Kevin's Digital Week 20: Middle Earths and Straw Hats

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Wednesday, 14 April 2010 05:00

Written by Kevin Filipski

The Lord of the Rings
(Warner Brothers) 

The Lord of the Rings Trilogy
(New Line)
Ralph Bakshi’s disappointing animated adaptation of the first two books of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings was released in 1978; using Bakshi’s rotoscoping technique—shooting with real actors and hand-drawing over them, frame by frame—the result was certainly an arresting, if awkward, visualization of Tolkien’s legendary Middle Earth. But Bakshi’s other limitations as a director forced his film into a no man’s land between unflagging inventiveness and clichéd spectacle. Crippled by indifferent voice actors and laggard pacing, Bakshi’s The Lord of the Rings remains a brave failure. The worn-out print isn’t done any favors by Blu-ray’s exceptional clarity, as scratches and visual noise distract from the vibrant colors and action. The film needs a true restoration, but will probably never receive one.

Peter Jackson’s epically-scaled (three films, over nine hours) adaptation not only won a boatload of Oscars but also became the last word in the fantasy genre thanks to the very real brilliance with which the director and his stellar technicians conjured up a fantastically breathtaking Middle Earth. Superbly acted and containing an extraordinary array of live-action and computerized effects, Jackson’s trilogy has earned its status as a cult classic and as a riveting, absorbing drama in its own right. On Blu-ray, the uniqueness of Jackson’s vision comes out in spades, thanks to a superb hi-def transfer. 

The Bakshi Blu has one extra: a 30-minute featurette about Bakshi’s career, which glosses over his work on Rings when it should dive into the difficulties of bringing it to the screen—it was originally supposed to be two films, instead of abruptly terminating before the second book ends. Jackson’s trilogy gets an extra disc for each film, with numerous and illuminating extras about all facets of the production. This Trilogy set will do nicely until the inevitable extended-version set comes along. 

DVD of the Week

The Italian Straw Hat
(Flicker Alley)
Rene Clair, one of the pioneers of early French cinema (his A nous la liberte was an obvious inspiration for Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times), made this silent gem in 1927, transposing the action from 1851 to 1895, to the very beginning of motion pictures, which allows Clair the opportunity to make a delightful homage to those early, silly silent shorts. Frenetic farce, as Chaplin and Buster Keaton's silents have shown, rarely ages when done well, and Clair's fast-paced film deserves to be in that elite company. 

On DVD, The Italian Straw Hat shows its age, but the unavoidable blemishes are part of an 85-year-old movie's primitive charm; the print itself has a vividness remarkable for a film this old. Also included are a pair of music tracks—chamber orchestra and solo piano—which lets viewers enjoy Clair's classic in two different ways. The small but enticing set of extras includes La Tour / Eiffel Tower, a 1928 Clair short film, and Noce en Gouguette / Fun After the Wedding, a 1907 short by Ferdinand Zecca, an inspiration for the madcap chases in Clair’s film.

Pandemonium Stirs "The Black Waters of Echo's Pond"

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 10 April 2010 20:32

Written by Maitland McDonagh / Miss FlickChick

Directed by Gabriel Bologna
Written by Sean Clark, from a story by Bologna and Michael Berenson
Starring: Arcadiy Golubovich, Robert Patrick, Elise Avellan, Electra Avellan, Nick Mennell, Mircea Monroe, Walker Howard, Danielle Harris, M.D. Walton, James Duval, Adama Paladino, Richard Tyson

In 1927, a team of archeologists finds a tomb dedicated to the pagan god Pan. Team leader Niegel (Adama Paladino) lays claim to a pre-Biblical board game entombed inside, which he takes home with him to Beacon's Island, Maine — infuriating Nicholas (Richard Tyson), who underwrote the expedition and who wants what's his. Niegel responds that he's hidden the game where no one will ever find it, and then kills Nicholas and himself.

Eighty years later, nine feckless friends arrive for a weekend of fun on the island, whose only resident is eccentric caretaker Pete (Robert Patrick). Well, make that eight friends — Anton (Arcadiy Golubovich) and his wife Erica (Elise Avellan); Anton’s best friend Josh (Nick Mennell) and his fiancee, Renee (Electra Avellan), Erica’s twin sister; Trent (Walker Howard) and his girlfriend Kathy (Danielle Harris); Rob (M.D. Walton), who got his sweet corporate gig through Trent but subsequently hop-scotched over his  friend; and buxom, blond, B-movie starlet Veronique (Mircea Monroe), whose relentless flirting has sometimes sorely tried the patience of her female friends — and one odd man out Rick (James Duval), whose drinking, drugging and relentlessly irresponsible carousing has alienated half his old friends and left him on thin ice with the rest.

Naturally, they find the ornate, wicked-weird looking game and decide to play — it must be just like Monopoly, they figure, only way cooler looking. Needless to say, the game quickly does what it does, unleashing repressed desires, exposing the fault lines beneath apparently solid relationships and ripping the scabs off unhealed wounds. The result is, well, pandemonium.

Credit where it's due to director Gabriel Bologna — the son of veteran actors Joseph Bologna and Renee Taylor — and screenwriter Sean Clark: The Pan game is a novel touch in an otherwise standard-issue slasher movie. And there's something almost subversive about the casting. Yes, the actors are better looking than the average group of nine friends in their twenties… at least, nine friends in their twenties who aren't in the movie business. But the fact that a third were clearly not born in the US (Golubvich is from Russia, the Avellans from Venezuela) and that where they came from has absolutely no bearing on their characters is, in its own way, as striking as seeing Night of the Living Dead’s Duane Jones in a role that wasn't written for black man. It's a casual acknowledgment that Americans come in many varieties. That they're all equally vulnerable to the Great God Pan's malevolent influence is also a given, though true to the much-mocked cliche, one of the black guys dies first. On the other hand, there's more than one — that, too, could be construed as progress of a sort within genre conventions.

For more by Maitland McDonagh: MissFlickChick.com

"Love is my sin" Reinterprets Shakespeare's Sonnets

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Parent Category: Film and the Arts

Category: Reviews

Published on Saturday, 10 April 2010 20:09

Written by Lucy Komisar

Written by William Shakespeare
Adapted and directed by Peter Brook
Starring Natasha Parry, Michael Pennington

Creating a richness in their arrangement that adds to the beauty of each poem, director Peter Brook has ordered 31 Shakespearean sonnets, dramatically recited by Natasha Parry and Michael Pennington, to create a striking theater piece. It elegantly expresses love as it consumes men and women in the highs and lows of their relationships and into their later years. The poems are grouped to praise love that lasts through time and to plumb the pain of separation; the torments of jealousy, self-deception, and guilt; and the sorrows of older age. That doesn't quite make a play, but it sets new standards for poetry reading.

The set is simple, some wood tables, chairs and stools on a Persian rug. Parry, who is Brook's wife, wears black slacks and a long coat with swirls in the back. Pennington has a sweater over his black trousers. Franck Krawczyk sets off the poems with the 17th-century music of Louis Couperin on accordion and keyboard.

Under Brook's sharp but subtle direction, in which the drama enhances but never effaces the lines, the actors play to each other and against each other. They move close; they drift or march apart. They are sensitive and they are furious. They are anxious. Sometimes they are forgiving. Pennington seems to suffer more. Parry gets angrier.

There's a sense of Shakespeare looking back. The first section, Devouring Time, reflects on the love and beauty that lasts even in the lover's thoughts, which makes losses disappear. It compares the speaker to "Bare ruined choirs, where late the sweet birds sang." The lover knows that time will take his love away: "This thou perceiv'st which makes thy love more strong/ to love that well which though must leave ere long."

Separation brings conflicting emotions. There is pain felt by a lover who waits like a slave and a fool, regardless of what the beloved may be doing. Alternatively, there is joy at thinking of the loved one: "For thy sweet love rememb'red such wealth brings/ that then I scorn to change my state with Kings." Or sorrow: "…thou away, the very birds are mute." And on a journey, "My grief lies onward and my joy behind." And "..my thoughts (from far where I abide) intend a zealous pilgrimage to thee." (Just compare that with "Wish you were here!")

But then Jealousy arises, and with it protest, disillusion, self-deception. Parry disputes: "Canst thou, O cruel, say I love thee not/ when I against myself with thee partake?" Pennington is distraught.  But perhaps the object of love is unworthy: "For I have sworn thee fair, and thought thee bright/who art as black as hell, as dark as night." And "So shall I live, supposing thou art true,/like a deceived husband; so loves' face / may still seem love to me, though altered new." "Thou mayst be false, and yet I know it not."

One might pretend: "Therefore I lie with her, and she with me, / and in our faults by lies we flattered be." Or worry: ‘"For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,/ from me far off, with others all too near."

Or ask forgiveness: "Alas 'tis true, I have gone here and there," says Pennington on bended knee. It made him young, he admitted. Parry pushes him to the floor! But there is half regret: "Enjoyed no sooner but despised straight." And besides, the other is just as guilty: "..those lips of thine, / that have profaned their scarlet ornaments,/ and sealed false bonds of love as oft as mine." Finally, he persuades her not to hate: " ‘I hate' From hate away she threw,/ and saved my life, saying ‘not you'." Parry moves from the fury of the first "I hate" to the softness of the last forgiveness.

And lastly comes Time Defied, about death. Their faces are drawn and pensive. One asks a lover to forget "If thinking on me then should make you woe." But in another verse, the man wonders why she pines within but is "painting thy outwards wall so costly gay?" In the end love is "an ever-fixed mark/ that looks on tempests and is never shaken." And, Shakespeare finishes that sonnet with an undeniable avowal: "If this be error and upon me proved,/ I never writ, nor no man ever loved."

"Love is my sin"
Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord (Paris)/Theatre for a New Audience
The Duke on 42nd Street
229 West 42nd Street
New York City, New York
646-223-3010.
Opened April 1, 2010; closes April 17, 2010

For more by Lucy Komisar: TheKomisarScoop.com

Photos: Pascal Victor