Throwing Spaghetti at the Wall

I picked up Selma (2014) because it looked interesting and cost me $1.

Jenny looked up the film against an accuracy site, and that historial film came in with the highest level of accuracy. That made me sit up and take notice.

We went through Selma last night, and it was a mighty good film. Nobody is a saint. Everybody is a person. They tell a difficult story.

Selma was the focal point of King's strategy for voting rights. What goes in was ambition, and what came out was the Voting Rights Act. This is that sausage making story.

I have nothing but praise for this film. Maybe it's a bit too amber at times, maybe needing more realistic color, but that's small stuff. The rest of it is effective and clear.

This is worth your time.

Films This Week

Back in the day, I heard that Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) was a terrible movie. Most of the time, I find that people were overly harsh with a film, and that there is some fun, but no in this case.

PoT is a generic fantasy film with a Robin Hood theme.

I found that each of the primary actors was in their own film.

Keven Costner acted as if he was reciting the phone book. His performance would have been improved if Daffy Duck had been dubbed in. Unfortunately, he's in so much of the film that he's got to drag it down.

I enjoyed Morgan Freeman when he was on screen, enjoyed his character, and I enjoyed the film that he appeared in.

At the other extreme, Alan Rickman played out villain in an outrageous and furniture chewing performance. He understood the innate schlockniess behind the script, and he went for it, not holds barred. I loved the film that he was in.

Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio played Maid Marian, and not a very interesting one at that. Hollywood wanted to produce more interesting maiden in distress, so they used ideas by people who weren't screen writers, or actors, or in the film industry at all, and the results played about as well as you'd expect.

The costuming mostly sucked. There were a few brights spots, mostly for Marian and Nottingham, but most of it was peasants are dirty. They even have a mother as a character, and even she is dirty. Fortunately, all those 80's fantasy films had leftover costumes, and they used all of them.

Add that all up, and you get 2.5 hours of footage.

If you're drinking, and you don't mind falling asleep during the fight scenes, this is the film for you.

I rewatched Genesis Climber Mospeada (1983), a mech anime from Japan. I first encountered it as the last part of Robotech. I can't say when I last watched through it, but it's been 30-40 years.

There's little to say for the series. It's story is okay, but even at 25 episodes, it feel both padded and rushed. The Invid invaded earth, our heroes are there to kick them out. Unfortunately, the Invid are heavily armed and capable, so our heroes mostly go from place to place. There's a reason why it petered out after half a season.

This series has a very loose relationship with geography, existing almost entirely in a generic reality, where everywhere is that same generic place. For example, our heroes cross the Gulf of Mexico, head into mountains, encounter Denver, cross a desert, and arrive at New York. While I could win dork points for ranting about this, it's better to just laugh at the absurdity.

The overall level of realism is highly challenged. When it's useful, the plot throws in some realism, but only as its useful.

The animation is tolerable, but no better. The character designs are solid, doing their jobs. The mech and equipment designs are good. The Legios fighter-mech is quite handsome. 

What gives the anime it's name is the armor and cycle combination that can convert into a power suit. That way, you can go fast as needed, or change into a combat configuration as needed. These see the most action of any design.

I had fun seeing all the stuff that got chopped from the Americanized version. Yes, I fully understand why some bits got edited out. Fortunately, I'm a grown up now. 

The show is entertaining in small doses, so it's an acceptable watch if you have the bandwidth. 

I first encountered Hiroko Sakurai while watching Ultraman, and I enjoyed her performance as Akiko Fuji. Later on, I saw her perform in Ultra Q, where she played Yuriko Edogawa, where i just fell in love with her performance. I saw exactly why they hired her. She created such a natural presence behind the camera, expressed all sorts of feeling and attitudes, contorted her face like an acrobat, sometimes switching between emotions from one sentence to next. She was so good at delivering while the film was rolling.

As I've watched more shows from that era, none of the other women come close to her emotional and telegraphic breadth. She's truly go this special thing going on with the camera.

In Ultraman, she played next to Yasuhiko Saijō, who also had the same amazing facial and kinetic skills. When they were acting together, they were such a joy to watch.

She was in more films than I'll ever be able to hunt down, and I fully understand why directors wanted her. She didn't just supply looks, she fully supported whatever scene she appeared in. For the 60's, she was the modern every-girl.

I watched both Robert Downey Jr.'s entries for Sherlock Holmes, from 2009 and 2011.

In my experience, Sherlock Holmes does quite poorly as a film, and to prove my point, Robert Downy Jr. demonstrated it two more times. The very nature of Holmes works against the very nature of films.

To get through these films, I turned up the speed to 1.75x and ignored the action sequences.

In addition to the existential issues faced by all Sherlock films, this film looked like mud on a mud background. The color grading lay somewhere between depressed and suicidal. The costuming, therefore, looked like a depressed suicidal fish. Likewise, the cinematography looked undigestible.

There was nothing pleasing about these films except Downy, whose performance I enjoyed. The actors did their best with the script that they were given and the direction that they received.

I don't know who might like these films. I'm not even sure who the audience was intended to be. 

I sat myself down on my holiday and made myself watch Titanic (1997). I somehow ignored this disaster movie, and only now have I put in the effort.

I found the first half boring and a bit tedious. As a historical, it failed to pull off what films in the 1970's were regularly pulling off, giving you a sense of there, making the background feel alive. The film put its work into the set rather than into the crowd. I can't say that Cameron was aiming for that specific feel, so that's a note, not a criticism. I wasn't drawn into the romance. In all, I'd say that the script is a bit lackluster.

The second half was an adrenaline junkie's heaven. Cameron put me into fight or flight mode, and kept me there for ninety minutes.

The money shots were at the rear, when the floating people gave you a sense of scale. When the tail lifted, and you saw the screws, it was like a kaiju rising from the water. The ship had become a monster, and indeed, would threaten everyone on it.

The cinematography struck me as competent but not inspired. It doesn't have a deep and innate sense of beauty. The sets and clothing are beautiful, but somehow, that doesn't translate to a beautiful film.

This is a film that I cannot watch twice. I don't have the heart for it. It's certainly worthwhile, but more as a spectacle than a narrative marvel. 

The Neverending Story 2 (1990) isn't an amazing film, but it does well enough for its demographic. As kids movies went, this one had a substantial budget for special effects, which means that the first film made a nice profit.

If you love miniatures, this is a good film for you. The work was competent, being fairly mid-tier for its day. As with all miniatures, the sets had that specific miniature look that you'd expect. Even with the media's limitations, I enjoyed the designs and the work. The Silver City's set had to be huge, and was likely the most complex piece of the film. 

They have some fun with costuming, so if you enjoy that art, this is also a fun film.

As for the Neverending Story 3 (1994), this was apparently a producer led film, and in an attempt to modernize it, they buried it. This film is not only terrible, it's the kind of terrible perfect for MST3K. It deserves to be put on the big screen and made fun of. I'd guess that it had a TV level budget, which led to a TV level look, likely following on the success of the Nickelodeon TV channel and all their series.

Eat Pray Love (2011) is a soulless film, devoid of soul.

It wanted to be a lush and connecting film, but it failed at that. Instead, it came across as palatable, portraying a cardboard spirituality from a spiritually selfish protagonist.

In short, everything about this film is safe, and nothing about it will challenge its target audience.

***

In American Pie 2 (2001), you get even more of the unfunny comedy of American Pie. If you hated the first, which I did, then you'll hate the second. I could not bear to watch this film to the end.