Storytelling
May. 25th, 2007 08:55 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
talktoolooseIt's a hot smoggy day and I'm hiding in the basement post-spamming!
Two recently viewed movies and why they work and don't:
Also, Nicole Kidman is making a habit of playing revolutionary female artists who later commit suicide. Too bad Sylvia Plath's just been done. Also, also, I have the hots for the guy who played her husband, Ty Burrell (despite his stupid name). It amused me to learn that the character he played, Allan Arbus, later went on to be an actor, most notably as the recurring psychiatrist character, Sydney, on M*A*S*H.
Speaking of fairy-tale movies, François Ozon's Les amants criminels, is a trip and a half. Hansel and Gretl as alienated French killer teens and the witch as a horny, gay woodsman who teaches Hans about love. The Disney/Tarantino ending is just.... wow, dude.
Two recently viewed movies and why they work and don't:
- Pan's Labrynth: The secret to the success of this film is that both the "real" and "fantasy" sides of the story make use of archetypal characters. If del Toro had made the Spanish Civil War sections more nuanced and ambiguous, it would have rendered the fantasy sections just an escape for the girl. In fact, the movie invited us to see the hard lessons of fairy tales in the world around us and to view the world as a place where real moral decisions can be made.
- Fur - An Imaginary Portrait of Diane Arbus: I enjoyed aspects of this movie, especially the performances but it ultimately fails. It is reductive and kind of insulting to imagine that Arbus' whole aesthetic moved into the rooms above her. It reduces the painful process of artistic discovery to a simple key-and-lock exercise. Very disappointing considering how good the writer/director's (Steven Shainberg) first movie, Secretary, was. He made Nicole Kidman do exactly the same investigative moves as Maggie Gyllenhaal did. In fact, Fur was the same movie as an artist biopic.
Also, Nicole Kidman is making a habit of playing revolutionary female artists who later commit suicide. Too bad Sylvia Plath's just been done. Also, also, I have the hots for the guy who played her husband, Ty Burrell (despite his stupid name). It amused me to learn that the character he played, Allan Arbus, later went on to be an actor, most notably as the recurring psychiatrist character, Sydney, on M*A*S*H.
Speaking of fairy-tale movies, François Ozon's Les amants criminels, is a trip and a half. Hansel and Gretl as alienated French killer teens and the witch as a horny, gay woodsman who teaches Hans about love. The Disney/Tarantino ending is just.... wow, dude.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2007-05-25 08:17 pm (UTC)*MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS*
Date: 2007-05-26 03:47 am (UTC)Snake looked at me funny when I said you have to take both endings as "real".
Hmm, are you saying it's a hopeful ending because Ofelia turns out to be the lost princess and ends up with her parents again? Or because moral order is restored in our universe? Both are true, I think.