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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
timothyhulsey
Published Letters: 61 Editor's Choice: 4
1. M. Hulot's Holiday -- practically a silent comedy, especially appropriate for a beach holiday, cute scenes with kids and a catchy jazz score, all ages.
2. The General -- Buster Keaton, lots of action, unfortunate pro-Confederate sympathies, best seen with the Carl Davis score, suitable for all ages.
3. Paper Clips -- inspiring G-rated documentary about a group of rural Tennessee middle-schoolers who build their own Holocaust memorial, a personal favorite of mine, very patriotic, ages 8 and up.
4. The Witches -- Roald Dahl, Nicholas Roeg, Jim Henson, a deliciously over-the-top turn from Anjelica Huston, good creepy fun for kids who like their fairy tales dark, ages 8 and up.
5. Louisiana Story -- Robert Flaherty, great Virgil Thomson score, fun boy's adventure crossed with nature documentary, all ages. Also: Man of Aran, which is somewhat more action-packed but equally suitable for family viewing.
6. Adventures of Robin Hood -- old-fashioned, rip-roaring adventure, Errol Flynn in green tights, classic Korngold score, all ages.
7. Little Fugitive -- another good film for a beachfront holiday, sweetly innocent portrayal of children at a Coney Island long past, some slightly mature situations, ages 6 and up.
8. Thief of Bagdad -- 1940 British production with Sabu, unusual flashback structure, colonialist subtext, mild suspense, all ages.
9. Time Bandits -- Monty Python for kids, early (and creepy) CGI, fun boys' adventure but limited appeal for girls, ages 7 and up.
10. Nightjohn -- 1996 telefilm from Charles Burnett, sufficiently but not excessively graphic depiction of the horrors of slavery from a child's point of view, perhaps not appropriate for vacation, ages 9 and up (with close supervision).
Glad to see that TIME BANDITS crosses the gender line. I worried that the absence of major female characters would limit its appeal somewhat, and I still think that's a legitimate concern for some parents. George Miller's BABE is a legitimate children's classic, though the sequel BABE: PIG IN THE CITY is every bit as good and not so well known.
Many little girls love Yoram Gross's animated film DOT AND THE KANGAROO. I can understand why, but that doesn't mean I have to like it. As for Rankin-Bass films, I'd probably recommend THE DAYDREAMER, which adapts several Hans Christian Andersen tales.
Older children who enjoy traditional westerns would probably like Monte Hellman's RIDE IN THE WHIRLWIND. (It might be too slow and tense for most children under ten.) The film features moral ambiguity and bloodless violence -- some of the latter quite startling -- but contains no truly objectionable content. Too bad it's nearly impossible to find.
I'm not sure I agree that Lee and Eastwood are more similar than different. Eastwood's brand of filmmaking is heavily influenced by John Ford and classic Hollywood cinema. His style is largely invisible, and his films tend to feature tight, clearly told stories with well-defined protagonists. Lee, on the other hand, is more influenced by the 1970s generation of film-school mavericks, most obviously Scorsese and Van Peebles. Lee's style is experimental, self-conscious and narratively diffuse, and unlike Eastwood Lee works in a wide variety of genres, including documentary. Both have secured a place in American film history, and both are heavily influenced by music (though in very different ways) but beyond that they don't have very much in common.
I also doubt Lee would have made a better film of MIDNIGHT than Eastwood, since Lee's track record with gay and lesbian characters (cf. GET ON THE BUS, SHE HATE ME) is so abysmal.
But you never hear that particular issue addressed.
Really?! I hear this issue addressed all the time. There are plenty of scripts in the marketplace which feature well-defined African-American characters and provide important correctives to the "whites-only" version of American history. The problem is, filmmakers can't secure the funding they need to turn these scripts into movies.
Creationists are many things, few of them good, but the one thing they're not is stupid. And they've stumbled across some genuine philosophical conundrums -- most pointedly, the inherent and perhaps irreconcilable conflict between our biological understanding of homo sapiens as subject to the processes of nature and natural selection, and our political understanding of human beings as uniquely conscious, free agents with certain inalienable rights.
What many creationists seek is the unity of religion, science and politics, with religion forming the moral and philosophical framework for a society; science contributing fact-based knowledge, intellectual authority and epistemological clarity to that framework; and politics both reflecting and enacting the perfect harmony of the first two. The result would be something like Plato's infamous Republic, only without the need to base the society on a "noble lie."
Of course, this idea is based on the fetishization of science as the temporal form of Ultimate Knowledge, not on a working understanding of scientific method.
I'll grant that Agee's essay on VERDOUX is a classic, but I'm not sure the film itself has been rehabilitated. It has its admirers, some quite passionate and articulate, but still it seems regarded as a relatively undistinguished work in the Chaplin canon. (For my part, I would give VERDOUX the distinction of being the only Chaplin film to liberate itself from the conventions of music-hall comedy.) The Brechtian awkwardness, the blending of disparate genres and the direct address to the audience may not be so groundbreaking, either, since all of these elements are present in Chaplin's films from CITY LIGHTS onward, most notably (and jarringly) in THE GREAT DICTATOR. And the tradition of confrontational social-protest filmmaking can be traced at least as far back as Griffith's INTOLERANCE.
She sometimes opts for weird three-quarter back views of characters as they're speaking -- why?
My guess: It makes dubbing easier.
And why would one want to see this film if one is not a doctrinaire leftist and/or red-diaper baby?
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
