Fantasia

Can I really say enough about this masterpiece? Nope!
I love this movie! When I was little I just sort of liked it, but now that I am older I can more fully appreciate its beauty and genius. This was a standard in Elem School, watching sections 3 or 4 times a year in Music Class. We also watched the dinosaur portion when we were studying the prehistoric age in science. So, yeah, I know it well.
It wasn't until I watched the featurette on the making of it that I realized the social significance of the piece during its time. I won't go into all of it, but Disney at the top of his game teamed up with Leopold Stowkowski (who was a rock star of the classical world at the time) and music critic Deems Taylor, who was the music parrallel to the best sports commentators of today.
You would think this would be instant magic. And it was, but it was a limited popular success. Still, it became a classic later down the line with its subsequent releases (thank goodness for that!) What fascinates me is that all of this began as just another Silly Symphony. But after a little while it became clear that the cost would be too much for a short, so they decided to make it a feature concert.
It won 2 Special Academy Awards (one for Disney and one for Stowkowski) It was selected for preservation by the National Film Registry and AFI honored it on its original Top 100 list as well as naming it #5 of the Top 10 Animated films.
The music selections are brilliant, the art is beautiful, and most of it is just fun! I take exception to the dinosaur part and Night on Bald Mountain - which, even after years, I still don't like - it freaked me out as a kid, and I guess that sticks with me. Although, I will admit that I can at least appreciate it now - and I do.
My personal favorite will always be the Nutcracker Suite. They are all so brilliant and beautiful. And who doesn't like the pastoral selection with the baby pegasus' and a fat, drunken God on a donkey? And the whole, meet the soundtrack is utterly brilliant! But the most beautiful is the ending with the Ave Maria. I'm 23 years old and it still brings me to tears.
Really, with this movie you can not go wrong. And this is something EVERYONE should see at least once. Sometimes when I hear a good piece of music or listen to a beautiful concert, I think: maybe if people had exposure to things like this, there would be more love of beauty, and therefore, more peace. Has that ever happened to you? Just sitting back and listening to something so beautiful that you can't imagine such things as war, pain, hunger, want, fear, and things like that. It's the best feeling in the world to be overtaken with beauty in art, and Fantasia is the best example of that.
5 out of 5 stars

review: Sweet Bird of Youth

Whew. Tennesse Williams does it again.
This is not 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof,' but it certainly has something. I haven't read the play, but reading the synopsis, there are some very big changes - as all Williams movies do. Because of censorship, two very big plot points are missing - and that changes this dramatically. Now, my favorite 'Cat' is also very different between book and play, but I think they did a better job adapting that script than this. The super-imposed "happy ending" in Sweet Bird is just a little too unbelievable. Whereas, in Cat, it is certainly possible with an immediate "happy" that actually only solves a single problem for the moment and it is rather grave future outlook if you think about it.
Enough comparison between the two.
Sweet Bird is about a young hopeful (Newman) trying to make it in Hollywood. He has failed at this, and so, in a last attempt, he begins a bit of an unlikely affair with an aging starlet (Page). With hope on the rise, he goes back to his hometown to get the girl he left behind (Knight). The problem is her father (Begley) who is as corrupt a politician as they come, spouting about purity and holding up his daughter as a sort of virginal goddess. It's really a sickening story. But it is intriguing too.
Newman is, as always, wonderful. He is sex appeal. But he is also more than that. He is funny, manipulative, calculating, hurting, and understanding. Page is also pretty good (She was nominated for an Oscar for her role as well as Knight - although the only winner was Ed Begley), she plays the rollar-coaster aging starlet very well. Knight is as pure a character as an adaption of a Williams character can be. Those who know William's work know what I mean. Actually, no, the most sincerely pure is Laura from Menagerie, but even she is jaded in a way - but what I really mean, I guess is that Knight was cheated by the censorship, the rewriting, and the conventions she had to comply to. I would love to have seen a more jaded performance, but - that's Hollywood for you.
As much as I love Newman and Williams, the best I can give the film is
3 out of 5 stars

review: Network

Wow. After that, I don't think I ever want to watch tv again.
Not really, but it certainly doesn't help the way I feel about talk shows and news.
The movie begins with the firing of a man, and his radical on-air claim that he will kill himself next week. That both saves and damns him. From there, the Network, UBC, goes a little crazy, and the people go a little crazy, and at the end, you watch this group of execs in a board room discussing something (I won't say what) and you just sit there and think: How the hell did it come to this?
This movie is a very powerful (very dark) satire about networks of television, but it isn't that funny really (and by that I mean, that this is not the kind of humor you laugh at), and it is also is very cynical and a little scary. Not like horror movies or thrillers are scary, but terrifying in the way it looks at our lives and you don't like what you see.
The most famous bit of this movie is the broadcast where the newsman goes a little crazy and screams for the people to open their windows and shout "I'm as mad as hell, and I'm not going to take this anymore." What really got me is that moment, its effects, and the way the network used a meaningful moment and turned it into a meaningless slogan. The next time you hear the phrase is it being shouted by the audience like "What's my line?" and it loses all the power that moment held. I guess that is the moral. Television is a transient thing, nothing can stay "real" for long on it.
This movie won 3, 3!, Oscars for acting: Best Actor (Peter Finch), Best Actress (Faye Dunaway), and Best Supporting Actress (Beatrice Straight). That has only happened for one other movie in history: A Streetcar Named Desire. So that gives you an idea of how amazing the acting really is. Finch shows us a man who goes from an everyman who throws away inhibitions because he is fed up (and you cheer him) to a madman. He goes crazy, but you don't see it that way. You see him as a fighter, a rebel, a man bucking the system. Only when it gets too far do you realize that this is not a freed mind, but a disturbed one. What is somewhat creepy about that is that Finch, much like Heath Ledger, died before he could win the Oscar for his performance. This was the first instance of an actor being honored with a win posthumorously. Faye also shows us the rise and fall of a mind, but in a different way. She is best described in the movie as "television incarnate" She has a rises to be a very powerful person, but her complete rejection of any reality but television and ratings makes her cold, calculating, and on her own way to damnation. You almost feel sorry for her, but then she continues on her same path willingly, and then you know there is no hope for her and she will be one of those miserable people. Beatrice Straight is an interesting choice for winner of the Best Supporting. Her part is so small, but in it is packed the best speech ever given by the wife of an unfaithful husband. She is fantastic - and while you realize her part has to be that small, you want to see more of here, and you wish there were more like her. No kidding, her screen time totals 5m40s, and as of today she holds the record for the shortest screen performance to win an Oscar. Less than 6 minutes of time, and she does it so well that she wins one of the highest honors in acting for it. Impressive, I would say. Network was also nominated for 6 other Oscars, including Best Actor for William Holden, who, let me tell you, is brilliant in his role as well as Finch is.
The movie is also in the National Film Registry and is honored on both AFI top 100 lists as well as being honored in the #19 spot on the top 100 Quotes.
Despite the utter depressingness of this movie, I rather liked it, and I certainly think that this is one that everyone should see - especially people like me, who have grown up with television. I'm no slave to watching tv, but I am a child of the age, and there are some lessons to be learnt by people of this age from this movie.
4 out of 5 stars

review: Trouble in Paradise (1932)

This movie is great!
The story is about two lovers/crooks: Gaston (Marshall) and Lily (Hopkins) They live for each other and thrill to steal things for and from each other. They begin a scam on a wealthy widow in Paris, Madame Colet (Francis). But things get complicated.
This movie is a wonder of the pre-Censor code in America. This movie is all about sex and stealing. Although, you never see any sex or stealing. This movie has some of the best dialouge and imagery to support the innuendos in the storyline. Not to mention, it is comically brilliant. I love Hopkins in her role - and she is a perfect match in crookery and wits for Marshall's character. Providing some wonderful comedy in the piece is Horton and Ruggles, who play feuding rivals for Madame's affections.
This story just oozes sex appeal - which makes for the best lines in the play: Gaston tries to reassure Lily that all of Colet's sex appeal to him is in the safe ($$). When she again pleads for him to duck out now he says "But darling, there's more sex appeal coming on the first of the month!" That just struck me and I had to pause the movie I was laughing so hard.
So scandalous was this movie that once the Production Code was enforces in 1935, the movie was restricted from view until 1968!

review: Benny and Joon

This movie is what I would call "darling." And it is. It's more than cute - it is precious.
The story revolves around Benny (Quinn), a man who has been taking care of his mentally ill sister, Joon (Masterson), since their parents were killed in a car accident. Things always border between just fine and complicated for Benny, and everyone is convincing him that putting Joon in a group home would be the best thing for her. In a random twist of fate, one night at a get together of Benny's friends, Joon loses a poker game with a pal of his: What was in the pot? A cousin named Sam (Depp). So, Depp comes to live with the two and things are never the same after.
I don't know if this is a good thing to say or not - I mean, PCwise - but I have always had a soft spot in my heart for stories of people who deal with, or have mental illness or challenges (whatever the current PC term is now) - or simply people that I guess you could call "innocents." (I may not have expressed that very clear - so I would like to point out that in any concievable way I do not mean to ridicule, criticize, demean, or disrespect people like those listed above.)
It is a good, touching story with more than a few lessons to be learned. The acting is supreb; Aidan Quinn is a great medium man, or gobetween guy - and as a side note, my gosh those eyes! Masterson gives a ... understated performance of a person who is dealing with mental illness. There are hints of it here and there, but the great thing is her performance is not mental illness - it's a side factor, which seems appropriate since the character probably sees her mental illness as a side factor to who she is too. Depp is delightful - well the character is delightful, and Depp does a good job playing him. You never quite know how he is mentally. I mean, he is simple (I know, bad word) in a sense because he hasn't exactly had an education, but I can't help but wonder if there is more there or not. Either way, it doesn't matter because he is magic, in a sense. His character has a freedom, and the comic ability of those old greats that he imitates so well. He is also kind, understanding, and free-spirited.
And whoever did the drawings for Masterson in this movie is pretty good - particularly the sketch of Sam sleeping. Incredible.
I'll say it again, all in all, a darling film!
4 out of 5 stars