The Contenders:
Laurence Olivier: Hamlet (winner)
Lew Ayres: Johnny Belinda
Montgomery Clift: The Search
Clifton Webb: Sitting Pretty
Dan Dailey: When My Baby Smiles at Me
Monday, March 11, 2019
Friday, March 8, 2019
Thursday, March 7, 2019
Style over Substance
Film: Fellini’s Casanova
Format: DVD from Quincy Illinois Veterans Home Library OCLC Interlibrary Loan on The New Portable.
Format: DVD from Quincy Illinois Veterans Home Library OCLC Interlibrary Loan on The New Portable.
Years ago, when I was working on a BA in English, my brother sent me something about how to be a really good English major. It was a joke, of course, a piece of satire that naturally included a great deal of truth. One element of it was that you should pick a particular author and hate all of that author’s work. I suppose the film equivalent of that is to pick a director that is widely acclaimed and hate all or most of that director’s output. For me, that director is Federico Fellini. I know he is lauded and well-loved, but I find virtually all of his work completely self-indulgent and navel-gazing. I didn’t have a great deal of hope that Fellini’s Casanova would be any different.
And…it’s not. Fellini’s Casanova is a riot of mise-en-scene and enormous, elaborate costumes desperately in search of being something more than just a series of events connected by a single character. I know that there are people who like this stuff. I know that Fellini has people who adore his work. I’ll I see, though, is a whole lot of style and virtually no substance.
Wednesday, March 6, 2019
Wednesday Horror: In the Mouth of Madness
Film: In the Mouth of Madness
Format: DVD from River Valley Public Library through OCLC WorldCat on The New Portable.
Format: DVD from River Valley Public Library through OCLC WorldCat on The New Portable.
I didn’t realize until In the Mouth of Madness started that it starred Sam Neill. It’s at this point that I consciously realized that Sam Neill has been in some freaky shit. He was in Possession, which is a serious head trip and he was in Event Horizon, which never gets the love it deserves. And he was in In the Mouth of Madness, which also goes by John Carpenter’s In the Mouth of Madness if you were wondering who directed and scored it.
There is a loose connection to the work of H.P. Lovecraft here, much more tangential than full-on homage. There’s a sort of feel to the story and the location that knock on Lovecraft’s door. It’s probably a good thing that this doesn’t really go any further because there aren’t a lot of directors who could come close to producing something that would work for Lovecraft. The only one I can think of off the top of my head is Guillermo del Toro, although Carpenter moved in that direction with The Thing. Still, I’m not entirely sure that Lovecraft really translates to film well, so “inspired by” is probably more than enough.
Monday, March 4, 2019
Sunday, March 3, 2019
Off Script: The Mothman Prophecies
Film: The Mothman Prophecies
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop.
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Founders Memorial Library on laptop.
I always, or at least often, appreciate it when a horror movie really attempts to do a lot with its atmosphere. The Mothman Prophecies is entirely about the atmosphere. The entire movie is really a long series of events that are all designed to get the audience to buy into a feeling that something going on in the world is just slightly off. There’s no gore here and no real jump scares. Instead, what we get is a slowly building sense of dread. It’s done pretty well, and I’m always happy when that works.
Washington Post reporter John Klein (Richard Gere) and his wife Mary (Debra Messing) make an offer to purchase a house. On the drive afterward, Mary sees a huge apparition and their car skids off the road. John is fine, but Mary ends up in the hospital. A few tests later and she’s been diagnosed with glioblastoma, and she succumbs to it soon after, leaving John alone.
Friday, March 1, 2019
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