Miscellaneous Movie Musings the Sequel

[Ghoulish Delight]

Originally Posted by Morrigoon

Production values kicked ass and the rest of the movie is great.

Really? I thought the cinematography was absolutely abysmal. Particularly during the big music numbers which were all filmed from a half mile away to be sure you couldn't possible get a glimpse at any sort of emotional performance from the actors (though perhaps that's more a commentary on the actors than the cinematographer.

[Strangler Lewis]

Originally Posted by flippyshark

The stage musical has been slowly whittled over its history to where it now runs 2.5 hours, as opposed to its original 3. Two and a half hours is a perfectly normal running time for a big event movie these days, so I don't see any real reason not to keep the musical intact. The real challenge will be dealing with all those gorgeous but motionless ballads. Having an actor stand alone on stage and sing is thrilling in person, and potentially deadly on film, and this show has a lot of that. I imagine there will wind up being many cutaways to illustrative montage during songs like "I Dreamed A Dream" or "Empty Chairs At Empty Tables" to avoid the spectacle of hapless actors lip syncing while looking forlorn for entire songs at a time. I hope it all works out. I adore this show. But it could be a ponderous bore of a movie if not handled carefully.

As I remember it, the movie version of "Evita" had so many cutaways during numbers I was starting to have seizures.

[innerSpaceman]

I hated the musical, never read the book.

* * * * * * *

But last night, I saw a movie I was so intrigued by. It's called "Howl" and stars James Franco as beat-poet Allen Ginsberg, author of the eponymous 1955 poem. Also featuring David Strathairn, Bob Balaban, Jeff Bridges, and Jon Hamm - which wouldn't be unusual for a "Hollywood" movie - but this is more like a documentary - and yet not.

Yes, in that every word spoken by any character in the film was truly spoken by the characters they play. But otherwise, the scenarios were dramatically re-created, and not "reported" on in documentary style. The controversial poem at the center of the piece is rendered wonderfully in two ways - a re-staging of a 1955 Ginsberg reading (by Franco) at an underground club that was, of course, the epitome of the beat poet Go-Daddy-O scene so often lampooned and copied - - - and an animated accompaniment to a less-public-drama reading, also by James Franco, that constantly punctuates the action - which shifts between the censorship / obscenity trial of the poem's publisher, and an extended interview with Ginsberg that deftly illuminates the poem as it unfolds in the aforementioned treatments and at the trial.

It really is an unusual and, imo, an unusually successful format for a film. So I recommend it for that alone. But it's also equally worthwhile for the appreciation of this seminal work of poetry and of Ginsberg as a person that can be gleaned through this oddball, wonderful film.

[Alex]

Far overshadowed by the movie and eventually ALW but the novel Phantom of the Opera is worth a read as well.

[flippyshark]

Originally Posted by Alex

Far overshadowed by the movie and eventually ALW but the novel Phantom of the Opera is worth a read as well.

I read it several times during my "monster kid" youth. (I also built the Aurora plastic model and frequently checked out the 8mm highlights reel of the Lon Chaney version from the public library.)

[Eliza Hodgkins 1812]

Originally Posted by Alex

Far overshadowed by the movie and eventually ALW but the novel Phantom of the Opera is worth a read as well.

Agreed. There's even some loveliness in there. The silent film is also very good and probably the most faithful adaptation, save the end.

[Strangler Lewis]

As for Phantom as a play: when we did Hamlet in high school, Euro played the Ghost standing backstage and using a microphone. I don't remember anyone saying, "Ghost sounded like a guy backstage coming over the loudspeakers." Yet that is exactly the feeling I had seeing Phantom at the Orange County Performing Arts Center some years ago. Perhaps it could not be otherwise, or perhaps their sound engineer was unsubtle, but it was not very phantomy.

[innerSpaceman]

Saw Source Code over the weekend. A really fun flick making good use of a pretty good gimmick. Not quite up to Duncan Jones' debut feature (Moon), in my opinion, but a damn good movie nonetheless. I've heard some criticism that the ending defies the film's stated internal logic, but that was the entire point of the exercise, and anyone who didn't see it coming is really kinda stupid when it comes to films.

Oh, and Jake Gyllenhaal sporting a 3-day stubble throughout the proceedings as a heroic sweetie is a super-plus!

[Alex]

The ending didn't defy the films logic, but it did leave unexplained something that the movie seemed to think it had explained. It also raises a few subsidiary considerations that aren't necessarily relevant but I'm curious whether they were thought through at all.

I enjoyed it. It was well paced which is good since the ending was obvious so too much clutter on the way there would have been a problem.

[innerSpaceman]

Yeah, you don't see many mainstream movies clocking in a 90 minutes. That was a smart move, as was not going back to the 8-minute train loop too many times. I don't pay too much attention to internal logic McGuffin gobbledeegook talk, so I'm not sure what exactly you're referring to, Alex.

Spoiler tags, perhaps?