The official site of Kelly Sedinger: Reader, writer, photographer, and dreamer
OK, I know that posting LOLCat photos is sort of the blogging equivalent of shouting out “Play ‘Danny Boy’!” at a Celtic music concert, but I can’t help but snag this one:
Wow, I just used these words as a post title the other day!
I’ve just realized that I have pretty much forgotten completely about my old series “Unidentified Earth”, and that the last installment, posted back in December, has remained Unidentified. Is there any interest in this series resuming, or is it one of those “fun while it lasted” things? What say you, Readership?
One of my goals for 2008 is to catch up on movie watching. And not just recent stuff, either, but some of the “Old Greats” that I’ve never before seen, or only seen in part. I’m not setting a specific goal, but it’s just a general thing I want to do. I’ll be using resources like the AFI 100 lists, which even if they are certainly open to debate, they do boast some very good movies in their ranks. In the last couple of weeks I’ve watched two such films.
:: Even though I’d never seen The Philadelphia Story until just a couple of weeks ago, I knew its story well, because I’ve seen a number of times High Society, the musical version of the same story that was made fifteen or so years later. Wouldn’t you know it; going back to the source material (so to speak, since The Philadelphia Story is in turn based on a stage play), I find that the original is superior to the remake.
It’s not an entirely fair comparison, I suppose, since High Society is a musical while The Philadelphia Story is not; they’re not really the same types of pictures, even if the stories are the same right down to large swatches of dialog. High Society‘s songs are all quite good, and the film has a justification for its musical doings: CK Dexter Haven is, in HS, a jazz musician who has scheduled a jazz festival in his home town (Newport, RI) that just happens to coincide with the wedding of his spoiled brat of an ex-wife with whom he happens to still be in love. Hijinks ensue.
Contrasting in TPS is CK Dexter Haven as a rich guy who is enlisted by SPY Magazine to get two reporters into the wedding, on the basis that they are friends of Dexter Haven’s equally spoiled brat of an ex-wife’s brother Junius. Or something like that. Anyway, the basics are the same: CK Dexter Haven is still in love with Tracy Lord; Tracy’s marrying a stuffed shirt named George Kittridge; two reporters (Mike Connor and Liz Imbrie) from SPY are in attendance, even though they find the assignment distasteful, and Liz is in love with Mike, although he’s oblivious to her feelings and finds himself involved in shenanigans of sexual chemistry with Tracy. Hijinks ensue.
I find it interesting that while HS is watchable because it’s got good actors and good songs and the like (although I continue to be amazed that anyone ever thought Bing Crosby a suitable romantic lead), TPS is, with the same story and much of the same dialog, actually funny. I’m not entirely sure why, but I found myself laughing out loud at a lot of the hijinks in TPS, and I was struck by Cary Grant’s ability to be the near-perfect straight man. He’s funny just standing there, being stoic while all manner of hijinks ensue around him, and when he himself partakes in some foolery, it’s utterly hilarious; witness his impromptu “Pomp and Circumstance” when George stomps away at the end of the movie.
And of course, James Stewart and Katherine Hepburn are, well, they’re James Stewart and Katherine Hepburn. I tend to like Stewart more in movies like this, where he can be cynical and weary; for instance, when his boss the publisher guy asks Mike if he hates him, and Mike replies, “No, oh no. But I don’t like you very much.” It’s not a great line, by any means, but Stewart turns it into one, by showing that Mike is enough of a diplomat to not openly admit to hating his boss, but possessed of enough self-pride to not pretend otherwise, either.
I also think that the ending works better in TPS than in HS, mainly because HS really beats the viewer over the head with the fact that CK Dexter Haven is still in love with Tracy, while TPS never really comes out and states it but rather lets us grow to suspect it as we get to know him.
(And for sheer laughs, TPS gets the nod over HS by having young Diana, Tracy’s precocious little sister, rip off an exuberant rendition of “Lydia the Tattooed Lady”, a song so funny that I’d laugh no matter who sang it.)
:: So, what better to follow up a 1930s screwball comedy about romantic shenanigans in an upper class Eastern city than a cynical 1970s tragicomedy about a man committed to a mental hospital? Nothing, obviously, which is why I finally struck One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest from my list of movies I should really have watched way before now.
What a great movie. Parts of it troubled me, parts of it made me laugh, parts of it saddened me. I guess that was the whole point. It never quite went in the direction I thought it was going in, and that makes me happy, even toward the end when the film took the tragic note that I’d really knew was coming the entire time.
I did find the film difficult going on occasion. I don’t know much about mental illness, but I do know that while it still probably isn’t taken seriously enough, it’s taken much more seriously now than it was even in the time One Flew Over is set (late 60s or early 70s, I assume). The attitude toward mental patients in the film seems to run from seeing them as children who can’t handle anything to people who are simply dangerous to themselves and others. I don’t know enough about the history of mental illness treatment to know how accurate a depiction of that period’s treatment of mental patients may be, but there’s certainly a rather disturbing and horrifying tone to it all. I don’t know if that feeling was there when the film first came out, but it’s certainly there now. Similarly, I’m not sure if I was supposed to feel this sense of impending doom during the fishing boat sequence, but I did. I was surprised when that doom didn’t happen at all.
This is why I had a hard time seeing Nurse Ratched as the malevolent villain she’s most often described as. I couldn’t decide if she was the cold authoritarian, or just a very serious person locked into the standard view of mental illness of her day. Certainly Louise Fletcher’s performance is a great one, worthy of the Oscar it won, but watching the movie now, in 2008, for the first time ever, I couldn’t truly see her as a villain. She’s an antagonist, certainly, but that’s not the same thing. She gets her way in the end in the brutal fashion of the day, but again, it’s hard not to see that situation playing out any other way, even if she’d been a perfectly nice lady the whole time, right up to McMurphy’s attempted strangling of her. The much more malevolent presence, for me, came from the orderlies underneath Nurse Ratched. I don’t know if this was intentionally done on the part of the director, but these orderlies, played by two black men, have the same hairstyles and the same mustaches, they wear the same uniforms of white shirts with black bowties, and they walk with the same muted swagger. They seemed like, for lack of a better term, stormtroopers. Certainly nothing in the film was, to me, more ominous, not even anything said or done by Nurse Ratched, than the orderly who decides that it’s time to get tough with McMurphy and puts a strap of hard leather over his knuckles in preparation to fight him.
McMurphy was doomed at that moment, of course, but even so, the Chief’s subsequent discovery of his lobotomy scars is one of the sadder moments I’ve seen in a film recently. McMurphy is literally reduced to the drooling existence he had earlier pantomimed after his electroshock therapy. This time it’s real, and McMurphy can no longer observe his greatest triumph: that he gave the Chief the wherewithal to free himself. I found the film playing out, in some of its particulars, almost like a Greek tragedy.
To praise the film’s acting is easy enough, but there it is. Most of what I’ve seen of Jack Nicholson has been released in more recent years, when he’s been JACK NICHOLSON, so to go back and see him when he was a young and vibrant force on the screen was a real treat. I kept noticing the one guy and thinking “Wow, he looks like a young Danny DeVito!”, and then when I watched the credits, I learned that it actually was a young Danny DeVito. And then, of course, there’s Christopher Lloyd, much younger than his Doc Brown days and much thinner and cleaner, and thus much more crazy looking, than his Reverend Jim of Taxi.
So: two movies down, and I loved both of them. Off to a good start, I think.
To whomever came to this blog via this search, I really hope you found what you were looking for, ’cause if you didn’t, I think I may have to reconsider the whole darn thing!
And here we are again, taking stock of The Phantom Menace. When last we left our heroes, they had escaped Naboo and were now en route to Tatooine seeking repairs to their ship without which they’ll never make it to Coruscant. They are unaware that the true menace behind the Trade Federation’s invasion of Naboo is actually a pair of Sith Lords, who are even now working to figure out where they’ve escaped to.
So, let’s jump right into it. In the movie, we cut from the awful scene between Jar Jar and Padme (which I replaced in the last installment with a scene between Obi Wan and Padme) directly to the landing on Tatooine. Instead, I’d move the later scene between Darth Sidious and Darth Maul, on Coruscant, to this point.
EXT: CORUSCANT – SKYSCRAPER – BALCONY
Darth Maul walks along the balcony beside his master, the shrouded Darth Sidious.
SIDIOUS: You have done well, my apprentice. The tracking information you discovered makes clear the direction the Jedi took the Queen, and the sensor data indicate that their hyperdrive had been damaged. Therefore they will be seeking repairs, and there are only three systems on that heading where they might have gone. Inspect each system until you find them. Kill the Jedi, and bring me the Queen.
Darth Maul bows his acquiescence.
SIDIOUS: The Jedi have never suspected that the Sith have returned, but the time has come to reveal ourselves. At last we shall have our revenge.
Here’s something I’ve always thought about TPM: Darth Maul should never speak. He only has two or three lines in the entire movie, and those are dubbed by some actor with a fine British accent, and it frankly clashes with his appearance. Maul should be as mysterious as possible, and it would help immensely if we never hear his voice at all. So all of Maul’s dialog? Gone. He’s all about the body language.
So now I’d cut back to the Queen’s ship landing on Tatooine. I like this entire sequence, really, and I’d only make a couple of cosmetic changes:
:: The shot of the ship approaching Tatooine from space should make a bigger deal out of the planet’s twin suns. That’s the iconic nature of Tatooine, and the suns vanish from the screen too quickly.
:: I like Jar Jar’s complaint that the sun is “doing murder on mesa skin”, but I’d move it to later in the Tatooine sequence, after he’s been in that sun for a while.
One thing I’ve always liked about the sequence in the film is the way Captain Panaka looks less than enthusiastic himself about the Queen’s “request” that “her handmaiden” accompany Qui Gon and Jar Jar into Mos Espa. I would only add a bit of reflection on Qui Gon’s part: after he initially refuses to take her, and Panaka says “The Queen wishes it, she’s curious about the planet”, I’d have Qui Gon look at Padme for a long moment and have her return his stare, unflinchingly. Again, suggesting that there’s more to this handmaiden than meets the eye. And then it’s off to Mos Espa.
First off, let’s get this out of the way: I’m a Jar Jar fan, but there should be no stepping in bantha droppings. I’m far less bothered by that than by the flatulent eopie later on, but still, while my version of Star Wars isn’t about to turn the franchise into a gritty space opera version of The Matrix or Blade Runner, I’m not going to keep potty humor around.
However, Qui Gon indicates before they leave for Mos Espa that “This spaceport is not going to be pleasant”, so I’d make it actually unpleasant. There doesn’t have to be a whole lot here, but little glimpses of stuff here and there to make clear what kind of place they’re entering. Maybe two pilots beating the stuffing out of a third who owes them money, or a drunken spacer leering at Padme, or beggars in the streets. Stuff like that. The script even says that they pass ‘dangerous looking citizens of all types’, but little if any of that reaches the screen. I’ve always been a bit surprised that Lucas didn’t do any of this kind of thing, because it’s always been clear in his movies that he knows his Westerns, and Western tropes tend to play a large role in various Star Wars films. (I wouldn’t go so far, as some would, to claim that the original ANH is a Western with spaceships instead of horses, but it definitely has some Western-style stuff going on in it.)
Anyway, Qui Gon, Padme, R2, and Jar Jar go into a junk dealer’s shop and meet Watto. Qui Gon tells Watto what he’s looking for, Watto says he’s got just what Qui Gon needs, and he and R2 follow Watto out back to do some haggling, leaving Padme and Jar Jar in the shop, where Watto’s slave boy keeps them company. This, of course, is Anakin Skywalker, and he’s meeting the only woman he’ll ever love.
So here’s where it starts. What would I change about this scene? Only one tiny thing: when Anakin asks Padme if she’s an angel and she says, “What?”, he tells her this:
ANAKIN: An angel. I’ve heard the deep space pilots talk about them. They live on the Moons of Iego I thimk. They are the most beautiful creatures in the universe.
In the script, Anakin goes on:
ANAKIN: (continued) They are good and kind, and so pretty they make even the most hardened spice pirate cry.
I actually like the entire exchange that comes after this. Anakin’s a boy with dreams and talents, and he also has an eye for beauty. It fits nicely that at the heart of his eventual fall into the ultimate ugliness lies one of the most beautiful women in the Galaxy.
As a brief aside, for all the vitriol tossed George Lucas’s way as a director, he handles this scene really well, I think. What really helps is that Anakin’s question, “Are you an angel”, comes out of left field; he just says it, matter-of-factly, meaning every word of it. There was no earlier moment in which he walks in, looks at the radiant girl, and gasps; there’s no “meet cute” here. Just a confident boy who doesn’t know that he’s not supposed to be this confident about anything, who starts talking.
Oh, and I’d leave in the bit with Jar Jar messing with the stuff in the shop and getting in trouble; I like how Anakin and Padme are talking away, completely ignoring Jar Jar’s attempts to juggle machine parts.
Qui Gon fails to strike a deal with Watto, and he heads on his way, dragging the others with him. While Watto says something to the effect of “I’m the only dealer in this town with the parts you need,” it would have been nice to see a quick montage of Qui Gon dragging his companions all over Mos Espa, from dealer to dealer, confirming this for himself. Toward the end of the day, they’d be heading back to the ship, dejected and wondering what to do (here’s where I’d have a noticeably sunburned Jar Jar complaining about the Tatooine suns, along with Qui Gon’s conference with Obi Wan via comlink, with Obi Wan’s quip about selling the Queen’s wardrobe), when they’d come across Anakin again.
(Oh, I almost forgot: yes, I’d ditch Anakin’s “yippee”. That just doesn’t work.)
Now, I’m not wild about the bit with Jar Jar sneaking a bite, and then having said bite flying across the cafe and landing in Sebulba’s soup. That was just a bit too slapstick for my tastes (at least, for my tastes in a Star Wars movie), so I’d have something else happen. Maybe Jar Jar could accidentally wander into the path of Sebulba’s speeder, causing the alien to swerve out of the way and hit a building or something. Anyway, the rest of this works fine too.
Anakin takes his new friends to his home, in order to shelter them from the coming sandstorm. Again, I like the ensuing sequence, although the initial part is a bit hard to follow, what with Anakin jabbering excitedly to Padme while Qui Gon’s trying to introduce himself to Shmi Skywalker. That needs to be ironed out and directed better, I think; I’d have Anakin wait patiently while Qui Gon introduces himself, and then I’d have him sent away by his mother in one of those “We grown-ups need to talk” moments.
Next we learn that Anakin Skywalker actually made C-3PO. I know that this vexes a lot of SW fans, but I’m not one of them. I kind of like the ominous tone this fact lends the line in ANH when Threepio, being lowered into the oil bath, says, “Thank the Maker!”
Meanwhile, back on the Queen’s ship, a transmission comes through from Naboo. It’s the governor, Sio Bibble, with news that things on Naboo are getting very bad. “The death toll is catastrophic! You must contact me!” Obi Wan sees this for a trick, an attempt to establish a trace by their enemies, and orders them not to respond at all. I would just change it thusly, a little bit:
BIBBLE: (static-garbled) …cut off all food supplies until you return… the death toll is catastrophic… we must bow to their wishes, Your Highness…Please tell us what to do! If you can hear us, Your Highness, you must contact me!
The Queen, terribly nervous, glances at Panaka.
PANAKA: Open a channel for response!
OBI WAN: No! Open no channel. The transmission is a trick. If we respond, they will be able to trace the transmission and learn where we are. Send no reply, no transmission of any kind. I know it will be hard, Your Highness, but you cannot respond.
Now we cut back to dinner at Anakin’s, where Qui Gon begins to hatch his crazy scheme to get engine parts out of Watto after all: he’ll appeal to the junk dealer’s love of gambling. This whole scene is very nicely done; I particularly like Liam Neeson’s delivery of the line “I wish that were so” when Anakin claims that nothing can kill a Jedi. The only change I’d make here? Well, yeah: Jar Jar’s frog tongue. This actually does serve a narrative purpose – it establishes what Qui Gon’s just said about Jedi reflexes allowing Anakin to fly a pod racer – but really, by this time we should have a pretty good idea as to what Jedi reflexes are capable of, right? Out that goes.
So it’s night at Casa Skywalker, and Qui Gon would speak with Obi Wan on the commlink. Obi Wan tells Qui Gon about the transmission, asks what if the Naboo are dying, and Qui Gon replies, “Either way, we’re running out of time.”
This is where we cut to Coruscant, and Darth Sidious talking with Darth Maul. As noted above, I’d replace this scene with another conference between Sidious and Nute Gunray on Naboo:
EXT: NABOO – PALACE GROUNDS.
NUTE stands on a veranda with RUNE and a captive SIO BIBBLE as a Droid Captain reports. Behind him, several more droids hold three Naboo guards captive.
DROID CAPTAIN: These men have been caught inciting resistance among the citizens of Naboo.
NUTE: Execute them, Captain.
DROID CAPTAIN: Yes Viceroy.
The droids take the men away.
BIBBLE: You cannot kill us all, Viceroy.
NUTE: I trust it will not come to that.
DOFINE comes rushing up, holding a holo-projector.
DOFINE: Lord Sidious, Viceroy.
NUTE: Ah.
He takes the projector and activates it, causing a hologram of SIDIOUS to appear before them. BIBBLE is highly perplexed.
NUTE: Lord Sidious. The occupation goes well.
SIDIOUS: As well it should, Viceroy. And soon victory shall be ours. My apprentice, Darth Maul, has traced the Queen’s ship to Tatooine, a system in the Outer Rim. He is on his way there now. When she returns, you will force her to sign the treaty.
NUTE: It shall be done, My Lord.
SIDIOUS fades; NUTE turns to BIBBLE.
BIBBLE: Who–
NUTE: So you see, Governor, the end to this affair is near.
Bibble now looks fearful.
And after that, we return to Tatooine, for the first hint of something that would vex Star Wars fans more than any other thing in TPM, with the sole exception of Jar Jar Binks. So, in our next installment, we shall discuss Midichlorians. Until then, may the Force be with you!
Oliver Stone is making a movie about George W. Bush. If that hits theaters the same week Hillary Clinton is elected President, I think that millions of right-wing heads all over America will literally explode.
Click these links or the puppy gets it.
:: Because what I realized was this: fans of movies immerse themselves in the fictional world they imagine the movie takes place in and become obsessed with the minutia. I’m a different kind of film buff, I guess. And if that’s fandom today, I’m glad I stopped participating in it around that time. It’s not fun anymore. It’s not about liking things anymore; now it’s about not liking things. And I think that’s just too bad. (A great post on the ugly side of Star Wars fandom, which has, to my eyes as well as SamuraiFrog’s, become the main side of Star Wars fandom. There’s some stuff that I disagree with in the comments — Lucas’s recent comment about TESB being “the worst one” was a joke he made at a tribute for someone, and not meant seriously; Lawrence Kasdan always seems to get the credit for TESB but none of the “blame” for ROTJ, to whatever extent blame is deserved — but still, good stuff.)
:: I want a film that is faithful to Star Trek’s pioneer spirit and Star Trek’s swashbuckling heart. If I get that, but Kirk never served on the Farragut, well…so be it. (I get the sentiment, and I wish I could say that I agree. I think it should be possible to do both. That Rick Berman rarely figured out how to do it shouldn’t mean that it’s time to toss everything — baby, bathwater, tub, and towels — out the window. But here’s the thing, really: Trek has so much baggage behind it that if rebooting it means totally starting over from scratch, why not really start from scratch and do something completely new? Why does it have to be Trek at all? Via.)
:: After completing his symphony, Beethoven confided to a friend: “I am at last learning to compose.” (Good post on the second movement of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony. The thing is, as great as that movement is, I think it works best in its intended context, as the second movement of a four-movement work. Coming after the fairly dance-like first movement, the Allegretto is shattering. As for the poster’s surprise that the Allegretto has been described as “folk dance”, why should that be surprising at all? Wagner called the entire Symphony the “apotheosis of the dance”. Via.)
:: See, this is how you gracefully retcon stuff, Spider-Man. You don’t make a magical deal with the devil. That’s just retarded. The way you do it is you get a man from the future to travel through time with his robot friend and another time traveler. Then you get him to team up with three other versions of a dead character and save the dead friend’s life. (Good tip, thanks! And congrats on the wedding planning.)
:: Consider this a literary experiment. (Jayme attempts a blog-serial. May the Force be with him.)
All for this week. Next week, maybe something different. Or not. I’m a free spirit!
Wow, I haven’t blogged The Amazing Race much at all this go-round, have I? The show’s as good as ever, but there weren’t any teams that I found really loathsome this time out (unlike, say, Dustin and Kandace from the last two seasons). My favorite team was Kynt and Vixen, the goths in black-and-pink, but they were eliminated two weeks ago when they made a colossal error in not U-Turning a team that they knew to be behind them. My least favorite was the couple eliminated last week, but basically all they did was bicker constantly and treat each other incredibly poorly. They weren’t very memorable, and I’ve already forgotten their names.
This is only my fourth time watching TAR, but this is the first time of those four that the finale sees three teams that I genuinely don’t mind racing for the million. While I want TK and Rachel (the hippie-looking couple) to win, it wouldn’t bother me at all if the grandson/grandfather or father/daughter duo won.
I don’t know when or if the next season is taking place, but I hope it’s soon. I imagine that the longer the writers’ strike goes on, the more attractive another season of TAR becomes. What would I like to see in future races? I’d love to see more long driving transitions, in which racers are in foreign locales and have to drive themselves not five or six miles within one city, but maybe two hundred miles to another city, maybe even changing countries: they open the clue in Berlin and are told, “Drive to ___ in Prague.” Or maybe some new complications: when the episode opens, instead of the clue saying “Fly to Buenes Aires”, the clue could feature a clue of some sort to their destination; maybe a photo of a notable building in a city and the words “Fly to the city where this building is located”. Or a new complication, which they could call “Pile Up”. Only problem is, I’m not sure what would happen in a Pile Up.
Anyhoo, best to the three teams.
UPDATE: Watching the show right now. The final Roadblock is psychotic.
Hmmmm….
:: Researchers confirm that kids don’t like clowns.
:: This isn’t weird, actually — 18 stunning bridges from around the world — but it partially qualifies on the basis that I can’t believe they want to build bridges in some of these places. Do we need a bridge to link Alaska to Russia? No way I would drive that thing. (via)
:: My Star Trek Year. This person is attempting to watch every episode of every Trek series, and all the movies, in the course of one year. He’s also apparently reading some Trek books along the way. Wow. He does not seem to be watching the episodes in the order they were telecast, however. I can kind of see why; a massive dose of, say, the third season of TOS over the course of a week would probably have anyone heading for the bathtub with a couple of brand-new razor blades.
:: In honor of this past week’s return of American Idol — yes, I’m a fan, sue me — I link the best Idol audition ever. This makes William Hung look like peanuts, folks.
