Category: Film & TV

We* went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow yesterday. Wonderful! Visually it’s an art deco treat, from the searchlights over the skyscrapers to Polly’s aluminium-framed dark glasses, from the Royal Navy’s “air ships” to the ray gun. (“Just shake it.”) And film buffs will have so much fun identifying all of the references…. I’m sure that when the DVD comes out there’ll be a “director’s commentary” explaining all of them, but until then it’s going to be a great game.
This is one to see again.
* “We” being The Fellowship, the group that went to each of the Lord of the Rings episodes together, plus my son Chris, who’s visiting from Seattle.

So as I blogged last month, I’ve seen the Control Room. I’ve seen The Fog of War. I own the DVDs of OutFoxed and Uncovered. I missed The Hunting of the President, but I read the book. This is clearly the summer of the political documentary.
So yesterday we were planning to go to see Fahrenheit 9/11 (which we still haven’t seen – are we the only ones?) But on Saturday we talked to my son Chris, and he urged us to go to see The Corporation first, so we did. It’s a study of the rise of the modern corporation over the last 150 years, from groups that were specifically chartered for limited purposes through the emergence of the corporation as a legal “person”, to today’s supranational entities.
It’s a very good documentary – it’s 145 minutes long, and the time flies by. It’s not a great documentary, in part because the film-makers tried to cram too much in, and lost focus. But on the other hand if you’re only ever going to watch one documentary on the subject, it’s probably a good tactic to cover as many bases as possible, to plant as many seeds for future reading, research, and – just maybe – action as they could.
My (un)favourite person: the woman psychologist who works on ways to make advertising targeted at pre-school children more “effective”: specifically, by making the children more productive naggers of their parents. She managed to keep her composure when asked whether she regarded what she did as “ethical”, but as she replied that she “didn’t know about ethics” her eyes told a different story.

While looking up one of my favourite movie quotations*, I was inspired to try to put together a top 10 list. Several classic musicals, several recurring names. In no particular order:
The Lion in Winter [1968; K. Hepburn, P. O’Toole]
The African Queen [1951; H. Bogart, K. Hepburn]
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner [1967; S. Tracy, K. Hepburn, S. Poitier]
Summer Stock [1950; J. Garland, G. Kelly]
My Fair Lady [1964; A. Hepburn, R. Harrison]
Kiss Me Kate [1953; K. Grayson, A. Miller, H. Keel]
The Shawshank Redemption [1994; T. Robbins, M. Freeman]
The Princess Bride [1987; C. Elwes, M. Patinkin, W. Shawn]
Hope and Glory [1987; S. Rice Edwards, S. Miles]
On the Town [1947; F. Sinatra, G. Kelly, A. Miller]
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* The quotation in question is from The Lion in Winter; Katherine Hepburn as Eleanor of Aquitaine: I made Louis take me on Crusade. I dressed my maids as Amazons and rode bare-breasted halfway to Damascus. Louis had a seizure and I damn near died of windburn… but the troops were dazzled!

The Golden Globes went to the good guys tonight. Lord of the Rings, Lost in Translation, and Mystic River all won in the film categories, while Angels in America cleaned up in the TV section. There were even a couple of awards for that bizarre British comedy series The Office.

I picked up the DVD of About A Boy yesterday. It’s based on the novel by Nick Hornby, one of the most incisive novelists observing contemporary England. For some reason I missed it when it was in the theatres. Anyway, it’s beautiful – and very, very English. It’s easily the best thing Hugh Grant (Will) has done, and the 12 year old Nicholas Hoult (Marcus) gives a performance that is both authentic and thoroughly polished.
Oddity: the DVD includes an “English to English” dictionary, to explain to US audiences the meanings of such terms as “bugger off”, “bloke”, “bloody”, “barmy”, and “get the wrong end of the stick”…

(1) Watch the Patriots win the AFC championship. Even though I don’t really care for American football (I far prefer soccer and rugby football), it’s hard not to be a Pats fan right now.
(2) Watch Millennium Actress on DVD. A wonderful award-winning anime film from Satoshi Kon.

This weekend has been dominated by emotionally draining film experiences. First, I saw Lord of the Rings: Return of the King twice, on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon. The first time was with my dearest friends with whom I saw the first two LotR films – we call ourselves “The Fellowship of the Fellowship”. The second time was with my 26 year old daughter and her husband, who really, REALLY wanted to see it with me.
Then this evening we found the time to watch the (taped) second part of Tony Kushner’s Angels in America. We saw the two plays when they first came to Boston over 10 years ago, and thought they were among the best drama of the entire 20th century. The film is even better.
I refuse to try to compare them. Both are epics – three 210 minute films for Lord of the Rings, two 180 minute episodes for Angels in America. Both deal with huge, vital, essential issues of the meaning of life, of good and evil, of life and death, of what it means to be human, of how we relate to one another. And both are, quite simply, wonderful films. If Angels in America had been shown cinematically, the Oscar committee would have had no option but to award joint honours for Best Picture. But we don’t have to deal with that. Phew!