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Joe Vitus

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 1:48 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 14498 Location: Houston

It's a sign of how little impact Roberts makes on me that I completely forgot she was in Closer.

I still plan to see Erin Brockovich.

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mo_flixx

Posted: Wed Feb 15, 2006 4:21 pm

Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 12533

dlhavard wrote:

She was very very good in Steel Magnolias. That was when I first noticed her.

She first drew notices in MYSTIC PIZZA. But the CRIME STORY appearance precedes that. That is why I considered this DVD such an esoteric find.

She blows the performances in MYSTIC PIZZA and STEEL MAGNOLIAS right off the map.

Also, it helps that this was probably one of CRIME STORY's very best scripts. The storyline (step-parent incest) remains remarkably relevant today.

Ghulam

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 1:52 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4742 Location: Upstate NY

Robert Bresson's Pickpocket (1959) is loosely derived from Dostoyevski's "Crime and Punishment". Bresson's usual style, often frustrating for viewers, of avoiding any psychological explanations, leaving key climactic scenes to the viewers' imagination, and having only new actors who recite their lines without any semblance to what we know as "acting", is again very much in evidence here. The protagonist is completely absorbed in his game of winning at his criminal art with total exclusion of emotional contact with those around him, including his mother and a young woman who befriends him, "imprisoned" in his circumscribed world, until he is improsoned in a real prison, at which point he discovers true love. Truly a remarkable film.

Nancy

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 6:00 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 4607 Location: Norman, OK

That does sound interesting, Ghulam.

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"All in all, it's just another feather in the fan."

Isaacism, 2009

mo_flixx

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 7:09 pm

Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 12533

Just checked Julia Roberts' early credits at the imdb.com because I was so impressed by her performance as the sexually abused teen in that CRIME STORY episode ('87). It turns out that that is her very FIRST credited role! And she nailed it!

(The only prior role was an uncredited one.)

Later come "Mystic Pizza" (1988) & "Steel Magnolias" (1989).

billyweeds

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 8:40 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

mo_flixx wrote:

mo--Where do I get a copy of that Crime Story? Is it on DVD?

billyweeds

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 8:43 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

mo--Never mind. I found out.

billyweeds

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 8:47 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

The fifth disc of Season One is now in my netflix queue.

mo_flixx

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 8:54 pm

Joined: 30 May 2004 Posts: 12533

billyweeds wrote:

The fifth disc of Season One is now in my netflix queue.

According to the imdb.com, the episode is #19. "The Survivor," from the first season. The date is 2/13/87.

There are a total of 22 episodes from Season One (I'm not sure how they count the pilot in there).

Last edited by mo_flixx on Thu Feb 16, 2006 9:00 pm; edited 1 time in total

billyweeds

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 8:55 pm

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

mo_flixx wrote:

billyweeds wrote:

The fifth disc of Season One is now in my netflix queue.

billy -
you want to view the next to last disc of Season One. The discs seem to be numbered in a weird way because Disc 1 was the Pilot. Just make sure it's the _next to the last_ disc.

There are a total of 5 discs from the first season.

I will check the imdb.com right now...because there is a complete list with cast for both seasons. That way I can find out the TITLE of the episode for you.

It's called "The Survivor" and netflix says it's on the last (i.e., fifth) disc.

Syd

Posted: Thu Feb 16, 2006 9:01 pm

Site Admin Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 12944 Location: Norman, Oklahoma

I finally watched Grizzly Man yesterday (from the Discovery Channel presentation, which had a lot of commercials and bleeps). It really is fascinating. I found Herzog's commentary on Treadwell's footage from a filmmaker's point of view to be very interesting, including some very nice accidental footage. The last twenty minutes or so was commentary on controversies from the original film, most of which struck me as very minor. The most important one to me was whether the bears were in as much danger of poaching as Treadwell thought. Herzog and the Park Service thought not, the Grizzly advocates thought yes, and the different points of view seem partially due to when the film was made: apparently there was no poaching when Treadwell was living with the bears (which argues that perhaps he was right when he said he was protecting the bears), but there was the year after his death. The controversy may come from when Herzog made his film. There's an argument that Treadwell did more to damage the bears than he did to help. Certainly, he didn't help the bear that killed him much except to provide nutrition.

Herzog has an entirely different view of Nature than Treadwell did. To Herzog, Nature is chaotic and cruel and the bear that killed Treadwell is a blank-eyed killing machine. However, some of the animals, particularly the foxes, do seem to relate to Treadwell, and the bear that killed him was not one of the ones he had lived with for thirteen years. The tension between their two worldviews is one of the things that makes the film so compelling. Well, that, and the knowledge that Treadwell and his girlfriend will be eaten by a bear.

This, incredibly, is my first experience with Herzog, and I'm very impressed with his work here. I didn't find Treadwell as annoying as I thought I would, although it was clear he was more than a little nuts. This is more apparent in the second half of the film. In the first half, he seems more heedless and eccentric.

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jeremy

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:37 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

Part II of Jeremy’s chronological stroll through 70 years of Disney full length feature cartoons. As you can see, by the amount of space given over to each film, I began to warm to my task, which I would offer in mitigation for having missed my deadline by a week. In writing this, I was surprised to discover that with the exception of the recently released Chicken Little, I had seen all of these films, though sometimes it was a struggle to summon up long dormant recollections of them and feelings about them.

Please forgive me for occasionally digressing into the realms of the sociological and psychological, when I’m not really equipped to do so. What I need is good copy editor. For those of you who’ve forgotten, we left off at Cinderella. Next up was,

Alice in Wonderland (1951)

I’m not particularly literate, but even I can detect that Alice In Wonderland is a complex and layered book. Ostensibly, a charming book, full of poetry, about the adventures of a little girl in the eponymous Wonderland, it can also be read as a satire of Victorian manners and mores, an exploration of innocence and the sublimation of Lewis Carol’s own paedophilia. It is not really a children’s book.

Deliberate or oblivious, Disney seems to have adapted the Carol’s masterpiece mainly for the scope it gave his animators to explore the fantastic. With little plot and stripped of meaning, Alice In Wonderland is largely reduced to a series of set pieces. Many of them, especially where they stick closely to the original text, work brilliantly. The Lobster Quadrille, The Mad Hatters Tea Party and the croquet match with the Red Queen are inventive and funny. I particularly liked the reading of The Carpenter And The Walrus (a classic piece of nonsense). For all the accusations of schmaltz, Disney pushed boundaries. Name another filmmaker who would devote five minutes of an seventy-five minute children’s film over to what is essentially poetry reading employing British regional accents.

In all these scenes the prim and conventional Alice is at the centre of a maelstrom of anarchy, the commonsense rules instilled in her by her elders don’t really help her navigate through the nonsense, but they do provide an anchor of sanity. In the absence of reason her certainties protect her from…from what? Carol’s Alice is an incarnation of innocence, yet there is a tension at the heart of this concept. In Britain and America, sex and innocence are often perceived as opposites, we know that eventually Alice will metamorphose into an object of desire. Perhaps for Carol she already was. In his Wonderland she was magically protected from the limitations of strength and size, from predation.

Disney has largely removed this ambivalence, but his golden-haired and blue frocked Alice remains a remarkable creation. The pencil drawn sketches that accompanied the original text were perhaps too crude to capture the popular imagination; allowing Disney not only to create the definitive image of Alice, but arguably the most iconic little girl in the world.

Other deviations from the original work were less successful. Given that he raided both Alice In Wonderland and Alice Through The Looking Glass for material, it seems incredible that Disney or his animators felt the need to indulge in some freeform riffing of their own. In particular, the scene where Alice gets lost in the forest goes overboard on the minimalist-jazzy-modern-abstract stylings (I’m sure there must be a one word term for it) and music of the period. I’m all for experimentation, but weak and most tedious it almost derails the whole film.

Disney was always at his best dealing with simple emotions and story lines. There was little dramatic tension or tangible emotion in Lewis Carol’s Alice In Wonderland to allow the Disney formula to work. Shorn of the books compensating depths and transgressive thrills, the film lacks of heart.

It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a commercial and critical flop. How it is viewed by the Disney corporation can be guessed by the fact that it was the first of their full length feature cartoons to be shown on television, and the only one that was not first released on video or DVD.

Peter Pan (1953)

Disney has always been fairly shameless when it comes to amending source material. They avoided using the appropriately named Grimm versions of the fairy tales and also felt the need to radically change the established endings of Sleeping Beauty, Beauty And The Beast and The Little Mermaid. Purists tend to round on Disney for this, but personally, I think the changes to Sleeping Beauty and Beauty And The Beast, if a little convenient, worked dramatically. The softening of the ending of The Little Mermaid was less justified, but perhaps also understandable. I will be happy to place a large wager the forthcoming cgi version of Rapunzel, tentatively entitled, Rapunzel Unbraided, is also markedly different from the established texts.

Perhaps my openly objection to Disney altering of traditional works is that the film and the merchandising that accompanies it tends to sweep all before it. For subsequent generations, The Disney adaptation becomes the established version. It can be quite hard to find a traditional, child friendly book of a fairy tale like Sleeping Beauty, say, without the prom queen features of a Disney princess beaming out from the cover. Disney’s adaptation of Peter Pan retained very little of J M Barrie’s original dialogue. However, in fairness it remains largely true to the structure and spirit of the play.

Are all children’s tales about the onset of adolescence? In this film we have Peter Pan and The Lost Boys who don’t want to grow up and Wendy (incidentally voiced by the same girl who voiced Disney’s Alice) who is on the verge of leaving the nursery for a life of corsets, arranged marriage and perennial child birth. It is interesting that in contrast to Wendy, Peter has an American accent. Was this Disney just being inclusive for an American audience? Like Alice In Wonderland, the prim, play by the rules feminine role is seen as European in contrast to the masculine and American rebel. It is the sensible Wendy who accepts and welcomes the inevitability of adolescence.

Of all the Disney films from the 1950’s in video collection, it is Peter Pan and Cinderella that got the most outings. Though, I suspect as far as my girls are concerned they, along with all but a few cherished soft toys, are destined for the charity shop. Peter Pan has adventure and Cinderella drama. Both films have a lightness and a sense of fun and are also chockfull of songs. Why did Disney only seem to manage to stumble on the right recipe about once every ten years or so.

The embarrassingly dated mermaid scene apart, if I was to raise a criticise of Peter Pan, it would be that Disney didn’t get the psychology quite right. They caught Peter Pan’s playfulness perfectly, but failed to show his vulnerability and loneliness. He comes across as a little mean-spirited. Boy’s are like that sometimes, but occasionally they also need their mummies. For me the 2003 film version came closest to getting it right.

Lady and the Tramp (1955)

I did not like Tramp. He was a bad influence, breaking the rules and getting that nice, well-brought up Lady into trouble. I couldn’t understand what she saw him in. She may have been a bitch, but he was certainly no gentleman. Was I jealous? Maybe, but more I think it was that Tramp offended my almost autistic need for order, a naïve conviction that irresponsible behaviour should not be rewarded. It took me a long time to realise that nice girls did not necessarily want a nice boy.

There may also be something of a cultural divide here. The self-image of the American male, laconic, but ingenious and anti-authoritarian standing in contrast to the verbally adroit, but unimaginative and conformist European counterpart. It stuck in my craw then and it…isn’t it strange how we intuitively feel things long before we understand the context or our capable of articulating our thoughts. Bugs Bunny used to get on my tits as well.

What’s that…the film…oh, you’ve seen it…a doggy romance with dramatic moments provided by a dog catcher and a cat loving aunt…a near show stopping musical number…it’s not bad as these things go.

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

What is Disney’s signature motif? Asked that question most would answer Mickey Mouse, which would also probably be the organisation’s official response. However, it is the fairy-tale and its attendant princesses, that are more representative of the organisation. Sleeping Beauty was Disney’s third fairy tale feature film and it was her mittel-European castle that dominates Disney’s American theme parks. It is not Mickey Mouse, but a fairy and castle that feature on the opening credits of every Disney film. And you know what you can do with your mouse ears and polka-dot mini-skirt, all the little girls want to be either Tinkerbell or the Belle of the ball.

Not written in stone, Disney’s genius was to take European folklore and mould it to the American dream, possibly perverting both, in the process. Like Snow White and Cinderella before her, Princess Aurora’s bildungsroman seemed to consist entirely of cooking and cleaning while waiting patiently for her breasts to grow and her prince to come. All are treated badly by envious women, two step mothers and a witch respecitively, before being rescued by a respectable man who is able to offer financial security.

The underlying sexual metaphors, Snow White her rosy red lips, Cinderella her tight slipper and Aurora a prick to the finger and an awakening kiss, are innate to stories, but, a demure kiss or two aside, all hint of a physical relationship has been expunged from the films. Disney made charming, antiseptic films fit for the American family. Give me the boy at seven and I’ll give you the man the Jesuits were reputed to claim. Well that’s exactly feminists feared for little girls in thrall to empty headed dolls, animated or plastic, Disney or Mattel.

In Sleeping Beauty in particular, the protagonists have been reduced to ciphers as flat as the animation. She’s beautiful, though unlike Snow white and Cinderella who are sweet girls on the cusp of womanhood, Princess Aurora with her flowing blonde locks, willowy figure and pointy breasts is really a budding Barbie, the precocious cheerleader all the jocks wanted to fuck.

She’s kind, as with all Disney heroines this signalled by her good natured stoicism and the trust animals show in her. And most of all she’s passive. She says little, spending half the film asleep and like Daphne in Scooby Doo her purpose seems to be to be rescued from peril. Her rescuer, Prince Philip, is steadfast and noble, as reflected by his white steed. There is no growth or warmth here, the characters qualities and motivations are innate and fixed. A view that perhaps reflected the cultural and political sterility of Eisenhower’s America.

Highly stylised, the animation looks cheap, but apparently wasn’t. Walt Disney spent the best part od the fifties making this film and the stylings of the three main settings in the film, the castle, the forest and Maleficent’s layer were inspired by carefully selected artworks. It is only the scenes with the evil fairy Maleficent that are infused with any drama. I remember as a boy being well impressed by her transformation into a fire breathing dragon and her fight with the noble steed. Though again, we are given no reason for her Malificent’s actions, we just have to accept her as evil incarnate. As far as I can remember the film has one song, the interminably dull, One Day My Prince Will Come. Better you go out and have some fun while your waiting sista.

Audiences recognised how flat Sleeping Beauty was. It lost about $6,000,000 at the box office and almost brought Disney to its knees.

One Hundred and One Dalmatians (1961)

Still very much a product of thefifties, this was the first film that was made using a technique called Xerography which reduced the amount of drawing and processing required to produce an animation. Unfortunately, it created a scratchy outline that was the norm for all Disney’s films until the release of The Rescuers in 1977. Perhaps, still staggering from the losses on Sleeping Beauty, budget constraints or a lack of ambition also seem to have impacted on the quality of the animation. And there were no musical numbers to speak of.

However, the film benefited from doing the basics well. It had a strong narrative drive, lots of tense moments, a few good jokes and one of film’s great villains, Cruella De Ville. It was a justifiable success.

The Sword in the Stone (1963)

Disney’s retelling of the legend of how the young Arthur became king was an uneven film with more downs than ups. A number of worthy set pieces, such as Merlin’s magical battle with the ‘Wonderful’ Madam Mim and two enjoyable songs were not enough to save it from the cheap looking animation, skimpy story arc and the unfortunate, jokey modern references.

The Jungle Book (1967)

As refreshing and free spirited as skinny dipping with a large bear in a jungle glade, the sixties finally arrived at the Disney studios.

I knew an Indian man who also delighted in The Jungle Book. Where we might be nervous of racial stereotyping or giving clumsy offence, he revelled in having a lead character, who with his brown skin, shock of unruly black hair and skinny, uncoordinated limbs was identifiably like him. Sometimes I wonder if our guilt at past sins invites and rewards the indignation of ethnic groups. We seem to have a symbiotic arrangement whereby in return for a seat at the table, they give us the flagellation we secretly crave.

Like its immediate predecessors, the animation for The Jungle Book was crude and flat, but the film made up for this with a strong story with a real sense of peril, a superb cast of characters and most importantly of all a string of great songs. Disney had long neglected musical numbers in his full length feature cartoons and, seemingly not realising how critical it was to the success of The Jungle Book, continued to do so in the films that followed. It wasn’t until the arrival of Michael Eisner and Jeffrey Katzenberg fifteen or so years later that their importance was realised and siezed upon.

Part III to follow subject to demand. It'll be shorter, honest.

_________________
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My irritability keeps me alive and kicking.
I know the meaning of life, it doesn't help me a bit.
I know beauty and I know a good thing when I see it.

billyweeds

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 8:49 am

Joined: 20 May 2004 Posts: 20618 Location: New York City

Jeremy--Great work. Keep 'em coming, and please don't make 'em too short. I love your willingness to go into detail. And basically I agree with your assessments, particularly of the lame, dull, characterless Sleeping Beauty. As for Alice in Wonderland, it's always been one of my favorite Disney features despite the fact that it's completely unfaithful to Lewis Carroll, literally, emotionally, and thematically. Disney was probably not the "right" person to do Alice, but am I glad he did.

(Btw, note the spelling of "Carroll," which you got wrong twice--and the sequel is not "Alice Through the Looking Glass," but simply Through the Looking Glass).

The title song to Alice in Wonderland ranks with anything from The Little Mermaid, Cinrerella, Snow White, or Beauty and the Beast. It's haunting, and "I'm Late" and "Unbirthday" are pretty memorable too.

Hope you liked The Fox and the Hound. IMO it's been really underrated.

jeremy

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 9:07 am

Joined: 21 May 2004 Posts: 6794 Location: Derby, England and Hamilton, New Zealand (yes they are about 12,000 miles apart)

I've surprised myself by discovering how much these films are part of me. I could easily have written more. It is easy to be dismissive of Disney, but the old man and his studio must have been doing something right.

gromit

Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2006 10:30 am

Joined: 31 Aug 2004 Posts: 9016 Location: Shanghai

Quote:

This, incredibly, is my first experience with Herzog, and I'm very impressed with his work here.

Syd,
Herzog is a crank, a crackpot and possibly a genius.
His films almost always focus on outsiders, people overcoming enormous odds, borderline crazies. Kaspar Hauser was one fellow that "spoke" to Herzog. (lame pun intended ... oh no, another one parenthetically).

Important to note that Herzog has made alot of documentaries (Land of Silence and Darkness about deaf and blind folks; The White Diamond about a balloon expedition in the Amazon; Lessons of Darkness about the environmental havoc in the wake of Gulf War I). Probably others that I've missed. Even The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is filmed as a careful re-creation of historic events. Herzog even goes to the extent of starring a guy (Bruno S.) who grew up in similar circumstances (and many a mental hospital).

Herzog likes to push things to the edge. He's not always striving for realism, but trying to conjure a version that captures truth in a cinematic form. That might sound vague and mushy, but in Grizzly Man, think about the coroner's interview, or the staged handing over of Treadwell's remaining possession (the watch).

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