Thanks for this and so much more.
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Category Archives: Movies
MARILYN AT THE BEACH
A LAWRENCE SCHILLER FOR TODAY
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ESTHER AGAIN
HERE’S LOOKING AT YOU, KID
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GRACE
ESTHER RALSTON
DJANGO UNCHAINED
Probably the best thing you can say about Django Unchained is that it’s almost impossible to say anything about it at all. It’s an utterly incoherent work of art, aesthetically, conceptually, emotionally.
What’s odd about it is that it has a kind of cellular structure — it’s component parts work on their own terms while you’re experiencing them. One cell sparks interesting intellectual thoughts about the place of slavery in American history. Another cell arouses the sort of emotions we associate with intense and unapologetic melodrama. Yet another cell connects us with the exhilaration of a brilliant goof on generic clichés.
The only thing I can think of to compare it with is a Joseph Cornell box, whose juxtaposition of discrete, disjointed sections somehow adds up to an aesthetic whole.
Is it important? Is it profound? Is it ultimately satisfying or meaningful? I really don’t know. All I can say is that it’s fascinating, that it’s of its time, that it took a lot of courage and eccentric genius to create. Compared to the sort of rote junk Hollywood is programmed to turn out these days, it’s a miraculous anomaly.
A SIMPLE MISUNDERSTANDING
Another new film from Matt Barry — harrowing . . .
LUNCH WITH MARILYN
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NATALIE READING
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DINNER
Matt Barry’s latest — laugh or cry, your choice . . .
A LAWRENCE SCHILLER FOR TODAY
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A COMIC BOOK COVER FOR TODAY
Personal love — it’s the best kind.
ARIAS
Western movies used to be referred to, usually dismissively, as horse operas. It’s not a bad term for them. Like classical operas, they might have silly plots or bad acting, but these things might be redeemed by beautiful music, or at least a few memorable arias.
Horse operas had their arias, too — passages showing superb horsemen riding superb mounts through handsome scenery, or in rousing action sequences. The quality of the horses and the horsemanship in Hollywood movies was almost always of the very highest order, even in the crappiest B-Westerns, so if you love watching images of fine horses ridden by fine horsemen, there is almost always great pleasure to be had from any kind of Western.
If you’re “tone deaf” to these visual “arias” in Westerns, to the kinetic melody of the movement of men and horses through space, you may find the appeal of Westerns baffling, just as a musically tone-deaf patron will find the appeal of many operas baffling.
This is your problem, not the problem of the operatic works before you.