not so much of a curmudgeon that I didn’t at least smile when he finally reconciled with the Lorax. Ultimately though, him being memed to death really didn’t help his case, but it means I’m not giving the movie version anything less than a 3/10. He might in fact be the best “so bad it’s good” villain ever, or at least up there. He’s just so undeniably enjoyable even if the narrative isn’t making him as complex as it thinks it is. The animated special version gets a 9/10, the book version is a 7/10, and the Once-ler’s family gets a 5/10 for being an interesting concept they sadly do little with, which will now be elaborated on as I follow up on the foreshadowing from the last paragraph...

Psycho Analysis: Aloysius O’Hare

Remember how I said the Once-ler’s family gets ignored in favor of someone else? Here he is, Aloysius O’Hare, one of the absolute lamest villains ever put to screen.

Motivation/Goals: He’s greedy. That’s it. I’m not kidding. He’s just a cartoonish caricature of a rich person, which still makes him a realistic portayal but also makes him boring as sin compared to the wacky dude with a big musical number about how bad he can be.

Performance: Rob Riggle does a decent job, but there’s really not much for him to work with here. This character is a cardboard cutout who exists to be as cartoonishly greedy and evil as possible with no nuance so the kids know who to root against and so that Once-ler doesn’t look bad in comparison.

Final Fate: Look, he’s a blatantly evil corporate villain in a kid’s movie about the environment. Of course he gets defeated and everyone turns on him. What’s especially funny though is that, on the brink of learning his lesson, he rejects any form of redemption and just goes whole hog on being a villain.

Best Scene: I will absolutely give him this: in the face of his ultimate defeat, after having the virtues of trees sung to him and the entire town turning on him, he for a moment contemplates turning over a new leaf… and then absolutely rejects the thought and instead decides being evil is just too much fun, at which point he tries to get everyone back on his side by seeing a funny little song about death while wavedashing. If more shitty villains did this, I don’t think there would be shitty villains.

Best Quote: LET IT DIE, LET IT DIE, LET IT SHRIVEL UP AND DIE! Yes I’m quoting a song again.

Final Thoughts & Score: Look, I’m not gonna mine words here: O’Hare sucks. Big time. He is a prime example of why The Lorax failed as an adaptation. In a story that is dealing with a moral grayness with no easy answers, O’Hare is just a big, blatant target, a dark shade of black in terms of black-and-white morality. He’s like a reject Captain Planet villain with Edna Mode’s haircut.

The movie would have been infinitely better if, instead of him, the Once-ler’s family were in control of the town, and they needed to learn the lesson about saving the trees instead of simply vanishing from the story. They were shown to be overbearing, manipulative, and greedy, and they had a much more personal connection with Once-ler being, you know, his actual family. The fact they abandon him and never really get any sort of comeuppance despite being perhaps the most evil people in the move, egging on Once-ler and taking full advantage of him, makes O’Hare all the more egregious, because there could have been some strong thematic elements that would have tied the film together and made it come off as much less preachy and more nuanced.

But we don’t live in a world where that happened, we live in a world where we got O’Hare. Aside from some genuine hilarity from him at the end, O’Hare really adds very little to the film. I gotta give him a 2/10, but I will say he’s a lot closer to a 3 than he is to a 1; there’s no denying his absolute rejection of learning a moral is absolutely hilarious. I love when villains do that. It’s just a shame those funny moments are wrapped up in something monumentally unimpressive.

#Psycho Analysis #The Once-ler #The Lorax #Ed Helms #Aloysius O'Hare #Rob Riggle

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themovieblogonline · 13 days

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The Greatest Hits Review: Lucy Boynton Leads Excellent Cast

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marvella15 · 3 years

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Astaire and Rogers Rewatch Part 11: Kisses, Partnership, and Final Thoughts

Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers made 10 films together. That’s more than Judy Garland and Andy Hardy. More than Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy. Almost one-third of Astaire’s musical filmography also stars Rogers. That’s incredible by the standards of any decade.

I’ve had a lot of thoughts throughout this rewatch and I’ve distilled some of the larger ones into this wrap-up post. So here we go.

Kisses

It felt important to talk about the kisses and distinct lack of them in their own section. As I mentioned in my Carefree post, Astaire didn’t like big romantic scenes, especially those that involved kissing. He preferred to let the romance happen in the dancing.

But here’s the problem with that:

After he made his last RKO film with Ginger Rogers, Astaire went on to make many more musicals with other leading ladies and he kissed all of them.

Look at 1941’s “You’ll Never Get Rich” with Rita Hayworth. Or Holiday Inn with Virginia Dale and Marjorie Reynolds (though I can’t remember if he kisses Reynolds). Or Easter Parade with Ann Miller and Judy Garland.

Through the rest of his film career, Astaire almost always kissed his leading lady. So what was the hesitancy with Ginger Rogers?

I know it seems like I’m making this all Astaire’s “fault” but… well it kind of was. It’s not like Rogers was stomping around demanding to be kissed. But she certainly wasn’t the one going off with the script with her spouse and coming back to declare for any number of reasons why she and Astaire shouldn’t kiss in the film. On the other hand, he was definitely doing that.

If you’re in any way thinking this was a case of “oh he didn’t like Ginger so he didn’t want to kiss her” let me stop you right there. Because you’re wrong (see my Barkleys of Broadway post as well as the Final Thoughts section here). And maybe it was the opposite.

Now look, I think you could chalk this up to Astaire being shy (which he was) or his newness to the movie business (also true) or simply an unease with romance on the screen. But it feels worth mentioning, again, that he and Rogers had a previous romantic relationship. They’d dated in New York prior to her moving to Hollywood. They also absolutely made out during that time because Rogers wrote about in her autobiography. So kissing each other was familiar territory.

I’ll just cut to the chase. Astaire had only been married for a few months when he and Rogers started making their series of films. By all accounts, he was deeply in love with his wife, whom he had spent two years pursuing. He may have felt that repeatedly kissing his ex-girlfriend on screen while also performing some undeniably sensual dance numbers wasn’t a good idea for the health of his new marriage.

Perhaps there were even lingering feelings between him and Rogers, though it must be noted that she was also married from 1934-1940 (to Lew Ayres). And if you have feelings for someone who is not your spouse, you need to have boundaries. Or maybe it was some combo of this and/or other factors.

In all, the Astaire/Rogers films don’t necessarily suffer from the lack of kissing between the two leads. A strange element to this discussion is the kisses we do get prior to the first “romantic” clinch in Carefree. There’s a peck on the cheek in Gay Divorcee and a comical kiss on the lips by Rogers (and it’s mainly one-sided) in Top Hat. But why not make either of those, especially the first one, an actual kiss??

And if comical kisses were going to be inserted anywhere, they should land in Roberta or Follow the Fleet, the two films where Astaire and Rogers have the snarkiest relationships because their characters have a history together.

Moreover, there are glaring moments where a kiss should obviously be. Such as somewhere in Swing Time. For goodness sake, they joke about not kissing in “A Fine Romance” and then have a scene where it appears they’ve kissed off-screen. Give us the real thing! Which they did, eventually, in Carefree and it’s… pretty lackluster imo. Their kisses in The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle and The Barkleys of Broadway look and feel much more heartfelt.

So sure, the Astaire/Rogers films aren’t worse off for not having their leads kiss but they could have sometimes been improved. Shall We Dance’s plot hinges on a secret relationship between the two main characters and yet we never see them actually romantic together. That said, it’s a bit entertaining, if also kind of annoying, how often the plots in nearly every Astaire/Rogers film bend over backward to avoid showing us a kiss.

(my gif)

Partnership

It’s undisputed that Rogers is Astaire’s greatest partner, both in terms of dance and on-screen companion. They play off each other remarkably well, with an ease that hints at their personal relationship. Astaire had spent most of his life partnered with his sister, Adele, so he had learned how to make a lady look good during a dance and put the audience’s focus on her.

But Rogers doesn’t really need his help. She commands the screen so entirely at times that it takes pointed effort to look anywhere but her. Her ability to continue acting (and acting well) in the midst of dancing absolutely sets her apart from not only Astaire’s other dance partners but other musical stars of the day. A large part of what makes her dances with Astaire so enduring is that she sells the romance, rapture, and joy of those minutes with him.

Katharine Hepburn quipped that Rogers gave Astaire “sex” and he gave her “class.” I think a more apt observation may be that he elevated/improved her dancing and she elevated/improved his acting. That makes sense to me since she was more experienced as an actress and he as a dancer.

Doing this rewatch made me even more resolute that every critic who remarks on her lack of technical dancing skills is an idiot. Just look at “Isn’t it a Lovely Day.” She matches Astaire step for step and he’s not exactly going easy on her.

Then there are the romantic duets. Let’s talk about the sexiness of those dances because look. Astaire had been partnered almost exclusively with his sister up until then. He’d had maybe maybe a handful of other partners prior to pairing up with Rogers on screen.

There’s no question he was a talented performer and choreographer but I do find myself asking exactly when and how he learned to look at his partner so seductively. He certainly wasn’t doing that with his sister!

Plus there’s the nature of his dances with Rogers. There is a heat between them that is especially pronounced during the Hays Code era of Hollywood. Even Flying Down to Rio, where they barely dance together, has some steamy moments. “Night and Day” in Gay Divorcee and, to a slightly lesser extent, “Cheek to Cheek” in Top Hat are very obviously dancing metaphors for sex. And Astaire and Rogers get away with it while also not diluting the meaning of the dance one single bit.

Astaire crafted those dances himself specifically for himself and Rogers so he knew exactly what he was doing and communicating and so did she. For a guy who jumped through hoops to avoid kissing his dance partner on screen until their eighth film together, he sure put a lot of tension, sexuality, and deep romance into their dances.

For her part, Rogers again matched him. Although I often commented about how much he smiles and gazes at her while they are dancing, she regularly did the same towards him. They injected softness and genuine affection into those dances. They were both good actors but it wasn’t always acting.

(my gif)

Final Thoughts

Every time I watch one of their films, I discover something new. There’s so much I wish we knew but we never will, like what they’re whispering to each other those times we can see them talking during a dance. Or what rehearsals, which were apparently grueling but filled with laughter, really looked like (“I’ll Be Hard to Handle” in Roberta is the closest we’ll get). Or the many other ways Rogers fine-tuned their dances, adding elements here and there that made a marked difference.

They held each other in very high regard and were extremely fond of one another. Michael Feinstein tells a story about meeting Astaire for the first time. Feinstein was playing piano at a party and Rogers, whom he knew, asked if he’d “met Fred.” When Feinstein replied he hadn’t, she took him over to meet her friend and former costar who shyly but sweetly listened to Feinstein fanboy over him.

Astaire and Rogers remained good friends throughout their lives, with him sending her a very sweet note that she cherished about her performance in Kitty Foyle (for which she won an Oscar) and also gifting her with an ornate travel watch at one point (as mentioned in the “feather dress” section of my Top Hat post). She said he was one of the few men she knew who was an excellent dancer off-camera as well as on. Their affection for one another is evident in their films and it’s one of the many reasons I come back to their movies again and again.

Thanks for joining me for this rewatch! I’ve gotten notes from a few of you and that’s been so kind and also a huge surprise. I was almost certain no one would read these posts lol

#fred astaire #ginger rogers #classic hollywood #old hollywood #fred and ginger #astaire and rogers rewatch

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nftbay · 3 years

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CryptoCeleb #628 Madonna

– Limited Edition of 1-

Crypto Celebrity #628 Madonna - Singer, Songwriter, Actor, Author- Madonna Louise Ciccone (born August 16, 1958) is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. Referred to as the "Queen of Pop", she is regarded as one of the most significant figures in popular culture. Madonna is noted for her continual reinvention and versatility in music production, songwriting, and visual presentation. She is also known for pushing the boundaries of artistic expression in mainstream music while remaining completely in charge of every aspect of her career. Her works, which incorporate social, political, sexual, and religious themes, have generated both critical acclaim and controversy. Madonna is often cited as an influence by other artists. Born and raised in Michigan, Madonna moved to New York City in 1978 to pursue a career in modern dance. After performing as a drummer, guitarist, and vocalist in the rock bands Breakfast Club and Emmy, she rose to solo stardom with her debut studio album, Madonna (1983). She followed it with a series of successful albums, including all-time bestsellers Like a Virgin (1984) and True Blue (1986) as well as Grammy Award winners Ray of Light (1998) and Confessions on a Dance Floor (2005). Madonna has amassed many number-one singles throughout her career, including "Like a Virgin", "La Isla Bonita", "Like a Prayer", "Vogue", "Take a Bow", "Frozen", "Music", "Hung Up", and "4 Minutes". Madonna's popularity was enhanced by roles in films such as Desperately Seeking Susan (1985), Dick Tracy (1990), A League of Their Own (1992), and Evita (1996). While Evita won her a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress, many of her other films received poor reviews. As a businesswoman, Madonna founded the company Maverick in 1992; it included Maverick Records, one of the most successful artist-run labels in history. Her other ventures include fashion brands, children's books, health clubs, and filmmaking. She contributes to various charities, having founded the Ray of Light Foundation in 1998 and Raising Malawi in 2006. With sales of over 300 million records worldwide, Madonna is certified as the best-selling female recording artist of all time by Guinness World Records. She is the most successful solo artist in the history of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 chart and holds the record for the most number-one singles by a female artist in Australia, Canada, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. With a revenue of U.S. $1.5 billion from her concert tickets, she remains the highest-grossing solo touring artist of all time. Madonna was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008, her first year of eligibility. She was ranked as the greatest woman in music by VH1 in 2012, and as the greatest music video artist of all time by MTV in 2003 and Billboard in 2020. Rolling Stone also listed Madonna among the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time and the 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time. All 1,000 CryptoCelebs are unique with only 1/1 Editions made. No two Crypto Celebrities are alike. Some accessories are very rare, while some are less rare. Official & Original Genuine Crypto Celebs View on Open Sea Read the full article

#628 #ALeagueofTheirOwn #Awards #BillboardHot100 #CertifiedBestSellingFemaleRecordingArtistofallTime #CryptoCeleb #EmeraldEarring #Evita #GoldenGlobe #GuinessBook #LikeaVirgin #Madonna #MTV #PurpleChoker #RedLipstick #RollingStone #VH1

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9worldstales · 3 years

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INTERESTING POINTS TO PONDER FROM INTERVIEWS 1

Interviews might not remain forever available or not be easy to find so I’ve decided to link them and transcribe the points I find of some interest so as to preserve them should the interview had to end up removed.

It’s not complete transcriptions, just the bits I think can be relevant but I wholeheartedly recommend reading the whole thing.

And of course I also comment all this because God forbid I’ll keep silent... :P

Title: Tom Hiddleston On Set Interview THOR; Talks About Playing Loki, How He Got Cast, and a Lot More

Author: Steve Weintraub

Published: Dec 10, 2010

BEST BITS FROM THE INTERVIEW

ON LOKI

So could you talk about in the film how it’s being played?

Hiddleston: Yeah. Well we’re starting at the beginning; I think it’s safe to say. I start in the film as Thor’s younger brother and I think in the manner of all younger brothers I have a greater sense of freedom. I’m not the oldest therefore the parental expectations aren’t as heavy, so it’s like a lot of younger children in sibling groups; I think Loki has a bit more freedom. He’s not going to be King. He knows that. And so he’s freer to…he has less responsibility on his shoulders so he’s freer to have a bit more fun. And I think like everybody at Marvel has been very clear and brilliant about coming into this that Loki just has…they’re both enormously gifted. Thor and Loki are a 2-man team and they’re both going to run Asgard when Oden steps down, and Thor has an ability and a physicality and a presence—a physical presence that is…he’s the type of man you follow. You just do. In the same way they used to talk about all the leaders and the captains and the generals that came out of both World Wars that those captains and generals weren’t necessarily elected just in battles. There were certain men who were followed. You know, leaders were born and Thor is that guy. And Loki’s gifts are different in that he is sharper, he’s cleverer, he’s more interested in tactics and strategy. He’s capable of thinking ahead and he enjoys chaos. So he enjoys reacting to chaos and that affects how given that he’s the God of mischief. Mischief is essentially chaos. He likes stoking the fire of chaos and seeing what happens as a result. And so I think that’s where we start in that he’s just physically not as strong, but he has…he’s quicker and sharper and I guess that’s fair to say…

PUBLICIST I’m listening, don’t worry.

Hiddleston: Yeah, quicker, sharper, more playful and then I think over the course of the story and I can’t say the full story, but there is a kind of….a couple of major shocks about Loki and his history and who he is and why he is come to him. He’s made aware of for the very first time in the films. There are certain things that fans of the comics will already know, but hopefully you see Loki learn certain things about himself for the first time. So it’s a journey of self-awareness. He doesn’t, at the beginning of the film, know his own power and I think through the course of the film he comes to learn his true nature and the extent of his power. But with a propensity for mischief I think as soon as he knows how powerful it is that’s when it becomes dangerous.

We got to play with some of those fantastic weapons, how have you learned to wield them?

Hiddleston: It’s been fascinating actually. And one of the first things I did when I came on board was that we started with stunt training. And we thought like what is…it’ll be boring if Thor was a tank. It’d be boring if Loki was another tank and they were just running into each other. So we thought if Thor is thunder and power and muscle and brawn and he’s got his hammer, Loki should be like…he should be so quick he’s like the wind. So if Thor is heavy, Loki is light. We thought what would be the weapon that Loki would be fighting with? So we thought throwing knives….because I think Loki doesn’t like to get his hands dirty in a fight. He likes to be quick, efficient and lethal. It’s like one blow—slam. So we thought it would be throwing knives. And I thought if there was a way…if Loki could fight in a way that was as impressive as Thor’s, but was completely different so in a way Loki is too quick and Thor can’t catch him, you know? I kind of conceived of Loki as a kind martial artist with these throwing knives. Someone who’s like a dancer. He dances his way out of combat and these knives are his way of keeping his foes at arm's length but it’s lethal. When you get one of those knives in, you’re gone. I had a great time actually, we were shooting on another set shooting a bit battle sequence. And the set was made of this stuff. It looked hard but it was soft. It was foam. And my stunt knives were rubber so they didn’t like take out the grip or the camera operator. But we found like…I’d always throw them and Russell Bobbit, the props master, would always go and retrieve them for me for the next take. And he couldn’t find one of the daggers and we were like looking all over the set for this dagger. And I’m like where the hell did it go? And like about half an hour later we’d thought we lost it somewhere in the green screen. And he said, Tom, and he pointed up and this rubber knife was stuck clean into the set, so I knew I was throwing them with some kind of velocity.

Does it affect your thoughts at all that maybe you could do this performance a 2nd, 3rd, 4th time? Did you bring any bread crumbs or anything like that?

Hiddleston: Yeah, I feel that way certainly. I haven’t started…I can tell you this for free. I don’t start the film with him like immediately gone to the dark side. I think it’s good to see that Loki is genuinely Thor’s brother and there is a complicated relationship there. So that it isn’t just like…he isn’t just an out and out villain. He isn’t all black. He isn’t someone who the audience can immediately say “he’s the bad guy” because I think it’s more interesting if… because no character in real life or in comic books or any play or film or anything, nobody thinks they’re a villain. You always think there’s a complete logic to what you’re doing and you know what’s best and you know what’s right. And I think it’s really interesting to see Loki’s actions from his perspective and he’s just someone who becomes more and more damaged by, I think, a sense of isolation from his family and a sense of…it’s kind of a deep loneliness. I think when the world makes you feel rejected, you bite back. And I think over the course of the film that’s what you see in Loki. He feels continually cast out by different sets of people and his brother particularly and at a certain point he’s pushed too far and he comes back with a vengeance.

A lot of the actors have been talking about working with Ken, Shakespeare is definitely a touch stone, is that something that’s come up working with Ken? Of any characters you’re sort of…

Hiddleston: I’ve talked to him very much about subtlety because I don’t want to do any eyebrow twitching or moustache twiddling. I don’t want to do sort of like a caricatured villain. I’ve tried very much to make Loki psychologically plausible. Someone who’s damaged and very, very intelligent and is able to sow the seeds of deceit. Like he’s the Oscar winning liar, you know? He’d stand up there and you buy it. You’d buy anything from him. He’s the perfect salesman. Because my background is Shakespeare as well, I’ve done a lot of Shakespeare in London and Iago is kind of a touch stone for me. Edmund in King Lear, if you know that story. But I draw my inspiration from all over the place. I’ve been listening to lots of the Prodigy. Like there was an album they released in the ‘90’s called Music for the Jilted Generation, which has a real rage in it. It has a real kind of like don’t piss me off because I’ll bark at you. And I find myself listening to that sometimes. And there are some great performances. Ken talked a lot about some of Peter O’Toole’s greatest performances and how in “Lawrence of Arabia” or “The Lion in Winter” he is on the edge of darkness. He’s on the edge of sanity. You can see it in his eyes that he’s been pushed to the brink and you’re not sure if you can trust him because there’s a madness in there, you know? A greatness, too and a charisma and a power that you want to get close to and you want to see inside, but it’s a little bit dangerous. And so I’ve been trying to kind of… I drive to work every morning and I try and light some kind of bonfire under myself which is adrenalized and hot and alone. It’s a strange feeling when you’re playing a character that feels so alone.

Are there certain like iconic gestures or poses from the comic book that you’re trying to use, because when I think of Loki I always think of him kind of slouched in the throne and kind of brooding.

Hiddleston: Yeah, that’s definitely like…I recall that Ken talks about the racing mind. He said I want to see…he said every time I put the camera on your face, I want to see your brain going at the speed of light. But I don’t want anyone else in the scene to see it. So this is a very private thing of like someone who’s just thinking 10 steps ahead of the game every time, but not making it so obvious that it’d be like guys, somebody look at Loki because he’s cooking up something. Bad ass, you know? But I do feel like he’s a sort of person who never sleeps. His brain never stops working. And he’s always cooking up something. You’re never quite sure if you can trust him and….what was the question again?

Well, like were there certain…

Hiddleston: Yeah, facial expressions. Certainly there’s this fantastic shot of me on the throne where it’s like straight out of that sort of iconic image where he’s got the staff and he’s slouching in it. He’s like, got a problem with that? You know? But yeah, I guess as an actor I start from the inside out. Like the costume is enormously helpful but I always think like what makes him tick? What is human about this character? I don’t want to play a cipher. I look at someone who is damaged, broken, alone, isolated from his family, doesn’t feel like he belongs, someone who’s been lost, abandoned. And there are physiological tropes for those things, you know? And you see the lost and damaged and abandoned children of our world. It’s no accident that they grow up to be… to fill our prisons, you know? And that’s kind of who Loki is. He’s just really clever, you know? So he’s good at hiding his own intents I think. So I think the process of living through those emotions or feeling so angry with people because they don’t trust him. And feeling angry with Thor because he gets everything. He’s the favourite son. I think just the process of living inside that anger, that rage, that hurt every day creates an intensity on my face which I’m not aware of. So it’s not like I’m creating expressions but absolutely there’s a kind of a raw intensity that Ken said from the word go he said I want to see you every day with a layer of skin peeled away. I want to see that ticker tape machine inside your head like working at 1,000 miles per minute. Yeah, it’s great man!

MY TWO CENTS

I love to read Tom Hiddleston’s interviews because they’re always filled with extra information, which are often based on bits that didn’t make into the final cut but are still part of the canon or give an insight on the characters’ minds.

Like how he says ‘Thor and Loki are a 2-man team and they’re both going to run Asgard when Odin steps down’ because in the old script it was implied that, although Thor would be king, Loki would be his right hand man, giving him consueling.

On the differences between Thor and Loki’s fighting styles and how Loki is still dangerous. People might not get it from the movie, assuming Thor is the one with the fighting ability but here it turns out Loki too has his strenght, although it lays in different things, like speed.

Or how he remarks about Loki’s loneliness and sense of isolation, who feels rejected and that’s why he bites back, someone who’s really smart.

It’s all things that I love to hear about a character and that show a good care in creating him.

Of course through the interview he also say things that are more technical, related to how he got hired or how he found difficult to wear Loki's horns and so on and this too is very intriguing but what always win me are informations about the characters, their mind, their world. And he always share some of them in all his interviews.

#thor #loki odinson #loki #tom hiddleston #interview #mcu thor #9 worlds interview study

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April 3, 2021: Duck Soup (Review)

I think I’m a Marx Brothers fan now?

I really liked this movie. I really did, and it’s genuinely one of my favorite comedies so far this month...even if I don’t think it’s as good as the other two. A paradox, I’m aware. But, to treat this like the others, let’s see what happened to the Marx Brothers after this film.

Unlike Chaplin and Keaton, I won’t be going as in detail about these guys individually. They were successful throughout the 1940s, partnered with UA (unsurprisingly), and each eventually split off on their separate ways. Zeppo was first in 1933, right after Duck Soup, as he really wasn’t as featured as the rest of them. He and Gummo Marx went into business together, making a gigantic talent agency. Both were also engineers later in life, with Gummo making raincoats, and Zeppo making plane parts!

The remaining three persisted, then also eventually went their separate ways. Chico got WAY into gambling, racking up a fuckton of debt in the process, but he also starting a big band act. Harpo continued to perform on screen and stage for the rest of his life. And Groucho...well, Groucho never really stopped. Television appearances and film appearances persisted well into the ‘50s and ‘60s, until Groucho stepped away...for a bit, anyway.

And then, well...Chico dies on October 11, 1961, of severe arteriosclerosis, and at the age of 74. This broke all of the brothers (and their sister), especially Groucho. Three years later, shortly after an appearance on stage in September 1964, Harpo died of heart failure. Again, this broke Groucho, and the remaining three brothers. The only one of the brothers left to perform now was Groucho, so let’s look at him a little more, shall we?

Groucho, with his iconic eyebrows and greasepaint mustache, was BY FAR the most famous of the brothers. He was married three times, all of which ended in divorce. With the last one, he was 40 years his wife’s senior. WOW. OK. He had three children, two of whom had children of their own. And by the time of his last divorce, Groucho was 79 years old, and was a Hollywood and television legend (due to his appearances as host of the show You Bet Your Life in the 1940s and ‘50s). Also, fun fact, dude LITERALLY danced on Hitler’s grave! HA! NICE!

He continued making appearances in the ‘70s, which may have been the result of his agent Erin Fleming, who maaaaaaaay have pushed the elderly actor too hard. This is also considering the increasingly senility that Marx was experiencing, being in his 80s at this point. Eventually, she was fired, and Marx began to settle into his old age. He was given an honorary Academy Award in 1974, and given a standing ovation. This is the last time that he would appear publicly in such a major setting. Gummo died in April of 1977, and Groucho followed soon afterwards, passing away on August 19, 1977, at the age of 86.

Zeppo, the youngest of the brothers, would pass away in November of 1979 at the age of 78, of lung cancer, and was the last of the Marx Brothers alive. And so goes one of the greatest families in film history. Hot damn. I really should watch more of their films.

But let’s FINALLY talk about this picture! What exactly did I think, after all that? Check here for the Recap, and read on for the Review!

Review

Cast and Acting: 9/10

MAN, the Marx Bros are great! Like, holy shit! Zeppo, sadly, doesn’t really get a chance to truly shine, which was something that haunted his career with his brothers (and eventually led him to leave the group altogether). Harpo and Chico are both REALLY good here, playing off each other and playing to their strengths individually. Seriously, they’re great...but nobody here is as good as Groucho Marx. Like, dear Lord, Groucho is fantastic in this movie. Sure, a lot of that is in the writing and jokes, but the DELIVERY of those jokes! Hot damn! So, why the 9? Well...everybody else. Sorry, Margaret Dumont and Louis Calhern are just in a different film entirely. In fact...they’re actually not in a film, but in a play. Yeah, Dumont especially is acting for the stage, rather than for a film audience. And...eh. It’s not terrible, but it definitely shows. Still, the Marx Brothers more than make up for any flaws there.

Plot and Writing: 9/10

I thought the Marx Bros. wrote this movie, but no! Instead, it’s Bert Kalmar, Harry Ruby, Arthur Sheekman, and Nat Perrin. Kalmar and Ruby were a songwriting duo, who had been working with the Marx Bros. on stage for years before they’d been in film. Sheekman was their writer for a few of these stage productions as well, and Nat Perrin was a film screenwriter, who would eventually move on to producing and writing...the original Addams Family TV series? DAMN! All four men were friends to the Marx Bros. throughout their lives, and they injected their flair into this film. So, why the 9? The jokes are absolutely fantastic, for sure...but the ending is a little abrupt for me, and hindered by the random-ass musical number near the end. Nitpicking, in other words. It’s still fantastic.

Directing and Cinematography: 9/10

Hey, Leo McCarey, how’s it been? I think you did a pretty good job with this one, although I’m not going to claim that it’s my favorite. I do think An Affair to Remember was a little better than this, direction-wise. But Henry Sharp, your cinematography is goddamn SOLID in this movie, real talk. Still, good job to you both!

Production and Art Design: 9/10

And yeah, this film does look great. Despite not being based off of a stage production, it certainly feels like I’m watching I professionally produced play. The budget for this one must’ve been high, because the costuming and sets are pretty well-constructed all around. Not The General or The Gold Rush good, but still great.

Music and Editing: 9/10

And finally, the music. Done by the afore-mentioned Bert Kalmary and Harry Ruby, this music is...mostly pretty great. The opening song is a little off for me, and I’m not a massive fan of the random ending number, but the songs are still well-made and performed. Seriously, I don’t have any real complaints about it all, even though I would put in in my playlist or anything. And LeRoy Stone’s editing is also pretty solid, while we’re at it.

For you, Marx Bros., I grant a 90%!

This movie is a hell of a lot of fun, and a great introduction to the Marx Bros. I really need to watch Animals Crackers and A Night at the Opera, now. I love it, seriously.

But now that we’re into talkies, I think it’s time to revisit somebody from the past, attempting to break into this new era. I could go for a Laurel and Hardy film, or the Three Stooges, or even Abbott and Costello (yeah, forgot to mention them in the Recap Intro, sorry), but...no. No, we need to move on into the realm of talkies, and also close out this early era with an old friend...who isn’t doing great right now.

April 4, 2021: The Great Dictator, dir. Charlie Chaplin

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