My favorite movie for the Oscars!

Any movie that uses Beethoven's Symphony No. 7 in A major automatically goes into my category of excellent films. I thought that I would take a moment to discuss a movie that I just saw, and is likely to be up for best picture at the Oscars. It has already been nominated for a Golden Globe, and I must say, it is one of my favorites of the year as well.

"The King's Speech" stars Colin Firth as King George VI and Geoffrey Rush as his elocution and speech 'teacher' Lionel Logue. Like all movies I end up loving, it took some forcing myself to go see it. I was much more excited about the tense, anxiety inducing thriller "Black Swan"...which I also loved. However, Colin Firth in particular (but also Geoffrey Rush, who I don't think has ever given a bad performance) is so incredible, I found myself mesmerized by a person I have never had any interest in whatsoever. In the film (and perhaps in real life? I confess to not being familiar with much about this era of British history), King George ("Bertie") talks funny--and I don't mean the stammer (perhaps some of you are familiar with the distinct manners of elocution around that time...several Hollywood personalities talked in a similar manner). He has a temper, cowers at times in the face of his brother and father, and is like much royalty, reticent about his emotions, past, and much about himself.

It is a testament to Colin Firth's extraordinary performance then, as well as the direction of Tom Hooper and screenplay by David Seidler, that these elements do not come across to make us dislike the character. We are rather more endeared to him because of these traits, and the film manages to build Firth's and Rush's, characters with very little exposition (always the mark of a fine film). If anyone has ever had to speak in public, it is quite a nerve-wracking experience. For a person with a speech impediment, it must be ten times worse. The film brings this anxiety out-not with pity or derision, but simply as a hurdle this man must face to perform his job (being king...). Still, at the climactic moment (cue Beethoven!), the gravity of the situation and the importance of the struggles of the king are executed beautifully as he makes a solemn speech to his subjects on the entrance of England into WWII, linking his personal story with the overarching history to which royalty especially is invariably intertwined.

It is a movie that deals wonderfully with the subject of royalty as well, and the manner that Albert and Elizabeth (Helena Bonham-Carter) fulfill their duties while others are not perhaps up to the challenge. Also, the manner in which commoners interact and do(not) necessarily comprehend what it still means to be the king (or queen...). "Black Swan" was wonderful for its excess, the story (even though it's not the most original idea...), and of course, Natalie Portman was wonderful. And I'm a sucker for a movie about dancing. However, "The King's Speech, with its understatement, and masterful performances, is exquisite. It deserves to win, and while it may lose out to the larger box office of films such as "Black Swan" or "Social Network", "The King's Speech" is my personal pick. At least, for now.

Master of Suspense

Well, I'm finally settled here in Los Angeles, working on my Master's Degree! I realize that the consistency of my posts is shaky at best, but I thought I would just keep plugging away, and try to keep up. At least you know that the movies that I do talk about are the ones that truly inspire me to write about them. That being said, let's get down to it!

I am working for the University of Southern California at the moment, in the capacity of a 'reader' for a class taught by Dr. Drew Casper on the subject of Alfred Hitchcock. Basically, I sit in on the class, do the readings, and then I grade the papers of the undergraduates assigned to me. The class has met 3 times now, I believe. We have worked our way through Hitchcock's silet films and British sound films, and next week, we'll move on to his Hollywood career.

I wanted to take a moment though, and recognize two films that I was particularly impressed with, seeing that not many people give as much thought to his British films as his Hollywood ones. While his Hollywood classics such as Vertigo, Spellbound, The Birds, and of course Psycho remain his most popular and widely viewed work, it is the films that he made during his time in Britain that helped raise him to the level of master.

In particular, the two films that speak to me are "The 39 Steps"(1935) and "The Lady Vanishes" (1938). Hitchcock has darker films, and films that mix light and dark, and the element of slapstick that goes into these two films is perhaps what draws me, personally, to them more than his other films (which have, arguably, greater technical merit). Hitchcock was a master at blending genres, and these two films, while very different, are similar in that they are a combination of suspense, action, adventure, mystery, thriller, and romantic comedy.

We'll start chronologically, with "The 39 Steps". Starring Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll, this film centers around a man who gets dragged into a game of espionage and intrigue involving national secrets that are about to be smuggled out of the country. After assisting an agent, who then gets murdered in his apartment, he is on the flee from the bad guys, the government-everyone basically, until he can clear his name. One of the points that is continually brought up in class is how Hitchcock's stories rely on character-it is how he successfully builds suspense, and why his stories are so gripping. He often takes flat, morally ambiguous characters at the beginning and takes them on a journey towards greater humanism and personality. This film is no different, which the character of Richard Hannay (Donat) taking on multiple character roles as masks as he makes his journey through the film. Madeleine Carroll takes the role of the 'cool blond', who starts out hindering Hannay as much as the rest, but also goes through a transformation of character and greater depth as the film goes on. The best scene, in my opinion, occurs after these two have been handcuffed together, and find themselves looking for a way out of their predicament while trapped in an inn in the Highlands of Scotland. This scene is also quite risque, and extraordinary for its blatant sexuality that was quite uncommon at that time (they even appear in a bed together!).


This film is particularly remarkable in my opinion because the acting is spot on. The secondary characters are particularly well rounded and interesting, despite having very little time on screen. Donat himself is probably one of the mroe charismatic British actors of that time period. Hitchcock perhaps would disagree with the importance placed on the actors, and perhaps it is just their ability to effortlessly carry off his (and screenwriter Charles Bennett's) masterpiece. The pacing of the story carries the audience along so quickly, you barely have time to catch your breath before the next sequence occurs. I would give this movie 5 stars, and heartily recommend it, especially if you are not familiar with Hitchcock's British, or black and white work.

The next film I want to overview is "The Lady Vanishes", which actually reminded me a lot of Agatha Christie's 'Murder on the Orient Express' when I first heard about it (even though they have very little to do with one another, except for taking place on a train). This film centers on a young woman who befriends an elderly woman aboard a train while she is heading back home to be married (for $!). When the lady vanishes suddenly, everyone else on the train claims not to have seen her, even though the protagonist swears she was there. Helped by a slightly roguish man (who records folk songs to write about), she searches the train and tries to unearth the conspiracy surrounding the old lady. My personal favorite scene is a rather farcical fight in the baggage compartment.

Once again, this film is chock full of wonderful secondary characters, most interesting among them is a homosexual couple whose only interest throughout the film is cricket, and getting back to England in time for a penultimate match. Claustrophobic (the whole set was something like 70 feet), this film defines how to tell a story in an extremely limited space-indeed, one of the main pleasures of the film is where the devil could they be hiding a little old lady on this train? Once again, the characters begin as morally ambiguous, but slowly grow in our estimation through their actions and worries. It is his first politically allegorical film (taking issues with Britain's lack of a stance against an increasingly fascist rising power in Europe at the time). Also chock full of engaging and charismatic performances by Margaret Lockwood and Michael Redgrave, this has perhaps bumped out The Birds as my favorite Hitchcock. (Also, the first of Hitchcock;s films with a recapitulation scene) Obviously, this film also gets 5 stars.



So, if you are looking for a more light-hearted side to Hitchcock, these two films are both wonderful. Perhaps they lack some of the mastery of later classics (Notorious just popped into my head...that's a wonderful movie). But these movies are full of incredible characters, amazing writing, and wonderfully paces plots with the right amount of suspense, humor and adventure mixed in to make one heck of a good time.

(At this moment, they are both available on at IMDB.com, as well as Netflix Instant Play).

Catching Up

There is a saying that classics are what everyone wants to have read, but no one actually wants to read. I feel like sometimes I get that way with films also. If I know that I should see a movie because it is a classic, but perhaps I am not feeling particularly interested at the time, or there is some commercial blockbuster coming out I'm looking forward to, I will put off the classic film for as long as possible. Until somehow I am forced to see it, I push it to the bottom of my Netflix account, or check it out and return it without watching it.

Such was the case with Ingmar Bergman's classic film "The Seventh Seal". It was briefly discussed in my film history class, and I decided that I had to see it. Two years later, I still hadn't gotten around to it. Finally, last November I couldn't put it off anymore, and I moved it to the front of my list. It is the first Bergman film that I have seen, but will not be the last. IMDB's summary: "A man seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black Plague". A pretty accurate description, however it cannot capture the nature of the film, and the reason that it should be required viewing for anyone who calls themselves a fan of film.

I have never seen a film that captures more of the dismay and hopelessness of the outbreak of the black plague. Recent films try to shock audiences with scenes of violent illnesses, or grotesque, wasting diseases. Fair enough, I'm sure they're not inaccurate. However, the Seventh Seal captures a sense of abandonment and foreboding despair that feels so real that it is easier to understand the horror of this particular event in history than some vague historical description of it. Characters in the film turn to religion (often times, disturbingly, to methods such as self-flagellation), turn away from religion, and try to cope with life and death in various ways. There are characters for different sets of belief, making the Seventh Seal a sort of allegorical film. Of course, this also appears through one of the more interesting characters of the film, Death. He and the knight, Antonius Block, play a game of chess in which the outcome is life and death. Death is also in my opinion, morbidly comical at points of the film, as he suddenly appears behind a man hiding in a tree trying to escape him and produces a large saw to cut the tree down.

Even in the darkness of the film however, there is a young family, Jof(Joseph), Mia (Mary) and their young son. As a representation of the holy family, the make it through the turbulent and dangerous times and provide hope in the midst of all the darkness and death surrounding them.

Anyway, trying to keep this post a bit shorter, I highly recommend this film. It is the most interesting rumination on death and the "mortal coil" that all humans face. A masterpiece of film, excellent cinematography and superb acting. It is the only film I have ever seen where I immediately wanted to watch it again with the commentary track on. If you want to see a film that will actually make you think, and you can tell a lot of though went into, this is the one for you.

A New Dawn for Vampires-With Lots Less Angst

It has been difficult for me to find time to post recently because I was working on graduate school applications, and more recently, I have just been working to make money for graduate school. There have been several films I have wanted to post about including "The Invention of Lying" and "The Seventh Seal", both of which I saw a while ago, but I just couldn't get past the basic mapping out of points that I wanted to discuss. Maybe I'll come back to them later.

This post however, I wish to devote to a movie that I just saw yesterday at the Art Theater in Champaign (previously Boardman's Art Theatre, but now under new ownership). I spent several hours there yesterday, as me and my friend went and saw the animated shorts that are up for Oscars, as well as the late night film "Daybreakers".

I want to spend a quick paragraph on the animated features up for the Oscars this year which include "French Roast" from France, "Wallace and Grommit: A Matter of Loaf and Death" from the UK, "La Dama Y La Muerte" from Spain, "Granny O'Grimm's Sleeping Beauty" from Ireland, and "Logorama" also from France. They were all wonderful, but I have to say, I'm rooting for "Logorama". While "La Dama Y La Muerte" was my favorite in terms of style and story, "Logorama" was one of the more thoughtful, critical and innovative animated shorts that I have ever seen. It contains over 2,000 images and logos from businesses and commercialized society in general, and while the story is nothing new, the fantastic way in which they have categorized and used the logos makes it this year's best animated short. Sadly, while I love Wallace and Grommit, and realize clay-mation is an incredibly intricate and time consuming art form, it is about third or fourth on my list of shorts that
deserve the Oscar.

But on to the main event!! At 10 PM, I sat down to the new release "Daybreakers", the most current film to come out in theaters about that most popular of subjects these days, vampires. Now, I'm not a huge fan of horror films in general, or of vampire movies specifically. I have been trying to rectify this with classics such as "Suspiria", so we'll see how that goes. However, I am not one of the best sources for information on vampire lore, besides what everyone knows. However, it seems to me that since Anne Rice has started writing, and really as cinematic history continues, vampirism has gotten poncy (see: Interview With a Vampire), and something that is supposed to be aspired to (see: Twilight series, any of the new vampire books, etc.). There are very few bastions left where the true horror of vampires--they feed off people people!--is left ( I have heard 30 Days of Night is a good film for this). Too often now, the fear of being an unstoppable, life-sucking force is taken out of the story ("No Edward, I want to be a vampire, because you're 'vegetarian', and we can make swoony eyes at each other forever!). Not that I'm saying teenage angst and romance doesn't have it's place, but the horror genre is not it.

Now "Daybreakers" is a film that treats vampires in an interesting, and relatively new way. The premise is that in a world where if you are bitten by a vampire you either a)die or b)turn into a vampire, the human population is dwindling. As a hi-tech company races to find a blood substitute, several of the remaining humans turn to Edward Dalton (played by the appropriately somber Ethan Hawke), a leading vampire blood scientist, a reluctant vampire (along the lines of Brad Pitt in Interview...). He doesn't drink human blood. However, in a world where the food supply is dwindling, there is the appropriate amount of terror within the vampire community as they start feeding off each other, and themselves (with horrific results).

Once Willem Dafoe shows up, it turns out that he has figured out a cure for vampirism. He used to be one himself. One aspect that I like about the direction the story takes is that it is not desirable to be a vampire, because it involves taking human life, and Edward Dalton would never bite the girl that he starts forming an attachment too (and she wouldn't ask!). There's nothing romantic about it in this film. What they can become as they slowly starve to death is grotesque.

The plot is another aspect of the film that I love, because it fuses the horror genre with science fiction. There have been many movies about the end of civilization as we know it--this film just takes a different point of view on it. The characters are suitably complex, but not so much that it requires extensive back story. There are no long expository sequences about the past, how they got this way, why they have to go back, etc. Things are the way they are, but there is a slim chance to change things for the better.

I like this film. The cinematography is very nicely done, beautiful blue filters make the night that the vampires live in as cold and lifeless as their undead hearts. The warm yellow filters of the daytime make you feel the relative safety the sun brings to humans (unlike a certain series of sparkly beings, these vampires burst spectacularly into flames in the sunlight). Some of the shots are incredibly structured also, and the inevitable presence of red in horror films always adds a wonderful color to a scene. It is gruesome and gory, however not too realistically so as go flying around, and the vampires explode in a shower of flame and sparks as they get staked through the heart.

Somehow, the actors don't take themselves too seriously, but manage to be perfectly believable in their roles. I have heard that in a movie, you can tell one big lie, and the audience will accept it. Here the one big lie is that vampires are real and they constitute the majority of society. Everything beyond that lies within the realms of believability for this one stretch of reality. At the Art Theater, the owner came out and introduced the film (which I really thought was a nice touch) and he said it was one of the more "realistic" horror films that he had seen in awhile, and I have to say, I agree with him. I give this film two thumbs up, an A, 4 stars, however you want to rate it, and I think that with its combination of horror and sci-fi, and the heavyweight actors in it (including Ethan Hawke, Sam Neill, and Willem Dafoe) this movie is a must see.



As a side note, anyone in the Champaign-Urbana I would encourage to go out and support the newly reopened Art Theater in downtown Champaign. The new owner seems very nice, and you can tell he really likes the movies that he's showing. The prices are reasonable, and I am so glad that we still have an independent, locally owned theater in the area. I highly recommend this theater, it's the best in town! Plus, you don't have to sit through half an hour of commercials before you get to the actual movie.