I was among the many who did not watch Pushing Daisies when it was actually airing on television. Like many people, I was not entirely aware that it existed, and what little I was aware of included the name and the fact that it was on a network I did not really watch. And that is a shame, because within a couple months of watching episodes in my spare time (thanks to the magic of Netflix Instant), I have fallen in love with this show.
I've been dog sick over the last week--combination of a vicious cold and a case of pinkeye--so I haven't been out much, nor have I been seeing many movies. I managed to creep out for an IFS film on Wednesday, sacrificing my health and, potentially, the health of anyone I might run into, all in favor of seeing a movie I'd have no other chance to see, ever.
Aside from that, I have mostly been watching Pushing Daisies after spotting it on Netflix Instant. I finished up the series this week, a good endeavor for someone in a crummy mood trapped at home. How could I have missed that show while it was on the air?
The other day, on hearing of Sidney Lumet's death, I re-watched Network. I have seen it before, so I haven't much urge to write it up, but Lumet was a great director and Network is a darkly funny film and one of my favorites. See it if you haven't yet--it's available on Netflix Instant, if that sweetens the deal.
Described to me as "an East German singing cowboy movie" not available on video or DVD, I absolutely could not miss this. A weird film, a playful comedy that seems sometimes too silly, even though it's intentional. The star (and writer, and director) is Denver-born country music star Dean Reed, who apparently moved to East Germany in the 1970s, where he continued his music and film career. Hence this oddball movie.
The original dialogue seems to have been performed half in English and half in German, with the overdubbing entirely in German. Except for the music, which is American country music performed in English. The story isn't very strong, nor the characters very deep, though the two leads are pretty charismatic and fun to watch. Mostly it's a vehicle for the music, which is more-or-less what you'd expect from any movie starring a popular musician, but it's surreal to see it coming out of the Soviet bloc.
A competently-made 1950s science fiction movie about a man, exposed to toxic chemicals and radiation, who begins gradually shrinking. It seems like something derived from a short sci-fi/horror story. Not a great work of art, but a very competent genre picture, certainly better than Tarantula (reviewed some time back) and a lot of the other B-movies of the period. The effects aren't quite as good as Tarantula, but this movie arguably needed more of them. Easier to create one giant tarantula than an entire giant world to surround a tiny man.
It ends on a very strange note--the kind of desperate resignation ("God knows I still exist, even if nothing else does!") shown by the main character at the end is something that doesn't happen often in this kind of film.
You might have noticed that, now, if you scroll to the bottom of the blog or any of the categories, the site is now paginated, making it easier to browse the categories and archives. You have no idea how much of a pain it was to implement this--it required me to set up dynamic publishing, which is a special case on NearlyFreeSpeech.NET, the company that supplies my web hosting. They have a lot of security restrictions in place on their default PHP configuration (PHP Fast Mode).
There are no up-to-date guides out there on how to make this work, so I spent the better part of yesterday toying with my files and reading old documentation, trying to tease out what was still accurate and what wasn't. Here's what I found.
Watched a lot of Netflix this week. But now IFS has started up again, so next week's going to be busy-busy when it comes to movies. There's a lot of good stuff in the mainstream theaters nearby right now, too. Of course it all shows up around the same time--of course.
Tonight I'm missing out on Woman in the Dunes to go to a Wanda Jackson concert, but that's all right. Wanda Jackson is a rock legend (she dated and worked with Elvis), and she puts on a great show. If she's touring near you, get tickets. You will not regret it. I went to the Boulder show on Friday, too--I am not much of a concert dancer, but with Wanda's music, it's impossible to not move your feet.
For some reason I forgot that I had seen anything last week, and thus did you miss out on hearing that Paul is a fantastically cute movie, if "cute" is an appropriate way of describing a movie about a space alien who swears a lot. It's a Simon Pegg and Nick Frost buddy picture, and those two are, as usual, charming as can be as a pair of British nerds on their first visit to ComicCon. Seth Rogen is charming, too, as the voice of the titular alien, and though Paul seems occasionally a little cruel, Rogen's likability smooths it over.
This is a movie for people with some experience with nerd culture. People who have never been nerds won't really get into it. The movie loves its characters even as it makes fun of them. I was grinning all the way through it.
I highly recommend this one. See it before it bows out of theaters.
A fantastic Buster Keaton film. It's amazing what can be done with pantomime and orchestra, with minimal dialogue (folks are there to see the actors, after all, not title cards). Some amazing special effects for the period, including a scene where a train falls from a burning bridge. I got wrapped up enough in the film that I forgot it was silent--it is masterful.
Watch more Buster Keaton movies. Buster Keaton is one of Hollywood's great actors, with a screen charisma comparable to the other great movie stars throughout history, and he is forever worth your time.
This film got a lot of press when it was released--it's a documentary about the annual dolphin slaughter in Taiji, Japan. The Cove certainly has an agenda, but at least it is frankly open about it. The filmmakers make no bones about their angle: they believe, based on a combination of popular science and personal experience, that dolphin intelligence nears or surpasses human intelligence, and consequently that dolphins should never be killed or kept in captivity at all. Even if you disagree with their opinions, you will agree that if dolphins are to be killed, it should not happen like this, nor at the scale that it happens in Taiji.
The filmmakers--particularly Ric O'Barry, former Flipper dolphin trainer, now an activist for the freedom of dolphins--make a compelling case, and their passion is contagious. Though I am a bit suspicious of the presentation of facts in any documentary with the intent of changing opinions, it's impossible to fake the scenes of the actual slaughter, which consists of running a boat through the herds of dolphins harpooning them as they struggle to escape. A significant proportion of animals appeared to suffer at length from their wounds before dying. Minimal slaughter footage is shown, but it is striking. I'm pretty pragmatic about hunting and animal slaughter--even a good, near-instant kill looks bad--but what I saw in this movie was deplorable. And the constant vigilance of the Japanese government and local Taiji officials to keep people from seeing it is pretty telling.
The movie's biggest flaw is its uncomfortably xenophobic tone toward the Japanese. Though everyone seems careful to point out that most Japanese people are not aware of these slaughters and do not believe in eating dolphins, it's conspicuous that the entire film crew is white, and the people they are demonizing are Japanese. It may not be an intentional dichotomy, but it was noticeable. The fishermen and Japanese IWC rep are sadly on the verge of being cartoon villains, and I'm not sure how much of that was manipulated in the editing room and how much was accurate.
A film with some pretty rough subject matter that was a big deal last year. Despite the near-absurd odds against the main character, Precious, she comes out pretty well pretty quickly, and the threat of her abusive mother is gone for the second half of the film. I had heard it was a depressing movie, but I actually found it pretty straightforwardly uplifting, despite some very harrowing and disturbing scenes during the first half.
The filmmakers made some interesting choices in dealing with the subject matter. The bleak scenes of Precious's hopeless home life are interspersed with surreal fantasy sequences. It would have been easy to take a conventional dramatic approach--and much of the time, they did--but they made some daring choices with the fantasies, which I think add some spark to a film that would otherwise just look like it was counting on an Oscar. Some great performances, though: Mo'nique as the abusive mother was amazing, and Gabourey Sidibe did wonderfully in her first film role as Precious. Teenagers who are almost completely shut down are hard to play well and hard to sympathize with, but Sidibe did a fantastic job.
