Author: Jandy Page 44 of 145

The Story of Film on TCM: Chapter 8

On October 28, 2013

Film wasn’t just a window through which you saw characters and stories, it was a language and a way of thinking in itself.

Just about every episode, I’ve lamented that Cousins had to rush through some things or wished that there had been a whole episode devoted to something he covered well, but briefly. Holy cannoli, this one is the ultimate example of that, at least so far. In the introductory interview, Robert Osborne asked him how you cut this topic down to an hour and still get everything in. Short answer: you don’t. Turns out Cousins’ original cut of this episode was three hours long. I bet even that was pretty hectic. As it stands, this episode is one of the least satisfying so far, simply because you barely get acclimated to each new place/filmmaker/situation before he jets off to the next one. It’s simply information overload, and almost none of it sticks. I will concede that perhaps some of it is my own ignorance of a lot of the cinema covered here – I can’t fill in the gaps mentally like I’ve been able to in some of the earlier chapters.

After covering the French New Wave and the spread of new wave thinking into Italy last episode, Cousins shows how new waves spread across the world in this one, starting with Eastern Europe. Behind the Iron Curtain, film industries were closely monitored, and making the kind of personal films that the French New Wave advocated was in itself a political statement – many Eastern Bloc filmmakers faced political persecution for their films, which were seen as radical.

Watch This: Mickey Mouse in Ghoul Friend

By Jandy

On October 22, 2013

In Film

Disney has been producing new Mickey Mouse cartoons for a while now, but I first really became aware of them when I happened to catch one playing at the Disney Store and was like, what is this, it’s awesome! Because they are awesome. I’ve been pretty vocal in the past about how little I like the things that Warner Brothers has tried to do with Looney Tunes in recent years, but for some reason, I have absolutely no problem with the way Disney has brought Mickey into contemporary cartoons. For one thing, they aren’t using gimmicks like 3D, they aren’t trying to fit the characters into a sitcom format, and most importantly, they’ve got a distinctive but classic-looking style to them.

Here’s this month’s short, appropriately Halloween-themed with a zombie Goofy. I’ve embedded the playlist below – check out the others as well, because this one isn’t even my favorite (that might be “Bad Ear Day,” which uses sound really cleverly or “Croissant de Triomphe,” which was the one I saw at the Disney Store and immediately grabbed me with its Parisian setting and stylish backgrounds).

The Story of Film on TCM: Chapter 7

By Jandy

On October 21, 2013

In Film

Cinema didn’t tell the story, it was the story.

Two episodes back I said how much I enjoyed the 1940s episode, especially since I love film noir so much. Well, my second favorite movement or faux genre might just be the French New Wave, so I’m definitely biased to enjoy Chapter 7 as well. If the 1950s were a cinematic pressure cooker bursting at the seams, constrained by the studio system and the mores of the time, then the ’60s were the explosion. The world had been in upheaval in the ’50s, but it became even more tumultuous in the ’60s, with the rise of the Berlin Wall, the Cold War, increasing nuclear fears, the hippie generation, free love, revolution, etc. Times were changing, and cinema, somewhat conservative in the ’50s, was now ready to change with them.

Before getting to the New Wave itself, though, Cousins looks at some of the highly individual directors who laid the groundwork for the more personal cinema that the New Wave celebrated. We’re in well-worn cinephile territory here (and really throughout this episode), with Ingmar Bergman, Robert Bresson, Jacques Tati, and Federico Fellini, but Cousins still manages to bring out insights into their films and relation to the larger Story of Film that I hadn’t really noticed. These are all directors who started their careers in the 1950s or earlier and thus were an inspiration to New Wave filmmakers, even as they continued their own careers throughout the 1960s and beyond.

Stream It!: Wrong

By Jandy

On October 18, 2013

In Film

There’s a lot of good streaming media out there these days, if you know where to look for it – Netflix is still a major player, but as they move more and more toward TV shows, others are taking up the slack. These Stream It! columns may pull from any of the major streaming services, and will be sporadically produced as I have time and feel called. Films often expire from these services, so if you’re reading this from the future, the films I highlight may no longer be available.

New on Netflix: Wrong

Quentin Dupieux’s Wrong is as delicious a dry humor absurdist comedy as you could wish for. It ended up in my Top Ten for 2012, and here’s my capsule review from when I saw it at 2012’s AFI Film Festival.

I was a pretty big fan of Quentin Dupieuxâ€™s previous film Rubber, and I may have loved Wrong even more, with its full-blown absurdity bolstered by an ever-so-slightly more substantial story. Dolph Springer wakes up one morning to find his beloved dog missing, an event that sends his already spiraling life even more out of control. Other things heâ€™s dealing with: his workplace is constantly raining (yes, inside the office), his coworkers seem very intent that he doesnâ€™t belong there, his neighbor and seemingly only friend leaves suddenly on a driving trip to find himself or something, the girl at the pizza place seems to have developed an obsession with him, and whatâ€™s more, the palm tree in his backyard has mysteriously turned into a pine tree. â€œThere shouldnâ€™t be a pine tree here. It doesnâ€™t make sense.â€ No, it doesnâ€™t, and neither does anything else in the film â€“ except, as true absurdity should, it sort of does, right down to the eventually-revealed reason for the dogâ€™s disappearance. Everything in the film is wrong, from obvious things like it raining indoors and trees randomly changing types to the ways people interact with each other. Itâ€™s a perfect storm of the awkward and nonsensical, and thanks to the deadpan script and actorsâ€™ perfect timing throughout, itâ€™s absolutely hilarious even as you feel bad for these people who canâ€™t quite manage to get along in any way that even resembles normalcy. Itâ€™s definitely getting my vote for funniest film Iâ€™ve seen this year, and I think itâ€™s safe to say that Dupieux is perfectly tapped into my sense of humor.

Double Feature: Being John Malkovich

Both films treat absurdity with a matter-of-factness that I find simply delightful. In Wrong, as mentioned above, it’s raining in Dolph’s office. In Being John Malkovich, John Cusack’s office is on a half-floor, and everyone has to crouch to be there. Crouching around, he notices a mytserious door and goes through it, finding himself temporarily in the head of John Malkovich, a discovery he decides he can profit on by selling it as a weird sort of tourism. Both films carry out their premises to ridiculous conclusions, and they’d make a great double feature.

The Story of Film on TCM: Chapter 6

By Jandy

On October 11, 2013

In Film

In popular American nostalgia the 1950s have a squeaky clean reputation – according to our collective memory, it was a time of white picket fences, domesticity, cohesive family units, and the American Dream coming to fruition. Just looking at the movies of the 1950s disproves that notion, as we instead see sexual desire, teenage rebellion, and discontent seething below the seemingly perfect exterior, ready to burst through the seams at the slightest provocation. Meanwhile, cinema was truly going global in the 1950s. Prior to this, the United States and Europe dominated, with some side notes of interest in Japan and China, but in this chapter Cousins highlights notable films from Egypt, India, Brazil and Mexico as well – new national cinemas bursting through the seams onto the world stage.

The world was undergoing great social change in the 1950s – in America, we had the invention of the “teenager” as a social construct and the development of rock and roll, while in Africa and around the world decolonization was creating new nations intent on forging a national identity and with it, a national cinema. What ties these together for Cousins is their shared use of a form of cinema that’s also bursting at the seams – the melodrama. The melodrama has kind of a negative reputation as being overwrought and emotional, but as Cousins will show, there are a ton of great melodramas, and melodrama as a form encapsulates the kind of repressed emotion just waiting to bust out that characterized the 1950s. Cousins calls the melodrama a “pressure cooker of pent-up emotions” and finds them dotting the globe at this point in film history.