Tag Archives: martin scorsese
Oscar Contenders Round-up
Oscar nominations drop in less than a week. Yes, awards season is heavy upon us, with all its implicit fun and horror! I’ve already reviewed three big Oscar players—The Tree of Life (love), The Help (hate), and Midnight in Paris (eh)—but have yet to touch on the season’s other talked-about titles. The following is my attempt to rectify that:
The Artist. I was delighted by the cuteness and chemistry of Jean Dujardin and Bérénice Bejo, who give a spry pair of performances attuned to the film’s silence. And writer/director Michel Hazanavicius has an eye for visual gags, which dot the film: the dancing legs, the take-after-take courtship, the ascension of Peppy’s name, etc., etc. But The Artist never really coheres, coming across more as a set-piece variety hour than a fleshed-out feature film. Its tragedies, when they arrive, don’t stick—Dujardin’s alcoholism and depression always seem to have a wry smile lurking beneath them, and a climactic suicide attempt is punctuated by a joke. The film’s story is all but an afterthought, schematically stitching Singin’ in the Rain onto A Star Is Born.
Guillaume Schiffman’s gleaming photography gorgeously invokes the memory of “classical Hollywood,” but to what end? The film never really gets beyond the shock of its own retro-novelty, preferring to be vaguely about the idea of “silent movies” rather than any historically real silent cinema.* (This meta-silence explains its “Dream Factory” Hollywood setting, which could’ve been constructed from issues of Photoplay.) When it does make concrete allusions (to Citizen Kane and, infamously, Vertigo), they’re hollow and don’t fit their contexts. The Artist suggests the gist of silent movies (i.e., “they didn’t talk”) but doesn’t follow through; it’s very limited in outlook and execution. Kudos, certainly, to Hazanavicius and company for merely making a functional latter-day silent movie. I just wish they’d made more than a broad pastiche that teeters toward “They don’t make ’em like they used to!” pandering. Well, at least the dog’s cute.
*Hazanavicius himself seems strangely misinformed about 1920s filmmaking. In one interview, he claimed that under the Hays Code, “People don’t kiss, there isn’t any kissing in my movie, the dancing scenes are the love scenes.” I’m really curious where he got the impression that no kissing signifies “an American way to tell a story.”
Next: Hugo, The Descendants, War Horse, and Moneyball.
Filed under Cinema
Horror is everywhere (3)
By Andreas
Since The Mike, of the truly excellent genre film blog From Midnight With Love was on vacation, I volunteered to help keep FMWL (and its June theme of ’80s horror) going in the meantime. To that end, I wrote a continuation of my “Horror is everywhere” series from Pussy Goes Grrr, delving into the scary side of five ’80s movies that aren’t technically horror: Raiders of the Lost Ark, The King of Comedy, Blood Simple, Ran, and Blue Velvet (the last of which I also addressed over at The Film Experience). Head on over to FMWL to read “Horror is everywhere (3)”!
Filed under Cinema
Link Dump: #33
What the musical remake of Little Shop of Horrors lacks in kitties (this is the only one, shown for a second during the opening number; of course our immediate reaction to seeing a kitty not related to the plot of the movie is to pause to get a screenshot for the link dumps) it greatly makes up for in blood-thirsty, alien plants and sexy, doo-wop trios. With that said, please enjoy these musical (read: totally not musical at all) links!
- This isn’t for another month and a half, but we’re eagerly participating in the Garbo Laughs Queer Film Blogathon. Stay tuned for more details!
- The text may be in French, but these Art Nouveau posters for sci-fi/fantasy movies (including Star Wars and Alien) are beautiful in any language.
- I’ll link to anything about Pauline Kael, so here’s a fine appreciation of her work from Open Letters Monthly.
- According to Female First, Martin Scorsese was depressed during the filming of Taxi Driver. (And no wonder!)
- This Guardian book review talks about the connections between Houdini and cinema.
- The Self-Styled Siren tackles a scene from George Stevens’ masterpiece (maybe?) Giant involving Rock Hudson and racism.
- According to nerdbastards.com, Netflix is going to make all Marvel animated series available for instant streaming. If this is the case, then I will be very, very happy.
- Don’t deny it: you want to read a long essay about vampires.
- Alex Jackson of Viddied Reviews talks insightfully about intertextuality, film history, and Inception.
- Frieze Magazine has a fascinatingly in-depth interview with the late father of computer music, Max Mathews, discussing his work at Bell Labs with scientists, avant-garde musicians, and Stanley Kubrick.
- Another Tumblr meme and this one is even closer to my heart: Fuck Yeah, Women’s Studies Wolverine.
Alas, we had a drought of truly weird or awful search terms. The only one that really stood out to me was “mom and dad eat the babysitter pussy” because honestly, that’s fucking gross. It’d be odd without “pussy” at the end, but that one word puts it over the edge. Honestly, WTF.
Link Dump: #5
Well, mid-September has arrived, and now Ashley and I are going to kick this blog into high gear. That’s right: Ashley is about to return from the land of the dead and start blogging (and making audacious tweets) again! Meanwhile, I’ve returned to school, and will soon be buried under piles of books & papers… but I’m sure I’ll still find time to blog every now and then. And to presage this purported autumn renaissance here at Pussy Goes Grrr, I’ve got links for you! Links, and freckly goddess Julianne Moore covered in lion cubs!
- Google has been, well, being evil lately. Among other issues, Carnal Nation reports that their new Instant search service blocks “lesbian” and “bisexual”… but not gay? Oh, silly Google, what the fuck are you doing?
- Ashley reblogged this fun list of “Anti-Gay Activists Caught In Gay Scandals” from STFU Homophobes.
- Here’s a handy list of online academic resources about Paul Thomas Anderson. It’s fun to peek in on other people’s classes!
- On the blog Mystery Man on Film, we’ve got the full text of a lecture given in 1939 by the Master of Suspense himself.
- In the “Fun Comic Summaries of Crazy Movies” Department, we’ve got a one-page condensation of Eraserhead. (Thanks, @baconalert!)
- Stacie Ponder of Final Girl wants you to make yer voice heard by sending her a list of yer 20 favorite horror movies. So go do it! What better way to get into the pre-Halloween spirit?
- The Daily Beast has a list of Martin Scorsese’s favorite gangster movies. Scorsese is a man who knows good movies, so it’d probably do us all a lot of good to watch every movie he mentions here. (Via @TCMOnAir.)
- A David Cronenberg Blogathon happened! Sadly, I wasn’t able to write for it, but for what it’s worth, here’s a post I wrote about Cronenberg at Happy Postmodernists back in July.
- Jezebel recently had a piece about a new trailer for David Fincher’s The Social Network. I’ll admit I’m excited for the movie: some of the lines sound kind of ridiculous (they are talking about Facebook, after all), but Jesse Eisenberg looks so earnest and jittery as Mark “No privacy for you!” Zuckerberg. What do you think?
- Also via Jezebel: the voice of Daria’s Daria, Tracy Grandstaff, answers questions from luminaries like Diablo Cody.
And now for some crazy-ass search terms! Unfortunately, we’ve had a dearth of truly bizarre searches lately. It’s mainly just been the usual “snails in pussy” or “fuck in my hair” nonsense. However, there was this: “horror movie scene woman forcibly milked.” I don’t know what movie that’s from, but it sounds pretty horrifying.
Less horrifying but more odd was this: “18th century renaissance pussy fucking.” While the searcher’s sense of history is a little off (the 18th century was the Age of Enlightenment; the Renaissance was long over), I still hope that they were able to find the powdered-wig-and-petticoat porn they were looking for.
- Addendum: I just discovered this 8-bit video game based on The Room from Newgrounds. It’s time-consuming, but hilarious. If Johnny’s your favorite customer, be sure to check it out.
Ash
Alice