Screened: At home, DVR from HBO
While it's mostly the slate of original series and documentaries that keep me paying an exorbitant-for-a-graduate-student monthly fee to receive HBO, I have to say that access to terrible romantic comedies requiring no effort on my part to obtain them is an added bonus. I couldn't stop feeling bad for Amy Adams and Matthew Goode while I was watching this; underneath her character's unbearable shrillness and awful, awful personality, they actually had decent chemistry that could've really worked in a movie that was more about the interpersonal relationship than the cliché-riddled concept driving the plot.
December 1: Waking Sleeping Beauty
Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix
I love a good behind-the-scenes film history, and I'd been waiting for this movie to come out on DVD ever since the trailer was first released. The film, looking at the resurgence of Disney animated films in the 1980s and 90s, benefits immensely from a sense of candor and self-reflection on the part of director/narrator Don Hahn, a former producer for Disney. It celebrates the accomplishments involved in creating movies like The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast, but doesn't shy away from chronicling all manner of behind-the-scenes discord among animators and executives. While there were a lot of things that I liked about this movie, I have to say that I really enjoyed the focus on the late Howard Ashman. It's clear that Hahn places great value on Ashman's contribution in bringing a musical theater sensibility to the movies, and the clip of Ashman coaching Jodi Benson through the recording of "Part of Your World" is a small treasure.
December 5: The Boys: The Sherman Brothers Story
Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix
Another in-house Disney documentary, this time about the Sherman brothers, the wonderful songs they wrote for Disney ("Feed the Birds" is one of those songs that's grown on me in leaps and bounds - I think I didn't have a lot of patience for slow songs when I was little, but "Feed the Birds" is too beautiful to deny) and their enduring mutual enmity. It was interesting to watch this after Waking Sleeping Beauty, if only for the contrast between the different Disney eras they depict; the Shermans' tenure began during the era when Walt Disney was still alive and actively shaping the brand, and you really feel the impact of his role as the driving force of the company when the Shermans talk about him.
December 11: Sherlock Holmes (2009)
Screened: At home, DVR from HBO
December 16: The King of Comedy
Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix
I finished my last paper on the evening of the fifteenth, so it seemed like as good a time as any to dive back into the Scorsese filmography. This go-round represents my first viewing for most of the eighties selections, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much I liked The King of Comedy. Not that I was expecting to dislike it, but critical or satirical looks at entertainment can feel kind of dated sometimes; while the film is very eighties, its take on fandom and celebrity felt eerily prescient.
December 17: After Hours
Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix
Conversely, the major discovery for me here was learning that, for me, there is such a thing as comedy that's too dark. The downbeats - especially the suicide midway through the film - were so down that I couldn't really get into the "isn't this zany?!?" vibe of the rest of it. Like Less than Zero, it's an interesting snapshot of a particular urban eighties scene, but there wasn't much beyond time capsule appeal for me.
December 17: The Godfather
Screened: At home, from personal collection
So, after that downer, I started puttering around my apartment looking for a good two-movie pairing, preferably for a nice little theme night. I landed on The Godfather since a) it was there, borrowed from my parents and b) I've previously seen bits and pieces, and have the sort of base-line familiarity with the catchphrases and whatnot just from growing up in middle-class America, but hadn't seen the whole thing beginning-to-end before. I mused for a while on potential themes for the evening - branching off on different actors (if Netflix had had Brian's Song on Instant Watch, it may very well have been "James Caan: Hot in the Seventies" Night(just because I like Brian's Song - obviously, I know there are other movies that could serve there)), the Coppolas, the "Easy Riders, Raging Bulls" era; a friend suggested looking for a movie with positive representations of Italian Americans, but I couldn't come up with one off the top of my head. Ultimately, the theme was the path of least resistance - Godfather Part II, which I didn't finish until the following evening as I fell asleep in the middle.
Ah, the movie: Good performances, but I had a lot of trouble keeping track of who was who among the various enemies.
December 18: They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
Screened: At home, from personal collection
Normally, I don't go for bleak in movies; it's proved to be a major stumbling block for me with the filmographies of Woody Allen and the Coens. For some reason, though, I flat-out love this movie. I love the weary cynicism radiating from Jane Fonda's performance, I love the uncomfortable frenzy of the derby scenes, I love the creeping dread that permeates every minute of this bleak, bleak film.
December 18: The Godfather, Part II
Screened: At home, from personal collection
December 23: Easy A
Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix
I feel kind of ambivalent about this movie - I really liked it, but I've got quibbles. Emma Stone's performance was great, but the attempts at meta-commentary on the teen movie genre in her narration were way too self-conscious. The connections to The Scarlet Letter were tenuous at best, but the denouement to the Huck Finn joke made all the other broad swipes at literary allusion worth it. Romantic comedies seem to be in such a sorry state that I appreciated the genuine humor in Easy A, but hopefully future additions to the genre can be funny without being so hyper-aware of their predecessors.
December 29: Black Swan
Screened: In the theater
I think I'm still sorting out all my thoughts about this one, but I know that I liked it a lot. Deeply, deeply unsettling in the best way possible. Having known a lot of high-strung, driven people, I felt like Portman and Aronofsky tapped into something about the way they think and function that was very real, even as the movie spiraled out into crazier and crazier places. I was also really impressed by the way that Black Swan managed to draw very heavily upon the kinds of themes that have distinguished some of the best ballet movies up until now - mother-daughter relationships and company politics in The Turning Point, life imitating art in The Red Shoes, etc. - and still feel daring and novel.
December 30: Eat Pray Love
Screened: At home, DVD from Netflix
Not as horribly self-indulgent as I'd feared, mostly rescued by good performances by charismatic actors and gorgeous visuals of sweeping vistas and delicious-looking food.
No comments:
Post a Comment