I just came across this website devoted to the Bechdel Test (via My Buffyholism is Showing).
Why haven’t I seen the Oscar winning film There Will Be Blood? Because a film styled as a “story about family, greed, religion, and oil, centered around a turn-of-the-century prospector in the early days of the business” which has “![[Red cross icon]](http://bechdel.nullium.net/img/nowomen.png)
Less than two women in [it]” is simply not high on my list.
I don’t need the money. Not needing the money puts me in a magical place because I can say no. I like the idea of having good movies made or having no movies made.
Neil Gaiman on The Anansi Boys, black characters, white Hollywood and ethics.
Apparently Terence Stamp turned down the role of Montag because he thought he would be overshadowed by Julie Christie. Well, to this set of eyes and ears he needn’t have worried. I am at a loss to understand the attraction of Julie Christie. She doesn’t seem either talented or compelling or even that good looking.
Andy and I started thinking about who was good-looking in the sixties and seventies and we had a problem thinking of anybody. I suggested that Terence Stamp himself was beautiful and maybe that was the problem – the era was full of beautiful men like Stamp, Hemmings, Beatty and McDowell. The women couldn’t get a look in.
Fahrenheit 451 is almost a great film but it suffers from its limited locations (making it look like a TV programme), its disconnected continuity, its lacklustre lead and from any sense of urgency. It failed to make Montag’s wife at all interesting when I think in the book she was clearly depressed and repressed and not simply shallow.
I did like the locations they did find especially the Alton Estate and the SAFEGE Monorail.
The most powerful sequences were in the old woman’s house with the increasing tension between the Captain and Montag and the old woman’s suicide along with her murdered books.
The spoken opening titles were fabulous and Bernard Hermann was the Danny Elfman of his day: instantly recognisable.
Doll House Crowd Convicted, originally uploaded by moley75.
This is a poor screengrab of the final few seconds of Walk on the Wild Side (1962). The dollhouse in question is a brothel.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to
stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t.
–Pudd’nhead Wilson’s New Calendar. in Following the Equator by Mark Twain (1897)
I really enjoyed this film starring one of my favourite people, Emma Thompson. Great music, fascinating story, good cast and lots of baked goods. I would have happily been one of Ana’s study buddies.
Best line “I brought you flours.”
I love Christopher Nolan’s Memento and The Prestige was interesting but felt like two films stuck together. It took me two viewings to appreciate Batman Begins – the first time I fell asleep – but second time I thought it was pretty good – certainly better than any of the Batman films of the late 80s/early 90s. I was quite looking forward to seeing The Dark Knight and here are some things I don’t mind about the film:
Actually, I have just got to the point of this post, women are so completely irrelevant in this film that James Gordon Jr is the focus of the scene between Two-Face and Jim Gordon at the end. However, if you ask anybody who knows the tiniest thing about Batman to name Commissioner Gordon’s children, they will say he has a daughter (maybe a niece) called Barbara Gordon and I bet most of them have no idea there was a son called James Jr.
So, when I say I don’t mind, I mean I do but not as much as I mind that during the climax (okay, one of the climaxes) the daughter of Jim Gordon (who is likely to be the future Batgirl) is barely considered as one of Gordon’s choices (in fact, her face is hardly even seen). Sorry dear but Jr is so much more important.
[Heath Ledger is good though.]
There is a meme going around the best film blogs but since no-one is likely to tag me I’m just going to produce my own list of my twenty favourite actresses.
My first criterion is that the majority of the films made by the actresses are in English since I am not likely to have seen more than two or three of their films if they mainly star(red) in foreign language films. My second criterion follows from this and is that I must have seen more than four or more films with the actress in question. My third criterion is that I have to have watched any old nonsense in order to follow these actresses (examples of these in brackets)
In alphabetical order:
I am going to tag Everything’s Swirling, Laughing Wild and this to say about that.
Mr Deeds Goes to Town
Frank Capra was a genius. I have no idea how he managed it but every sentimental, corny, mushy, unlikely scene in this film just wasn’t.
The dialogue (by Robert Riskin), acting and casting certainly helped. The film overcomes its abrupt changes in direction with charm and verve.
I love Jean Arthur. She makes me laugh (I know she is supposed to but it doesn’t always work out that way) and her cracked voice gives her dramatic scenes extra poignancy. The hard-boiled but actually quite squodgy girl reporter was a thirties standby but she played it so well. The rope and coin tricks were quietly funny. When she drops the coin and had to get on her knees to search for it, I was reminded of the piggybank scene in Easy Living. This excerpt from Ray Carney’s American Vision: The Films of Frank Capra talks about Arthur’s performance in the film and has a fascinating take on the dropped coin incident.
I’m not a fan of Gary Cooper. I can’t think of another of his films that I have particularly liked but I do like him in this particularly when he was untidy. I liked the fact that Longfellow rang up Babe to confirm the truth of the story rather than relying on secondhand news: that happens too often in films and on TV.
Lionel Stander was super as the strong-arm who was the first to recognise Longfellow’s merits. The two old ladies (Margaret Seddon and Margaret McWade) were hilarious and I really liked John Wray’s affecting performance as the farmer.
There is a huge problem with this film that stops it from being completely enjoyable. Why is Longfellow so violent? Thumping people was not the answer to any of the problems he faced and his powerful words at the hearing amply demonstrate this.
Nice photography too:
Tootsie
I haven’t seen this film in years but I have seen it several times as I realised when I watched it on DVD and found myself anticipating many of the scenes and the funny moments and lines. It has aged quite well and I actually like Bill Murray this time. Dustin Hoffman is utterly fantastic as Michael Dorsey and Dorothy Michaels. However, it is too long, I found it a bit boring in parts and the music and songs were…dated.
The film examines gender roles and expectations but fails to maintain consistency. Many of the problems that women face were picked up but then left dangling. This is most notable in the case of Sandy who is treated thoughtlessly, dishonestly and carelessly but is not given any closure. How are we supposed to believe Michael will behave better towards Julie (“but I was a better man with you, as a woman than I ever was with a woman, as a man”) when we have seen how he treated Sandy while he was busy being this wonderful man as Dorothy? He even sleeps with Sandy because he would rather do that than tell her the truth.
Revolting predatory behaviour by an elderly male actor is portrayed as commonplace sexual harassment and the step-up to rape is seen as a natural progression. I believe that we are still supposed to think that John Van Horn is not unequivocally repulsive but amusingly and misguidedly mistaken.
Another thing that irritated me was that Julie’s father got an apology from Michael while Sandy got nothing and, not only that, he got to moan about how he could have done without the dancing when it was he who had forced Dorothy to dance with him.
Finally, Dorothy was lucky to get away with so much ad-libbing in the hectic world of soap opera and I love how there was not a writer to be seen anywhere near the studio.
Madeleine
As you would expect this is an impeccably made film by a true great. However, the other British great, Alfred Hitchcock possibly might have made a more involving film.
Ann Todd was icy as Madeleine. Actually what I mean is that icy Ann Todd played Madeleine and that cold centre of the film made it all rather mechanical. I did like the unequivocal ending with her face giving it away.
I’ve just realised Ann Todd was in The Paradine Case so maybe Hitchcock might not have improved this.
There was one outstanding scene when Madeleine persuades Emile to dance. She twirls, he gradually gets into the rhythm (stick and all) and soon they are dancing as uninhibitedly as the villagers in the valley below, and this scene is incredibly sexy. Seriously, I don’t think I have seen a dance scene that was quite so effective before.
Fitzcarraldo
We made Adam watch this by telling him it was about a man who drags a boat over a hill. That is true, of course, but we hadn’t bargained on approximately an hour of film before he even gets his boat. Once it got going and Claudia Cardinale’s disturbing dubbed breathlessness was left behind this became compelling viewing.
Kinski made have been bonkers but I reckon Herzog isn’t too normal either. Not that I’m complaining when people make films on such unlikely subjects and take me to places and eras I’m never going to experience and make fantastic and magical films.
House of Games
This is a stupid film and Professor Maggie Walsh, I mean, Professor Margaret Ford is stupid for the majority of it.
Lindsay Crouse’s performance is wooden and unemotional but I have less of a problem with that now than I did when I saw this in the cinema on its first release. She is just a strange actress and she is, at least, better than Rebecca Pidgeon. I’m not sure what to make of the practice of directors casting their wives in films: it often leads to strange and uncomfortable dynamics.
I like Margaret’s revenge and I do dispute Mike’s assertion that he never hurt anyone. I think humiliation comes extremely close to hurt.
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