Today's Viewing- Battleship Potemkin

I have watched parts of this multiple times in various film classes (Hello Odessa Steps), but wanted to watch it the whole way through. Pretty amazing, and there is a reason that this scene is basically the foundation of everything in film.

Read more

The African Queen

Read more

Cookie Monster Batman

Read more

Top 5 Documentaries about Crime

I can't even try to explain the obsession with these kind of narratives, especially since I don't particularly like this kind of content in fiction films. Yet, Netflix is on to the fact that I obsess about crime documentaries. They run the gamut from really smart with interesting distance from the crime itself to kind of short sighted to totally vague and not particularly interesting.

1. Aileen Wuornos- Life and Death of a Serial Killer- The first time I saw this, I was not a fan, but this film, and its prequel are one of the most interesting accounts of what happens after the indictment I have ever seen. It would be plenty smart if we only saw the economics and publicity that ran rampant around Wuornos, but this is paired with interviews with Wuornos that are so insane that they are actually mesmerizing. Two very strange movies, but I would say they are much more interesting than the film Monster, which is based on Wuornos. Truth is definitely more compelling than the fiction, in this case. They are on Netflix, and I would recommend them for afternoon viewing.
2. Capturing the Friedmans-This film captures the perspectives of the Friedman family, a typical family who was broken up when the father Arnold (and subsequently one of his son's Jesse) were tried and plead guilty for shocking crimes against Friedman's young students. Director Andrew Jarecki lucked out to tap into such a compelling archive of the family's private films as their father and brother awaited trial for pedophilia. Where many of these films suffer from a sort of vague point of view, Jarecki uses the ambiguity of the trial to his narrative advantage. The director was said to have sympathized with the family, believing them innocent, but I think the film can only transcend the original allegations as long the father's insistent silence, non-presence, and undeniable collection of child pornography fade into the background. But the gap (and some level of guilt?( at the center is so loud, and that is what makes the film so compelling, pared with the excessive emotion of the wife and children.
3. Dear Zachary- This film is emotional torture. I can't even recommend it to you, because it comes right in and crushes your soul. I would never watch it again, but I think it was well done and certainly approaches the crime in question with a tender and thoughtful intimacy not often displayed in these kinds of films. It also has a very specific and political point of view which I think is really smart. But seriously, I would not wish this film on my worst enemy.
4. Roman Polanski: Wanted and Desired- I never knew much about this crime, beyond that Polanski is a creepy perv. This movie didn't really change my mind, but it's account of the vast differences (and the political stakes) in his treatment in Europe and America is highly compelling. All in all, a very smart, very dry account of what happened from multiple perspectives. Good little documentary.
5. Cropsey- Dealing with murder as collective myth and shared mystery. I loved that aspect of the film, though the research aspects of the film are weak and the actual facts around the murders seem rather loose. They picked a road that it was difficult to finish, and the beginning of the film is much better than the end, but it is still an interesting experiment.

Read more

A Fish Called Wanda - Otto

Read more

Following Sean- other recent viewing

Read more

Capote (2005)

Read more

3 Things I Love Today

from www.harpersbazaar.co.uk

from www.thefreshfilms.com/Movies/bonclyde.htm

from classiq.me/style-faye-dunaway-in-bonnie-and-clyde

1. Everything Bonnie from Bonnie and Clyde- I watched this movie from 1967 this afternoon, and Faye Dunaway is really pretty fantastic in it. It is amazing to me this movie doesn't get mentioned more often as a good example of a great female character because her badassery is both the catalyst of the whole film and treated as an absolute given. The story is as more hers than anyone else's and she is the most well-rounded and flawed character of them all. Also, and on a much shallower note, her wardrobe is this unbelievable 1930's/60's hybrid that is just jaw dropping in every single scene. Seriously, you could watch the movie just for her clothes, as bizarrely double-dated as they are. Someone waify needs to use this as a starting ground for their personal style. When the film started, I didn't totally get the appeal of Faye Dunaway, but man she is just a quiet powerhouse. Fantastic performance that built a lot out of a character who could have been a stereotype or underwritten a great deal.

from imdb.com

Dunaway on the part-  "Never have I felt so close to a character as I felt to Bonnie. She was a yearning, edgy, ambitious southern girl who wanted to get out of wherever she was. I knew everything about wanting to get out, and getting out doesn’t come easy. But with Bonnie there was real tragic irony. She got out only to see that she was heading nowhere and the end was death.

There was a real kind of fierceness I’d seen in Bonnie that I recognized in myself as well. You look at photos of her and see it in her eyes, the set of her jaw. It takes fierceness in life to get ahead. I already knew that. Bonnie was Tennessee Williams, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof time. She knew the only way to get what she wanted was through her own sheer force of will. She was driven by her own desire. I know that territory - you do whatever it takes. She wanted to be something special, something out of the ordinary.”

from www.ifc.com/fix/2010/04/dede-allen-1923-2010

2. Dede Hall's editing in Bonnie and Clyde- not only does the film boast two interesting performances from women, but it also has really fantastic cinematography and editing. When I looked up the info on the editor, I was happily surprised that it was a woman. Two sequences come to mind- one is immediately after this particular heist, when a chase scene is spliced together with the interogation of the victims. The whole thing, with the addition of the music, really has a lot of joy and fun (helping to endear the criminals to the audience). Secondly, and I don't want to ruin it in case you netflix instant stream this movie (do it, it's long but it is worth it), but the last two minutes are extremely effecting without being sappy- it's all the editing that does it. It is a tour de force set of cuts and it creates a great emotional ambiguity and strange tension/calm that are so effective and smart.
3. Any Olympic Coverage that isn't Swimming- I am so sick of swimming. It becomes much less impressive that Phelps won so many medals when you see how many freaking swims there are. He has the widest net ever. And, no offense to Amanda Rose who I know has a much better understanding of the sport than I, you can only watch so many races. They are all the same and they are all boring. Also, the big star swimmers are not that likable, other than Missy Franklin who is pretty adorable. But seriously NBC, how much of this do we have to watch when there are so many sports to cover!? So bored with it.

Read more

Merida and the Always Tricky Question of What Exactly Makes a Strong Woman

from www.moviequotesandmore.com

Last week we went to see Brave, the Pixar movie that was touted as the first one that was about girls. I can appreciate this, because Pixar in general has totally failed at giving women narrative arcs. Rather than the sort of beautiful courage and effortless they give their best storytelling (the beginning of Up, all of Wall-E, the first Toy Story movie), this film felt labored. It's main character was not as funny as pretty much all of the others have been (they do that thing movies do where women with character just means a little bit of uncouth behavior). It felt heavy-handed, like it was saying the whole time "Look! It's a movie about girls! And not typical Disney princess! Look at her do this totally non-princessy thing!" But what really bothered me about Merida is that they consistently hammered in all the things that she wasn't, but it was never narratively clear what she was or more importantly, what she wanted. She likes shooting arrows and going outside. So what are her actual dreams? Or motivations? She just doesn't want to be a princess, or marry suitors she can't pick (yet), or listen to her mom.

from http://www.crushable.com/2013/04/30/entertainment/merida-disney-princess-single/

When the movie first came out, Entertainment Weekly wrote a blog post about how Merida could be the first lesbian Disney princess. At the time, I found this argument really discouraging, especially because their support was that she didn't want to marry any of her three (bad) choices and that she likes shooting arrows, because there are so many problematic assumptions tied into suggesting if a woman is strong, she must be a lesbian. There is nothing wrong with being a lesbian, but these assertions basically say that heterosexual (or asexual, pre-sexual, etc) women could not possibly be strong or like boy things. Now, I get where the desire to label her comes from. Because Merida's actual motivations are so vague, you can tie whatever business you want on to her. Does she want to shoot arrows, or does she enjoy aggression and conflict? (later she does not participate in the manly brawls in her home) All of her characteristics are shallow.

Actually Strong female characters actually are something and want something. You cannot just define a character by what they don’t want to do! That’s not a personality, it’s just petulance! You also cannot define a woman as being awesome by dumbing down literally everyone else around her, because women can only be powerful and intelligent by a very weak comparison. Of course, I recognize the challenge in writing good female characters, and this is still a step in the right direction, but I'll say it- I think Tangled was more successful in defining almost the SAME female character (crazy hair, mommy issues, desire for freedom). Rapunzel had a lot more actual characteristics and a much funnier "man being a princess is boring" number. But I find it discouraging that this is the only female archetype available, when it seems the types of women should be as rich and multiple as the types for men. Though there are parts of this movie I loved, they never dug in beyond this sort of self-congratulatory defiance of older tropes of femininity- it was a superficial appeasement instead of being as fun and rich as it could have been.

from disneyforprincesses.tumblr.com

That being said, if you are putting it on a scale of whether it was a movie you would show your children, I definitely would. It does NOT pass the Bechtdel test for the great majority of the film (because "being a princess" always seemed to equal "getting married"), but once the big twist takes place, the dialogue shifts somewhat, and the movie becomes more about relationships between women (as opposed to Mulan, who is a great character, but never really gets to interact with other women). With a week to think about it, I am not convinced that this isn't just another movie that seems to be about a young woman, but is really about her mother (Hello, Mamma Mia!). If anyone is truly heroic and strong in the film, it is the figure of the queen, who pretty much is the toughest badass of anyone in the beginning of the film, and she is the only one who really learns/ changes in a productive way. Merida only learns that what she didn't want is actually not that bad, but you can see genuine heroicism and love from the Mom character. She also is in a functional and joyful adult relationship, which has to be a first for Disney movies. Anyway, it is still a great counterpoint to all of the movies where the boy gets to be the hero, and maybe the looseness of her character is actually a cool space for kids to fill with their own dreams and motivation.

So, as a movie I would give it a 3.5. It should have just been more fun. It also seemed to have very low stakes and the big reveal of the mystery didn't make much of a difference in any direction. The climax did make me tear up though, so it still did it's job. Merida, as a character for little girls to look up to, is probably a 3. So close, Pixar, but you can do better! Her hair is a 5 out of 5 though. And the settings are gorgeous. So a mixed bag for sure!

Read more