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Toy Story 3

If you have ever been wondering – I never watched “Toy Story” nor “Toy Story 2”. In fact, I have not been planning on doing that, although I am strongly considering it now. Back in the day, when “Toy Story” just came out, I didn’t like its computerized style and thought that the toys looked pretty ugly. At the time, I wanted beautifully hand-drawn Disney movies, most preferably with pretty and smart princesses like Belle in Beauty and the Beast. After “Monster Inc.”, “Ice Age”, “Wall-E” and “Up” I have now definitely revised my opinion on computer animation, but “Toy Story” remained a bastion of ugliness in my eyes.

However, “Shrek” is ugly too which means that a good story can make up for everything. “Toy Story 3” is surprisingly good a third instalment of a successful franchise. The story is funny, very suspenseful and even had quite a lot of touching moments during which you realize how much you ended up caring for all these characters. Of course the evil characters were mostly boring, but what can you expect from a children’s film?

Animated movies are best in a movie theatre, and since I am more into cats than I probably have ever been into toys my whole life (I do not have a favorite toy except Lego and, uh, pistols) it is no surprise that I enjoyed “Puss in Boots” more, which came with 3D glory and cute facial expressions. But “Toy Story 3” is definitely proof that not all sequels must be bad – and that computer animated movies can be very promising. Nevertheless, I think that I will have my children watch “Snow White” and “Cinderella” before I show them “Wall-E”.

Make Way for Tomorrow

Many years ago, I saw “Grave of the Fireflies” with my parents and then vowed to never see the film ever again. In retrospect, I think I don’t even really like the film – it was just over the top tragic and victimizes the Japanese in a manner I do not quite approve of (very much unlike “Letters from Iwo Jima” which I wholeheartedly approved of). “Grave of the Fireflies” feels a little bit like this article I saw quite awhile ago in which reporters described how both Israeli and Palestinians are using pictures of killed children to prove how cruel the other side is. It’s just unnecessarily sad.

I should also vow to never see “Make way for tomorrow” again because it is so, so sad! But in reality, I think that the film is too precious to never see again. None of Ozu’s movies contain even a fraction of the truth that McCarey’s transports – and we are talking about Ozu, the master of “youngsters are all impolite and worthless“ stories. While I found “Tokyo Monogatari” highly annoying, I absolutely loved this film. I don’t think it has a single weakness, except perhaps that it is very one-sided in how it focuses on only a single couple. But for “Make way for tomorrow”, that is definitely a strong point. Orson Welles said “it would make a stone cry”, some Imdb commenter (who usually don’t have that much interesting to say) wrote “Romeo and Juliet are nothing compared to Pa and Ma Cooper”. I agree – this is probably the most beautiful and absolutely most tragic love story of all times, and it is even more powerful to see that the protagonists of this love story are not young and beautiful, but just… human.

Sadly enough, the film is perfectly realistic. I have seen plenty of other people act like the children in this film, and among the people I know – parents of friends, or friends of my parents – only a small handful are actually truly taking care of their parents. I want to be prepared to do better in case my parents ever got into a situation like this.

Bottom line: I don’t think I have ever seen a more tragic film in my life. I want to make everybody I know watch the film (except Gorp of course, who recommended it to me). It’s just so great and sad.

Trouble in Paradise

I am not actually complaining that there are none of them, but considering that you can turn western or film noir/gangster movies into a genre, in theory you could totally do that with thieves. It’s a similar pattern – the characters are outlaws and their stories could be funny or tragic, and some of my most memorable film experiences were with such films. One of them was the best Chinese movie I have ever seen on an airplane, Yesterday Once More. Maybe my impression of it would be different if I saw the film today, but back in the day, I absolutely loved it. This film definitely needs a second viewing, so I should try to find out how to get my hands on it.

“Trouble in Paradise” is strangely similar to that story, except it involves a third woman, making it one of the unusual love triangles in screwball comedy. I don’t think I enjoyed the film as much as “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife” which made me laugh even more often, but that doesn’t mean that “Trouble in Paradise” did not meet my expectations. On the contrary, I felt the same fuzzy lightness and happiness as I do with literally every other great Lubitsch comedy. Lubitsch’s movies make me feel like life is immensely rich and enjoyable, that this feeling is the reason why I started watching movies in the first place.

Wikipedia qualifies the film as “pre-Code”. After reading what the Code entails, I am surprised to see so many elements in “Trouble in Paradise” – some socio-political criticism towards the rich, some gangsters and a lot of sex. A triangle love story only interesting if there is enough sexual investment involved, and this film shows plenty of it even without all that many actual kissing, let alone sex scenes. This is a bedroom comedy, but people get interrupted in their bedroom activities. Considering that Lubitsch loves these “rich people” and their frivolous love stories”, which I find somewhat reminiscent of Händel’s “Agrippina”, one of my favorite love comedies in opera, I think that there is a lot of truth in them. I enjoy the funny scenes even more when I can actually relate to the characters, and when I feel like they are realistic in some way. “Trouble in Paradise” definitely is even if nobody I know is a thief, and nobody I know (very well) is that rich.

Another thing I really liked about this film was its cast. I have never seen Miriam Hopkins before (though I am looking forward to seeing her in “Design for Living”, assuming that she will have a better role there) and loved Kay Francis as Madame Colet. She has a slightly strange look on her face, but it’s perhaps the acting that turns her into this attractive woman in every sense. Sexual innuendo lingers in every scene she is, even with those men who she doesn’t want to be with. Herbert Marshall’s Gaston was amusing but nothing out of the ordinary. It is definitely the women (and by the way, the side characters) who shine here.

“Trouble in Paradise” is a must-see for every Lubitsch fan, and I had a hard time comparing it to “Ninotchka” – they are just so different and I loved them both. Whenever I will come around it, I will probably see “Design for Living” next.

PS. The advisor has recently written something about writing scientific papers, and the example he uses is Hemingway. Specifically he says that one should not use commas, dedicate only one idea to only one sentence and not repeat yourself. As much as I love Hemingway, I also love Thomas Mann so I am not actually sure whether it is truly a good idea to write like Hemingway. There is a reason why language has given us the opportunity to write convoluted sentences, but it needs a master like Thomas Mann to make it readable. On the other hand, it takes a master like Hemingway to make a very bare style beautiful. So I guess you guys have to deal with my never-changing convoluted style.

Puss in Boots

I have not been to a 3D movie ever since “Alice in Wonderland”, which was quite a disappointment. What I do remember is the fact that these glasses never stay on my nose properly, even when I do not put them above my normal glasses. They slip horrible at the slightest moment. But, it works fine enough if I hold the glasses and/or do not move around too much and doesn’t detract from the movie too much.

Before the film, they showed a bunch of previews – “Hugo”, “Happy Feet Two”, “Tintin”, this Dr. Seuss movie and something really odd by Sony. Apparently you have the choice between quasi-orphan goes onto big adventure with lots of action or strange character design. They all seem like style over substance, but a lot of fun. As for “Puss in Boots” I thought it was quite wonderful to see in 3D. Unlike “Alice in Wonderland”, there were a lot of scenes which were enhanced by 3D and contributed to the experience. People jumped back and forth, and the whole story had a great number of action scenes which I thought were exciting and entertaining.

The greatest hit of the movie was definitely the dance scene: It had carefully designed, different cats playing instruments and an awesome dance. Again, 3D made all those swift camera moves and the crazy dance choreography a feast for the eyes. I am a cat and dance person (oh gosh I can’t wait to play Just Dance 3 again), and on top of that, I absolutely loved the 3 magic beans fairytale from my childhood, so the movie wins many points for me which it might not actually deserve. How can I possibly judge a film when it’s full of cute cats?

I am also glad that the film had none of the Shrek character and completely focused on Puss in Boots, arguably the most beloved character of the franchise. While the Shrek movies became a little silly at times, Puss’s story might be generic, but nevertheless lovely, and as long as I enjoyed the experience of this 3D showing, I will not complain. Otherwise, the film is probably forgettable.

Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife

For all of those who have always wondered what the tagline of this blog is – Wilder had a sign on his door, which said “How would Lubitsch do it?” If I wanted to make a movie today, I’d probably ask myself the same thing about Wilder – he was the more versatile of the two and was great at very different genres, he had (as far as I could have seen) a better grasp of actors than Lubitsch did, and ultimately was more successful than Lubitsch. But strangely enough, the latter produced so many more movies I liked. There is a reason why Lubitsch is the only director with 2 movies among my all-time favorites, and that certainly does not mean he only had two brilliant movies. Recently, when I saw “The Philadelphia Story”, I was seriously worried that I might have become bored and tired of the screwball genre. After “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife”, I know that this is certainly not the case.

I read awhile ago that Claudette Colbert was very cunning and strong-willed when it comes to getting what she wants from the movie bosses. To me it seems that it is perfectly reflected in this film – she is something like the perfect woman here. Smart, perfectly attractive and at all times stronger than the guy, she’s a whirlwind like Katharine Hepburn in “Bringing up baby” but without being so annoying at first. I thought it was pretty obvious that she has set her eyes on the guy she wanted ever since the first second, and when she realized that he might be easy to get but hard to keep, she faces the challenge and takes her sympathetic schemes up a notch. I don’t think you usually see a woman “playing” a guy throughout half of a movie, and it naturally begs the question how appropriate it is. It was very reminiscent of my favorite part of “Ai Monogatari”, story number 5 in which the woman gets her guy back by smiling when he breaks up with her, and crying the moment she leaves by train. In both cases, the woman succeeds by not showing her feeling at a specific time in order to make somebody desire her. Bottom line, they play hard to get. I have a hard time approving that (I don’t think feelings should ever be played with) but I cannot help but admire the capability of people who can do that with such rationality.

As it is so often with these screwball comedies, it’s not really the storyline that counts, nor the premise or what happens at the end. Screwball comedies are all about how to get to the destination, and “Bluebeard’s Eighth Wife” was a storm of enjoyment. I loved how much the film inherited aspects of the silent era, no doubt still very fresh in Lubitsch’s mind. Certainly the film was full of funny dialogue, but there were enough scenes in which just actions were enough to make me laugh, such as the one in which the husband reads “The Taming of the Shrew”, unsuccessfully trying to adapt the play’s ideas to real life. Obviously this is not how you get a woman to love you, tsk tsk, Shakespeare is all but vain male fantasies. Besides a pleasant focus on people’s facial expressions and general gestures, the film uses music in a wonderful fashion. I was heavily impressed at how greatly the background music matched to the specific scene, especially the parts with the wedding music – first played in a happy, then in a sombre manner. Pure comedic gold. I don’t remember any other movie in which the music made me want to laugh.

Watching one Lubitsch film totally made me want to see more, especially now that it restored my faith in old comedies. (How could I have ever doubted them?) It’s too bad that most of them are rather hard to get.

The Women

Wow, my blogging backlog has become huge now. Considering that I spend at least half an hour writing these postings (though there is a great variation in that, sometimes it’s more like 10 minutes, sometimes it’s as much as over an hour), it’s like having two hours of work backlogged! Well, this is not truly work, so I shouldn’t perceive it that way. And it is more relaxing than e-mails, of which I also have a significant number backlogged.

The backlog all started with “The Women”, because after watching the film, I felt an incredibly strong desire to, well, see other films. To some degree, “The Women” was the perfect appetizer. It was good but not too good, and the film left so much to desire. I am determined not to enter the typical bashing of the film, usually performed by people who saw the original 1939 film and cannot stop complaining about how much inferior this version is. Certainly it is, but that’s not all. It’s been a little while since I saw the 1939 version, so I feel confident that I am now able to see this version for itself.

On Imdb, the only person who does not compare the film to the original has a complaint about something valid: The moral of the story seems to be “Do whatever you like, don’t care about others and everybody will love you”. That is pretty much exactly what’s happening in the film, and it annoyed that person just as well as me. Bottom line: It’s not a particularly great film and has some major weaknesses -aforementioned questionable morals, an unbearable clothing style (are the women in the story all 50 or what?) and this amazingly painful scene which must take place in every chick flick nowadays: the two main characters’ tearful girl friendship reunion. Nevertheless, the movie is much better than your average chick flick. The story is engaging, the actors are all pretty good (except for that damn daughter) and most of it is actually quite funny! I think there are two types of chick flicks: Those with romance and those with girl friendships (such as Sex and the City). For a girl friendship chick flick like this, it’s quite an accomplishment when I am not trying to bang my head against a wall.

I actually thought Eva Mendes is quite well cast for the film. Certainly she is no Joan Crawford but her apparent sex appeal compared to the main character was made pretty obvious. Sadly Meg Ryan was totally no match against her in their confrontation, but she had her own nice transformation, which I enjoyed. One of the smartest scenes in the film was the one in which Meg Ryan’s character talks to her mother. There was a scene like that in the original film, but I don’t recall it making such an impact. The way she described how betrayal feels was something quite unexpected, it was the big moment of ‘truth’ of the film.

Ultimately, I watched the film because I am a fan of the 1939 version of “The Women”, the truly memorable version. But it wasn’t all that bad and, in my opinion, doesn’t deserve the bad reviews. After all, the film was quite a box office success, and I feel critics and complainers just cannot appreciate good entertainment sometimes.

The Philadelphia Story

I am a little bit at a loss here. This is the strangest screwball comedy I have seen, or rather, it’s strange apart from the fact that it is a screwball comedy. So, granted, the protagonist has feelings for two men at the same time, and then there also is the fiance but he doesn’t quite count because, well, it’s pretty obvious she had no feelings for that guy whatsoever. But then there is this issue of morals – it is lovely and all that everybody (father, sister, friends) approves of her final decision to go for her feelings and not for some strange sense of morals, but the process of getting there was utterly strange. I don’t quite get this scene in which her father reproaches to her that her failure to love and to understand human weakness made him have an affair with a young dancer. Certainly we all should be a little tolerant, but why in the world would anybody want to tolerate an old lecherous man who goes after young girls so he can feel youth himself? That’s not weak, that’s despicable. The same principle goes through the whole film – Hepburn’s character is depressed because she does not feel human and in one of those other odd scenes, she apologizes to her father for not being “a disappointment”.

Ignoring the oddities of the film, I think I was quite delighted by Katharine Hepburn’s performance, who is not only as perfect together with Cary Grant as she has always been but even has some chemistry with James Stewart too – I think this made their love triangle quite lovely. Just like the brother in “Holiday”, my favorite characters were the little precocious sister and Liz Imbrie; her hair looked a little odd but her sarcastic tongue was an enhancement to every scene she was in. The only thing I thought was sad was that I mostly watched “The Philadelphia Story” because of Cary Grant and totally thought his role was too little! (In comparison to his other films at least.)

If I had a boat one day, I’d call it “True Love”. It’s too bad I don’t really like boats. Maybe an airplane, or a cat. Perhaps I expect too much from screwball comedies these days, but for one of its famous examples, “The Philadelphia Story” was not much more than good. Maybe on day I shall rewatch it.

Blood Simple

Today, Loris asked me to write this blog posting today and something smart on top of it. If I had not put “write blog posting on Blood Simple” onto the top of my to-do list today, I would normally have said that these two requirements do not mesh well. But I will give it a try so here we are. (Concerning the top of my to-do list you might be wondering what I have been doing all day, well somehow I worked some, did some homework, took a nap, watched TV shows, danced and wrote thank you notes. I love thank you notes.)

In the conversation, rule 34 also came up. So, considering that “film noir” exists, it’s probably conceivable to turn a thriller into porn. I wonder how often that actually happens – it’s a very specific esthetic, but it’s cheap to do (film noirs were cheap, back in the day) and your typical film noir has plenty of male-female interactions which could be re-written into full-blown sex scenes. That brought us to the question as to how “Blood Simple” is a film noir. Certainly there aren’t that many gangsters nor detectives in the film, and you cannot quite count a private detective whose incapability is almost funny. Frances McDormand is so, so cute in the film but she is far from being a femme fatale character. Nevertheless, I have doubted a single second that this is a film noir (though, not being black-and-white nor from the 40-50s, technically I probably have to say “neo-noir”); the premise of the film is the attempted murder because some wife had a new guy, and practically everything else in the film happens as a consequence to this premise (i.e. because of the woman), but also because of misunderstandings between the characters. The characters cannot trust each other, and that becomes the reason for their downfall. Even without being a traditional femme fatale, two out of three men in the film act because of their love for Abby.

One of the criticism against “A woman, a gun and a noodle soup”, Zhang Yimou’s quasi-remake of “Blood Simple”, consisted in the assertion that Zhang does not care about his characters in the film. That would make it an entirely different film from “Blood Simple” because I think the Coens really cared for these characters here. The way Abby is portrayed as weak, innocent-looking and afraid yet brave when looking into the eye of death, Ray as the guy in love who doesn’t quite know what to do but is smart in a similar way to the Dude since just looking at those fake photos he understood qhat happened and finally Morty as the jealous, painstricken man. Since I expected Frances McDormand to be giving a great performance and was happy to see her in such an important role again, I was most impressed by the character of Morty. Certainly his jealous anger seems run-of-the-mill but I have not seen such an emotional portrayal of such a man for quite awhile and the camera work with its close-ups of Morty certainly helps.

Camera work is definitely what makes “Blood Simple” so great. People say “oh it’s pretty good for a first movie” so often, but when it comes to the art of film-making, I think that the Coens definitely have mastered it already. The way the story is told, with the audience always one step ahead of the characters, the suspense created by the fact that all these misunderstandings between them creates an incredible sense of danger, heightened by the fact that you never really know who is actually dead or not – it takes a great filmmaker to be able to produce something like this, first film or not.

But then again, there are these kinds of films that you think are great in every aspect but you cannot quite relate to them, especially with something as down-to-earth as “Blood Simple” which differs from a typical Coen film in how it does not try to inspire some intellectual meaning into a huge cast full of freak of natures, but depicts comparably normal people in an admittedly quite murderous conflict. Despite my great impression with Dan Hedaya as Morty, I was not really able to feel with the characters, whereas I strangely could with “Barton Fink”. This is even more impressive considering that Barton Fink was quite a wimp, heh. It’s the kind of story which I thought was very entertaining while it lasted, and I certainly will remember the enjoyment, but there isn’t much more to that. Most of all, “Blood Simple” stands as an example for well-made films with a well-told story, definitely a must-see even if it’s not one of my personal favorites.

I have an incredible craving for a Lubitsch comedy now, but sadly I don’t have any available. I might decide to go for another Hollywood comedy, but then I also discovered another random film I want to see, namely “The Crush” with a 15 year old Alicia Silverstone. It look so randomly interesting?

Knocked Up

I do understand where the complaints of sexism are coming from, but that is certainly not because the males in the movie make sexist jokes. Everybody and their mother would probably agree that they are being idiots, and the bad misogynist jokes they crack just show on what low level they behave. The problem is with the women – oh God, why do they all have to be so incredibly bitchy? Debbie is the worst, but Allison herself also has at least two major scenes in which she is, downright, a bitch. Number 1 is the instance where she complains about him not reading baby books, number 2 is the moment she was about to have a baby and calls him for help. She only calls him when she needs him, huh? There are some reviews which complain about how the female protagonist loses her individuality to become a “wife” whose sole purpose is to support her “husband” in becoming a better man; I thought it was the other way around: She made him turn into herself, in the most egoistic manner possible. Annoying.

Apart from the seriousness which I couldn’t ignore (I can’t help it, really) and the unbearable ensuing emotes, the movie was awesome. I only wanted to peek into it at first, but then ended up watching over an hour because I just couldn’t stop. The storyline is a lot like Juno adult version, but who cares? The characters have a lot of great, funny lines, the story is engaging and I especially enjoyed the clash of characters between Ben and Allison. Except for the aforementioned scenes (and Debbie), I thought all characters were likable in their own way, very amusing and human.

On a completely unrelated side note, I watched the deleted scenes of “Mean Girls” today – so many good lines! But actually it made me want to watch “The Notebook” again. Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams are so awesome together?

I think that “Knocked Up” is a witty and smart movie, in a very down-to-earth kind of way. And it was hilarious! But now, I feel like I need something more… artsy? Think a Tarkovsky movie. I really want to watch “The American” now, but I don’t really have access to it.

Heathers

But then again I admit that I have totally loved “Superbad”, but then again, “Superbad” was about guys and – that is its biggest plus for me – it was about nerdy guys in a 2000s setting instead supposedly popular, bitchy girls in an 80s setting.

“Heathers” could only lose – just look at that hair and the horrible, horrible blazers which, back in the day, made me think that blazers always make you look like a silly mannequin. Nowadays I love wearing blazers, although not like the ones the Heathers wear. My favorite aspect of “Heathers” is actually the color scheme: I love how Heather 1 is red, Heather 2 is yellow, Heather 3 is green and Veronica is blue. I especially love how the camera shows Veronica’s blue shoes and blue tights while playing cricket. It makes me want to dress up in a single flashy color too – but which one? My least favorite aspect of the film is the fact that the Heathers didn’t actually show up that much. Whereas “Mean Girls” heavily featured amusing antics of the Plastics, the three Heathers seemed awfully generic – you couldn’t believe it can get even worse. Instead, it was all about Veronica and her dude being all rebellious and murderous. First, I thought it was funny, then it turned a little bit into ridiculous blah blah, and it is only the style and the hilarious absurdity of the story that saves it.

Winona Ryder had some strange yet awesome roles, and this one is no exception. I think that “Heathers” is worth its hype, but at the same time, it didn’t blow me away.