![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Annoyingly, I am still stuck halfway through Solaris, so that doesn't count, and watched the first half of The thing. And being in the same room as Good Night, and Good Luck does not count. However:
VI: The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951)The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), both of which I'm likely to rewatch within the next few weeks, but he also did West Side Story (1961), The Haunting (1963) and The Sound of Music (1965) as well as working on Citizen Kane (Welles 1941). Forget the Keanu remake (no, really), this is a significant film at the start of a whole cycle of sf films which need to be thought of as political, at the height of Cold War - this is the time of the House on Un-American Activities, McCarthyism, loyalty oaths and the Korean War.
Its origins lie in a story by Harry Bates, "Farewell to the Master," Astounding Science Fiction (October 1940). It's quite different, and goes in different directions. It was written and published before the US entered the Second World War - but probably at a point where the Soviets were not trusted, but the film is an intervention in the Cold War. So a flying saucer lands in Washington DC and is surrounded by the military. An alien, Gort (Michael Rennie), gets out, accompanied by his robot, Klaatu (Lock Martin ), and is shot by a trigger-happy soldier. When he recovers, Gort says he has a message for all of humanity, and wishes to talk to a conference of world leaders. The US are unhappy with this, and all the other leaders refuse or want the conference in their own capital cities. Gort is running out of time - so he escapes, and goes to try and meet real people, and to find sympathetic scientists. But he can't hide forever.
There's a pro-peace message here. We're invited to see our conflicts as petty on the scale of the universe, but still a threat to that universe, as well as to ourselves. Gort chooses the name Carpenter to live under - which might suggest a religious parallel or even allegory: someone who goes among the people rather than staying with a particular leader, and rising from the dead. One thing that feels odd these days is how readily a mother in the boarding house Gort stays in lets her son go off with him. These days it'd be a call to social services.
VII: Che Part One - The Argentine (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)
For once a film in which you can understand every word Benicio del Toro says - but because his Spanish is subtitled. I guess I need to get round to watching The Motorcycle Diaries to find out how Guevara comes to be invading Cuba - here little more than a bizarre dinner party moment of "Ernesto meet Fidel, Fidel meet Ernesto". I suspect economics have dictated that corners have been cut. He has no more past than medical training and a series of jobs.
Here we have the story of the battles (over a number of years) to take Cuba from Fulgencio Batista, intercut with Guevara's speech to the UN in 1964 and an interview. Soderbergh is careful to show the protests against him, but none of them are distinguished as characters. Meanwhile in the campaign, he is both the charismatic leader and in thrall to Castro, and obeying orders with little or no question. Sometimes he is put in charge of a column of (male and female) soldiers, sometimes he is sidelined to training. He insists that every soldier has a gun and is able to read and write. It's not without its moments of comedy, or of horror. On the other hand, I could have lived without the intercutting, at this point more a stylistic device than a narrative one. I'm looking forward to part two.
VI: Shelter (Jonah Markowitz, 2007)
Heartening coming of age romance. Skater/surfer Zach (Trevor Wright) wants to be an artist, but pulls shifts as a short-order cook, baby sits his five-year-old nephew Cody (Jackson Wurth) and runs around after his ill father and single-mother sister Jeanne (Tina Holmes), whilst trying to keep his girlfriend (Katie Walder) happy. Shortly after his best mate Gabe (Ross Thomas) goes to university, Zach becomes friends with Gabe's older brother, writer Shaun (Brad Rowe). The two fall in love - leaving Zach with some agonising choices.
Whilst I think there's a charge of wish-fulfilment to be levelled, it is nice to see a story that doesn't go (yawn) all Brokeback on us. There's some agonising, but frankly Wright is spared taxing his acting too far. Instead he can emote at the wheel (there's a lot of drinking and driving here - but without the OC consequences) or hug himself in his hoodie in the moody sepia twilight. Despite a slice of unwitting homophobia dramatised early on, no one but Zach and his sister really care, and the latter because she like an on-tap baby sitter. Even Jeanne's not-quite abusive boyfriend says nothing. Again, I suspect the director pushed at the limits of his actors.
I'm slow this year - a projected 97 films at this rate. But a busy weekend planned.
Totals: 8 Cinema: 2; DVD: 6; Television: 0.
VI: The Day the Earth Stood Still (Robert Wise, 1951)The Andromeda Strain (1971) and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), both of which I'm likely to rewatch within the next few weeks, but he also did West Side Story (1961), The Haunting (1963) and The Sound of Music (1965) as well as working on Citizen Kane (Welles 1941). Forget the Keanu remake (no, really), this is a significant film at the start of a whole cycle of sf films which need to be thought of as political, at the height of Cold War - this is the time of the House on Un-American Activities, McCarthyism, loyalty oaths and the Korean War.
Its origins lie in a story by Harry Bates, "Farewell to the Master," Astounding Science Fiction (October 1940). It's quite different, and goes in different directions. It was written and published before the US entered the Second World War - but probably at a point where the Soviets were not trusted, but the film is an intervention in the Cold War. So a flying saucer lands in Washington DC and is surrounded by the military. An alien, Gort (Michael Rennie), gets out, accompanied by his robot, Klaatu (Lock Martin ), and is shot by a trigger-happy soldier. When he recovers, Gort says he has a message for all of humanity, and wishes to talk to a conference of world leaders. The US are unhappy with this, and all the other leaders refuse or want the conference in their own capital cities. Gort is running out of time - so he escapes, and goes to try and meet real people, and to find sympathetic scientists. But he can't hide forever.
There's a pro-peace message here. We're invited to see our conflicts as petty on the scale of the universe, but still a threat to that universe, as well as to ourselves. Gort chooses the name Carpenter to live under - which might suggest a religious parallel or even allegory: someone who goes among the people rather than staying with a particular leader, and rising from the dead. One thing that feels odd these days is how readily a mother in the boarding house Gort stays in lets her son go off with him. These days it'd be a call to social services.
VII: Che Part One - The Argentine (Steven Soderbergh, 2008)
For once a film in which you can understand every word Benicio del Toro says - but because his Spanish is subtitled. I guess I need to get round to watching The Motorcycle Diaries to find out how Guevara comes to be invading Cuba - here little more than a bizarre dinner party moment of "Ernesto meet Fidel, Fidel meet Ernesto". I suspect economics have dictated that corners have been cut. He has no more past than medical training and a series of jobs.
Here we have the story of the battles (over a number of years) to take Cuba from Fulgencio Batista, intercut with Guevara's speech to the UN in 1964 and an interview. Soderbergh is careful to show the protests against him, but none of them are distinguished as characters. Meanwhile in the campaign, he is both the charismatic leader and in thrall to Castro, and obeying orders with little or no question. Sometimes he is put in charge of a column of (male and female) soldiers, sometimes he is sidelined to training. He insists that every soldier has a gun and is able to read and write. It's not without its moments of comedy, or of horror. On the other hand, I could have lived without the intercutting, at this point more a stylistic device than a narrative one. I'm looking forward to part two.
VI: Shelter (Jonah Markowitz, 2007)
Heartening coming of age romance. Skater/surfer Zach (Trevor Wright) wants to be an artist, but pulls shifts as a short-order cook, baby sits his five-year-old nephew Cody (Jackson Wurth) and runs around after his ill father and single-mother sister Jeanne (Tina Holmes), whilst trying to keep his girlfriend (Katie Walder) happy. Shortly after his best mate Gabe (Ross Thomas) goes to university, Zach becomes friends with Gabe's older brother, writer Shaun (Brad Rowe). The two fall in love - leaving Zach with some agonising choices.
Whilst I think there's a charge of wish-fulfilment to be levelled, it is nice to see a story that doesn't go (yawn) all Brokeback on us. There's some agonising, but frankly Wright is spared taxing his acting too far. Instead he can emote at the wheel (there's a lot of drinking and driving here - but without the OC consequences) or hug himself in his hoodie in the moody sepia twilight. Despite a slice of unwitting homophobia dramatised early on, no one but Zach and his sister really care, and the latter because she like an on-tap baby sitter. Even Jeanne's not-quite abusive boyfriend says nothing. Again, I suspect the director pushed at the limits of his actors.
I'm slow this year - a projected 97 films at this rate. But a busy weekend planned.
Totals: 8 Cinema: 2; DVD: 6; Television: 0.
Tags: