Entries in the Category "epic wednesday"
Movie Review: Western Round-Up
I watched four westerns in one day during my Summer Movie Watch, and a fifth before it was over. Recently, I watched a sixth western just for the hell of it, during TCM’s Summer of the Stars. (It was Glenn Ford day, which was also the first time I saw the amazing Gilda.)
Anyway, that’s a lot of movies to juggle for a single review; also, my recall is not so strong that I can devote tons and tons of words to all of those movies. Still, I have westerns on the brain because I've been researching Tarantino movies for my film class and his work is heavily inspired by classic westerns (including his recent WWII epic, Inglourious Basterds).
So, instead of writing standard reviews, I have commented on a few interesting aspects of the individual films I watched and will allow my readers to draw their own comparisons. Please note: Spoilers ahead, though the majority of them are 40 years or older.
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Movie Reviews: Epic Wednesday Ghetto Life
I’m more Gilmore Girls than ghetto, of course, and so I can’t say that the realism of the movie really struck me or that I felt a spiritual connection with the characters or anything like that. Yeah, good stories are universal, but there’s a certain wall between me and this kind of life that sort of absents me from having anything real to say about it.
I know narratives, though, and this was a good one. The threads of the story were woven quite skillfully together, what seemed to be isolated incidences reverberating later, until they all came together in one explosive tangle. (Does that work?) There was also a nice parallelism with Caine’s childhood and Anthony’s, including the nearly-identical scenes on the stoops. The guy who will eventually be Anthony’s father teaches Caine how to be a thug; years later he finds himself in the same situation in the opposite role, with a kid at his feet. I don’t know what to make of the fact that he didn’t speak at all, and waited for Ronnie, Anthony’s mom, to come out and rescue him.
It is a bit puzzling—though moments in the film were clearly telegraphed from the get-go (I’m at home saying, “Someone’s gonna die right about now, I don’t know who, but…”), other moments were more careful and ambiguous. The character of Ronnie (Jada Pinkett later Smith) was the biggest puzzle, for me. In fact, she seemed to exist in a different movie altogether. She complained that Caine had become hardened, but how was she living in this environment without being hardened herself? How was she not filled with the rage that was fueling everybody else? “Do cops hate us?” her kid asks her and she says, “no, of course not, it was a misunderstanding.” That’s an extremely generous view to take of things—where is she drawing that strength from? Caine’s grandparents are explicitly drawing their optimism from their religious faith; Ronnie didn’t seem to have devoted herself to anything in that way.
Maybe we were supposed to understand that she had devoted her energy to Caine himself, who was a pretty questionable idol, seeing as he became more and more of an ass throughout the film. Was it for his benefit that she invited all those thug guys to her house for her going-away party? She couldn’t be friends with them if all she does is hassle them about their lifestyles and what they’re smoking and the kind of role models they are for her son. Just don’t invite them, Ronnie.
Spike Lee, and Michael Jordan wannabes, after the jump.
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Epic Wednesday: Here Comes the Counterculture
Tomorrow's Epic Wednesday viewing looks at hippies, sleazebags and antiheroes:
9am: Easy Rider
11am: Midnight Cowboy
1pm: Taxi Driver
4pm: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
And that's the end of the road! I'm looking forward to getting the privilege of movie choice back (returning to the Netflix queue already in progress) but I couldn't be happier to have finally seen for myself all these old classics that I've been hearing about my whole life. I recommend the experience to anyone.
Notes for a Tuesday night
On Boxing Movies
I've had a super busy day, but even so, I'm forcing myself to watch Rocky right now so I can mark a movie off my list today. I don't have anything against the movie necessarily--I understand that the stupidness of the many sequels is not a reflection on the value of the first. But, I gotta say--I hate boxing movies in general. They are so sweaty and armpitty and...and what's with that goo they rub on the boxer's wounds? It's just the grossest sport in existence.
Raging Bull, which I did not much care for, is not at all exempt from this.
Epic Wednesday for July 29
Here is tomorrow's viewing schedule for Epic Wednesday: (Vietnam) War is Hell edition.
9:00am: Platoon
12:00pm: MASH
3:00pm: The Deer Hunter
Notable Quotables
I went to a money management seminar tonight on Case's campus (my parents will be extremely excited to hear this) and one of the people who ran the seminar said something very quotable. This is not a direct attribution, of course, but it was something along these lines:
"People want to say that the hit the economy took last year was just a speed bump. The truth is, it wasn't a speed bump, it was a pothole, and when we hit it, the tire came off."
Who knew a financial analyst would have such a flair for metaphor?
Epic Wednesday: Ghetto Life
Today's viewing schedule:
9:30 Menace II Society
12:00 Do the Right Thing
3:00 Hoop Dreams
I have six movies left on the EW list, these three and three others. All six are on my shelves right now, and so I could conceivably finish the EW list in as much time as it takes me to watch those movies.
Unfortunately, two of the other three that remain are Natural Born Killers and Drugstore Cowboy, which both look terrible. The last is Unforgiven, which I would quite like to watch, but which I'm saving to for Friday night to watch with Jeremy.
Epic Thursday?
I had to shift my epic day this week; yesterday I was out of town.
Today's schedule:
10:00am - Sophie's Choice
2:00pm - Schindler's List
It's the Depression Special! All Holocaust, all the time.
For anyone who, like me, is obsessed with my list statistics, the viewing of Schindler's List will finish me on the top ten films of both AFI lists. I have quite nearly finished the top twenties as well; just One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (AFI 1998) and 2001: A Space Odyssey (AFI 2007) will do it.
Schindler is on EW's list, too, being less than 25 years old. (Such a serious movie, and it's just a teenager! That's so cute!) It doesn't fall within the top twenty at all, but at number 21, below such masterpieces as The Matrix and Casino Royale. When I mark it off, I will have just one film left in EW's top twenty-five, Spike Lee's Do the Right Thing.
I'll watch Lee's film during next week's regularly scheduled Epic Wednesday. It'll be joined by other portraits of ghetto life Menace II Society and Hoop Dreams.
Epic Wednesday: Films of David Lean
I've been looking forward to this Epic Wednesday--today I watch two films from master director Sir David Lean, Lawrence of Arabia and Doctor Zhivago. Lean was known for sweeping epics full of beautiful camerawork. I'm halfway through Lawrence now, and even on my modest TV the desert seems to stretch a hundred visible miles in each direction. Seeing so much empty space involves the viewer in Lawrence's journey, makes us feel as though we too must take each step. Here's an article on the work of David Lean that perhaps does his genius a bit more justice than I can.
IMDB reminds me that Lean also directed one of the best list movies I have watched so far, The Bridge on the River Kwai--and amazing movie about prisoners of war struggling to maintain their dignity in the enemy camp.
Yet I think my favorite Lean film might still be Brief Encounter, one of the most beautiful thwarted romances ever. If I have any stamina left after today's two films, both of them 3 hours and change, then I will put on Brief Encounter, which doesn't appear on any of my lists but is a masterpiece regardless.
Join me next week for Epic Wednesday: Depression Special: Schindler's List and Sophie's Choice.
By the way, if anyone is interested in my summer movie watch statistics, here are today's calculations:
After today's two films, I will have a total of 38 films left to watch. That's 42% of the total films I needed to watch; I passed the halfway point last Wednesday amidst the westerns.
Fourteen movies will finish the EW list; twenty-seven will finish both the AFI lists. (Note: There are three films which appear on both the EW and AFI lists which are being counted on both sides.) My plan right now is to exhaust the EW list first and end on the AFI list--I want the last movie to be a fantastic one.
Epic Wednesday: Westerns
Tomorrow was meant to be a double header of two classic films based on novels, films which decided to recreate the experience of reading the novels by taking approximately as long to watch them as it would take to read them. I.e., Doctor Zhivago and Lawrence of Arabia.
Unfortunately, Lawrence of Arabia is apparently an extremely hot property. It's been borrowed from both Case's library as well as Cleveland Heights'.
Subbing in, then, are the following movies:
High Noon
Shane
The Searchers
The Wild Bunch
Unlike war movies or mob epics, westerns actually tend to clock in at extremely short and manageable times. High Noon is an impressive 83 minutes long. Shane and The Searchers both fall just on the sweet side of two hours at 118 and 119 minutes, respectively. The Wild Bunch is slightly over two hours, but this is not a problem both because my movie stamina is at Olympic levels right now, and also because it's got William Holden in it.
See you tomorrow, Bill!
Reviews: Epic Wednesday: Mob Rule
I started with Scarface, figuring that I wouldn’t want to watch it after six hours of Godfathering. All I really knew about it was that it was a remake (but not really) of a crime film from the 30s, and that at the end Al Pacino says, “Say hello to my leetle friend.” And shoots people. Also, you can buy the poster at any college bookstore.
More about Scarface, as well as The Godfather(s) after the jump.
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Epic Wednesday: Mob Rule
A preview of tomorrow's viewing schedule:
9:00am: Scarface ('83)
12:00pm: The Godfather
3:00pm: The Godfather Part IIRun time: just over nine hours, total
Al Pacino quotient: high
Body count: presumably will also be pretty high
My mobster movie education has been pretty limited up to this point; or so I was told when I dared to tell somebody that my favorite mob movie was Donnie Brasco.
But really, a film buff such as myself going almost 30 years without seeing The Godfather is in itself a crime. Tomorrow I will make amends.
Lots of thanks to Sis and Husband of Sis for lending me the DVDs.
Epic Wednesday: Ancient Rome
Due to last month's move, and the attendant difficulties, I've not been making the progress on my movie list that I should have by this point in the summer.
So, starting yesterday, I established Epic Wednesday to knock off two to four movies in one day, preferably those which are "epic" in nature (i.e. insanely long) or those which are part of a series. Though I got a bit of a late start, I made it through Spartacus (3 hours, 18 minutes) and Ben-Hur (3 hours, 34 minutes). Spartacus is about the uprising of slaves, trained as gladiators, in ancient Rome. Ben-Hur is about the conflict between Jews and Romans in the Roman-ruled Jewish-inhabited historical land of Judea.
How did the films compare?