by Dean | Aug 6, 2012 | General
Pirates–i.e., evildoers–are sanitized and trivialized in the clay-animation feature, The Pirates! Band of Misfits (2012), and there is a conspicuously silly plot, but a lot of good jokes crop up as well. Even something weird will occur now and then, as witness the presence of Jane Austen and the Elephant Man (the year is 1837). Also, surprise, there is no love interest.
A product of Britain’s Aardman Animations, Pirates! is a rowdy family film proffering the voices of Hugh Grant, Imelda Staunton, and Salma Hayek. Miss Staunton “plays” a mean Queen Victoria, who looks like a fat Helena Bonham Carter.
Film poster for The Pirates! - Courtesy of Columbia Pictures (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Jul 30, 2012 | General
In Revanche (2009), from Austria, an ex-con named Alex (Johannes Krisch) works for a scurvy pimp and is secretly in love, and in a sexual relationship, with one of the pimp’s prostitutes, Tamara (Irina Potapenko). Both wish to get away from the pimp and raise enough money to pay the drug-addicted Tamara’s debts, so Alex devises a plan. He’ll rob a bank for some short-term cash, the two will flee Vienna for Ibiza where Alex has a chance of co-owning a bar. During the execution of the plan, however, Tamara gets killed by a policeman, Robert (Andreas Lust), who is thereafter obsessed with what he’s done. He doesn’t know exactly how the killing took place and his inner turmoil affects both his work and his marriage to Susanne (Ursula Strauss). To Alex the shooting was murder (he’s wrong) and he doesn’t want Robert to go on living. Early in the film, the pimp asserts that Alex believes he’s a tough guy but really isn’t. While living with his grandfather in a rural area, where coincidentally Robert and Susanne also live, will Alex turn into a tough guy and avenge himself by killing the policeman?
Even viewing it on DVD, I can see that Gotz Spielmann’s film, which never played in Tulsa, is a terrific work of art.
The effect of being deprived of a lover and thereafter alone is staggering. The scenes of city life in Vienna and then of doings in the countryside are equally compelling. Except for Alex’s grandfather, the people in Revanche are incomplete, stunted, because of the lure of ill-gotten gain, because of drug addiction, because of childlessness (in the case of Robert and Susanne). They face their own failure: Alex himself gets Tamara killed, Robert wishes he hadn’t killed her. Indeed, if the policeman did anything truly wrong, he eventually receives a comeuppance by being cuckolded. He is a pitiable man, and so, in a way, is Alex.
The film is Austrian, the title is French. “Revanche” is “revenge” in French. Spielmann may have given it this title because in France romantic notions about revenge, as about so many other things, were generated over the years. Even revenge against a policeman in the twentieth century–in French Algeria, perhaps?–could be considered as legitimate as revenge against the royal family during the Revolution. Yet Spielmann, I think, rejects such romanticism for his Austrian milieu. It never arises.
(This is a foreign film with English subtitles.)
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by Dean | Jul 26, 2012 | General
Anyone who’s a music lover should check out the Russian composer Sergei Prokofiev’s Violin Concerto No. 1 in D Major.
It’s an outstanding composition whose first movement gets feverish as well as lightheartedly lovely, whose second movement is strikingly jaunty, and whose third movement is poignant and highly melodic. It may be the best thing Prokofiev ever wrote.
For pared-down strings, I recommend Leos Janacek’s String Quartet No. 1 (inspired by the Tolstoy story, “The Kreutzer Sonata”)–just as rich and accessible as the Prokofiev piece.
English: Sergei Prokofiev playing his 3d Piano Concerto with the Orchestre Symphonique de Brussel under Désiré Defauw pencil on paper 22.8 x 16.9 cm signed l.l.: HW signed by performer l.r.: Serge Prokofieff February 1936 Palais de Beaux-Arts, Brussel (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Jul 23, 2012 | General
The first half of the new version of Spider-Man—The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)–is quite captivating and even disturbing as it tells of Peter Parker’s becoming the titular hero and his fighting the Big Mutant. But the second half is clunky and somewhat boring. Why, I have to ask, is Gwen Stacy’s policeman father such a fool? He obviously thinks he can take on the Big Mutant without Spider-Man’s help. (He can’t.)
Andrew Garfield is fine as Spider-Man. So is Emma Stone as Gwen, and although the role is underwritten, Gwen is plainly both a strong female and a romantic. In a pleasing scene, Peter Parker hesitantly begins to tell the girl about the astonishing spider bite he recently received. “I’ve been bitten,” he murmurs. “So have I,” Gwen replies, looking softly at Peter.
But a lot of not-so-pleasing stuff is here too. I actually consider Sam Raimi’s Spider-Man (2002), insipid as it occasionally is, a somewhat better entertainment.
The Amazing Spider-Man #121: "The Night Gwen Stacy Died". Cover art by John Romita Sr. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
by Dean | Jul 16, 2012 | General
I have no use for Oliver Stone’s wrongheaded movies, and not surprisingly his latest, Savages (2012), is more interesting than truly good. It is very interesting, though, in my view; an intriguing drug-cartel drama. For the most part it is poorly written–forget the film’s dumb suggestion that there are “beautiful savages” here–but it’s dramatically sobering and visually seductive nonetheless. Or at least it’s visually seductive when it avoids Stone’s filmic pretentiousness; it is Don Mindel’s fine cinematography with its seaside colors that gives the movie its look.
Histrionically Benicio Del Toro (as a drug-trade bully), Salma Hayek (as the Baja cartel leader) and John Travolta (as a corrupt cop) carry the film. Taylor Kitsch and Blake Lively do not. Travolta gives it all he’s got, with acting that’s tough-fibered and unself-conscious. Hayek is pleasantly solemn.
David Thomson, on the Internet, is right: Savages is trashy, and not because Kitsch bares his bottom. It’s quite a sensationalistic stew. Even so, Thomson accepts the film and so do I. Reluctantly.
Taylor Kitsch (Photo credit: Eva Rinaldi Celebrity and Live Music Photographer)
by Dean | Jul 11, 2012 | General
1963’s Seduced and Abandoned, which received a Big Apple showing in 2007, was said by someone at New York magazine to make Judd Apatow’s film, Knocked Up, look tame by comparison. That it does, and like Knocked Up, Pietro Germi’s Italian gem concerns a non-slutty female who gets pregnant outside marriage.
An adroit Stefania Sandrella stars as Agnese, the seduced and abandoned one, a Sicilian girl of 16 defiled by her sister’s fiance, Peppino (Aldo Puglisi). It’s statutory rape, even though Agnese’s father, Don Vincenzo Ascalone (an outstanding Saro Urzi) gets furious with both Peppino and Agnese. As puny as a worm, Peppino refuses to marry the violated girl because now she is no longer a virgin! It’s a matter of honor.
Acridly, hilariously satirical, Seduced exposes Honor pursued and safeguarded in the face of, and regardless of, utter hypocrisy. Superficiality prevails, while that which is DIShonorable keeps coming to the fore (Peppino’s finally agreeing to marry Agnese just to stay out of jail, Don Vincenzo’s plan to murder Peppino). What Germi’s movie displays is a healthy old-style liberalism, albeit one with a limited but genuine respect for such institutions as the Catholic church and the judicial system. No love for anarchy here. It’s just a daring dark comedy, one of the finest I’ve seen.
(The film is in Italian with English subtitles.)
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