by Dean | Apr 28, 2016 | General
Cover of Excalibur
A man of limited taste, director of Deliverance and Hope and Glory, John Boorman released in 1981 a King Arthur movie, Excalibur. Much of the acting, when it isn’t indifferent (Helen Mirren as Morgana, Paul Geoffrey as Perceval), is loud and showy (Nigel Terry as Arthur). Withal, the film is cheap and exaggerated, with second-rate music.
The scenery is ravishing, however, and there are delicious medieval-fantasy costumes and set design. As well, Excalibur can be intriguing: Nicol Williamson plays Merlin, an amazing magician in Christian England, a man whose day is passing along with the old gods (or simply the dark arts?) But I wish Boorman’s film had something to say; frankly I would rather see Robert Bresson’s Lancelot du Lac, weak as it is.
by Dean | Apr 26, 2016 | General
Cover of Stoner (New York Review Books Classics)
The novel Stoner (1965), by John Williams, chronicles the life of William Stoner, a farm boy sent to college where he falls in love with literature before becoming an adept English professor. This is in the early part of the 20th century, during which Stoner does not enlist to fight in the First World War. Drawn to a woman named Edith, he courts and marries her—one of the worst wives in American literature, and not much of a mother either. The couple have a fragile daughter, Grace. Gradually Stoner enters an affair with an attractive student, but is also deprived of it before long. The passage in which he learns of the student’s feelings for him is superbly written.
An unfortunate fact in Stoner is that an academic career is used to support such sordid realities as Stoner’s ugly marriage and the abetment of a deplorable grad student protected by a vindictive colleague. Human meanness encircles the scholar, although when Grace mentions that things have not been easy for him, he admits, “I suppose I didn’t want them to be.” He says this before he dies of cancer, a disease which merely becomes Stoner’s last enemy, as Edith and the vindictive colleague are his enemies. But none of these enemies does he hate. They create conditions to which he becomes resigned. Over and above, the novel implies that if a man can be resigned to (non-lethal) human enemies, he can be resigned to inevitable death.
The book’s description of the moments before this death is memorable, set forth in what has been considered a lost classic.
by Dean | Apr 24, 2016 | General
I don’t know why Disney keeps remaking The Jungle Book, but at least the current version is a visual dreadnought a lot like a hard-to-forget theme park ride. It’s fun and for the family, albeit some of the animals this time are genuine monsters. King Louie the villainous ape is huge, Kaa is the most stupendous snake you’ve ever seen, and even Shere Khan is not your average-looking ferocious tiger. These are CGI creations for one wickedly scary jungle.
Directed by Jon Favreau.
by Dean | Apr 20, 2016 | General
The recent Saturday Night Live skit satirizing Christians who resist honoring same-sex marriage with wedding cakes, wedding planning, floral arrangements, etc. also poked fun at gay couples.
Even so, with the Christian baker’s announcement to the law firm, “I want to deny basic goods and services to gay people,” we discover that the skit can be accurately described as just more SNL bullshit. No such denial is what Christians are after. . . Describe the skit also as less than clever and you’d be right.
by Dean | Apr 19, 2016 | General
I no longer care much for Citizen Kane, because of the screenplay. I actually like Aaron Sorkin‘s screenplay for Steve Jobs (2015), in which Steve Jobs is the Citizen Kane of the 80s and 90s, better, for all the factual nonsense there is supposed to be. Sorkin’s Steve is an egotist and a blabbermouth (to me, laughable) as well as a profoundly reluctant—unwilling—father, grippingly played by Michael Fassbinder. It’s a wonder the film ends on a heartening note.
The direction by Danny Boyle is fanciful but clear-eyed. Additional bravura acting emanates from Kate Winslet, Michael Stuhlberg and Katherine Waterston.
by Dean | Apr 17, 2016 | General
Wanda (film) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Wanda (1971)—written, directed and acted in by Barbara Loden—is one of the truly good American films of the Seventies.
The newly unemployed, soon-to-be-divorced Wanda (Loden) ignorantly takes up with a robber (Michael Higgins) who is unstable and tyrannical. Theirs is a pathetic (occasionally funny) relationship, but Wanda never has to assist the robber in his stealing until he finally insists on it apropos of a bank.
The cannily written film has to do with what the lives of working-class people—Wanda, not the robber—sometimes become, and with the slow, harmful creep of irresponsibility. The movie concludes with a freeze-frame shot of Wanda sitting in a tavern and at a dead end, not enjoying the conviviality of the strangers who have invited her to drink with them. With her deep performance, Loden proves she understands the character she is playing; likewise with Higgins.
Loden, by the way, was married to Elia Kazan. One wishes she could have made at least one more film before she came down with a fatal cancer in 1978.
