Epic films, part one

Over Easter, I had a lot of time on my hands and, like I said in a previous entry, I was in the mood for long-form entertainment. So I fulfilled some Easter traditions, and gave in to some cravings, and watched some epic films.

Gone with the Wind:

This had been on my mind for ages, probably close to a year off and on. And when mental_floss reminded me of the Carol Burnett “Went with the Wind,” and posted some of the screen tests for Gone with the Wind, I decided to watch the whole thing.

I had forgotten how incredibly good that movie is. Yeah, it’s incredibly long, but it doesn’t drag. The story keeps moving, from pretty nearly the first scene all the way through to the end. So much happens, but it’s not overwhelming with anything either. It’s incredibly well-paced.

And it’s incredibly well-acted, too. Hattie McDaniels, of course, won Best Supporting Actress (her acceptance speech was another clip on mental_floss, and it made me tear up). But Vivian Leigh and Clark Gable are nearly perfect. Rhett is not a horrible person: he’s mercenary and he admits it. But Scarlett …. is. She’s mercenary, and knows it, but does her absolute best to make it appear otherwise. She’s a horrible person, but you can’t help but sympathize with her. You love her and, even while you want her to get her comeuppance somehow, you still want her to succeed.

I had expected to find the movie more dated. It is so often seen as a love song and an elegy to the Old South. There are definitely elements of racism. And it certainly wouldn’t be made today. But I felt, while watching it this time, that the “oh, woe are we” part of it was found more in the screen narration (someone pleeeeease tell me the actual term for this? The written narration that comes up on the screen, like the dialogue in silent movies) rather than in the story or the acting. Scarlett was a belle of the Old South, no question, and she milked that for all that it was worth. And there are certainly characters who moan the loss of the Old South way of life. But both Scarlett and Melanie do their absolute best, everything they can, to move on from that way of life and to adapt to the new order and the new lifestyle that they must. Scarlett does it by becoming a businesswoman and a fantastic manager of Tara. Melanie does it through emotional support, and by refusing to give in to fear and despair the way that Scarlett’s family does. Two very different women, but both adapting in their own way.

I also found myself much more frustrated with Ashley than I remember being before. He explicitly tells Scarlett that if it weren’t for Melanie, he’d marry her, that he loves her. Is it really any wonder that she can’t fully move on from that? If Ashley had been harsh at the beginning, and been honest with Scarlett about his true feelings, it could have been a much different story.

I love the ending, too. It’s complete, but also full of hope for things to come. I like to think that Scarlett finds a way to get Rhett back, and makes Tara a successful plantation again. I can’t quite imagine the exact way that she does it, but I fully believe that she will.

The Ten Commandments:

This is an Easter tradition in the US, and it’s been a few years since I’ve seen it. This, unlike Gone with the Wind, was dated. The acting was good, but the presentation was incredibly dated. There was even a speech at the beginning about … I don’t remember, something about standing up to government and following rules and whatever else. I didn’t really pay attention.

The acting was so incredibly stylized. It’s not bad, of course, but it’s very stylized. There were a few points where I couldn’t help laughing, because by modern standards, it’s so ridiculous. The plagues were skimmed over – not even montaged! River to blood, immediately followed by death of the first-born.

I also, as a feminist, was a bit disturbed by the implication that “God hardening pharaoh’s heart” was done by a jealous woman. A beautiful, well-acted jealous woman, but still a jealous woman. It struck me as sexist in a way that it hasn’t before. (of course, it’s been at least ten years since I’d watched the whole thing. Probably more like fifteen.)

But Charlton Heston is fantastic. So once I’d watched The Ten Commandments, I had to watch something else of his.

Ben Hur:

What can I say about Ben-Hur? It, like Gone with the Wind, is a nearly perfect film. It’s got good pacing, good acting, everything. There’s a reason that it won a record number of Oscars. It actually wouldn’t be unthinkable that this could be made today.

*sigh*

As you can tell, I’m kind of running out of steam. I’ll have to write about my absolute love for Peter O’Toole (Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter, sparked by Casanova) some other time. (And maybe by then I’ll have watched Becket.) (And, also, hopefully it won’t take me a month to get to it.)

Desert Island Discs

My best friend and I did the “Desert Island Discs” game the other day. We created a shortlist of 10 and a finalist list of 5 for the music, movies, and books categories, with the added rule (stolen from the radio Desert Island Discs program) that the Bible and Shakespeare are already on the island. These are the books, DVDs, and albums that (at this point) we would want with us forever.

It was really difficult, and actually a little surprising. I’m a big fan of doing things like this every so often, to see how your tastes have changed over time – and sometimes how they haven’t, even if you think they have. Some of my favourites – most-played songs, most-watched films, books that I love – did not make the list. If they were songs, then the whole album wasn’t worth it; books were emotional in perhaps the wrong way (Hardy, I’m looking at you), films I’d watched so many times that even looking at them makes the whole thing play in my head.

It’s also quite challenging. Do you pick your “comfort” items? Things that you’ve been meaning to get to but haven’t had the time? A combination of the two? Is length a consideration? (For example, if it comes down to a choice between two books by your favourite author, do you pick the longer one?) Do series count as separate items, or one item total? What about “collected works” or anthologies or single-volume sets?

It was challenging, but here’s my final list. I say final, but really it’s just final as of last week when we did this. Lists like this are so dependent on mood and state of mind that it’s entirely possible that my list will change again tomorrow.

Books:

Finalists – A Room with a View (E.M. Forster), Bet Me (Jennifer Crusie), An Equal Music (Vikram Seth), Persuasion (Jane Austen), The Canterbury Tales (Geoffrey Chaucer)

Runners-Up – Rilla of Ingleside (L.M. Montgomery), The Robin Hood Handbook, Bellwether (Connie Willis), The Blue Castle (L.M. Montgomery), War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy)

Comments – I went with the comfort items on this list, for the most part. A Room with a View is my favourite book ever, and every time I read it I find something new in it. Bet Me is also one of my comfort books; I find it nearly perfect. An Equal Music is one of the best books I’ve ever read that shows what it’s like to be a musician. Persuasion is my favourite Jane Austen, even beating Pride and Prejudice, in part because of the letter at the end which is one of the most romantic letters in all of fiction. The Canterbury Tales makes the list for two reasons: I couldn’t go without something in Middle English, and I’ve never actually read the whole thing. So, in a way, it’s both a comfort book and a challenge book.

I was torn between The Canterbury Tales and The Robin Hood Handbook – Robin is my historical fictional boyfriend, after all – but ultimately decided that Chaucer had more variety. The Montgomery books are also wonderful, and comfort books for me, but not quite as meaty as the finalists. Bellwether is my favourite Connie Willis book, and there to satisfy the sci-fi/specfic side of me. And War and Peace is on the list purely for length – I liked it a lot when I read it and it would keep me entertained for quite a while. But it doesn’t come up to the personal emotion of the finalists.

Films:

Finalists – Singin’ in the Rain, Bend It Like Beckham, The Empire Strikes Back, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Pride and Prejudice

Runners-up – North and South, Raiders of the Lost Ark, The Lion in Winter, Ratatouille, Beauty and the Beast

Comments – This is a list that changes almost every minute. It’s like picking your favourite child. It was actually harder to narrow this list down than it was for the books! But the first three are my all-time favourite films, than I can, have, and will watch over and over and over again, sometimes in the same day. Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is the “funny one” of the Indy movies, plus it features Sean Connery. And it doesn’t matter which of the (more recent) Pride and Prejudices it is. I adore both Colin Firth and Matthew Macfadyen.

Any of the runners-up could easily make the list on any given day, depending on mood and how recently I’ve seen or been reminded of that particular movie. And there are many more that could make the shortlist, again depending on day, mood, and proximity.

Music:

Finalists – Romeo and Juliet (Prokofiev), Ninth Symphony (Beethoven), Wicked, Carmen (Bizet), Revolver (The Beatles)

Runners –up – Amahl and the Night Visitors (Menotti), Abbey Road (The Beatles), Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (The Beatles), Led Zeppelin IV, Joshua Tree (U2)

Comments – This is where I surprised myself. I thought I was moving away from classical music and more towards pop/rock/alt stuff. But it turns out, when picking the albums to go with me onto a fictional desert island for the rest of my life, I go back to my roots. Romeo and Juliet is my favourite of the Prokofiev ballets, or really orchestral music in general. Beethoven’s 9^th is, without a doubt, the most perfect creation of musical structure, themes, instrumentation, and just everything that has ever been performed ever. Carmen is my favourite opera. Wicked is currently my singalong musical, although depending on mood it could easily be another one; I do need something in my range to sing along with, though. And Revolver is my current favourite Beatles album.

I really debated between the three Beatles albums that I had on the shortlist. All three of them are amazing, and are the three that I listen to all the way through, without skipping. Sgt. Pepper is even my stated all-time favourite Beatles album. But for some reason in my subconscious, possibly because it has one of my favourite tracks, Revolver was the one that I chose to come with me. Led Zeppelin IV is partially on the list for my rock interests, but as it turned out it didn’t hold a candle to the others. And Amahl is wonderful, but very occasion-specific. I sometimes listen to it when it’s not Christmas time, but I listen to Carmen all year long.

As previously stated, these lists are only valid for the day and time that we did them; they are subject to change based on mood and experience. But it’s an interesting exercise nonetheless. Have you ever done the Desert Island Discs game?

An attempt to escape perfectionism

I can't get away from Wagner. If I end up working at all in twentieth-century literature, I am going to have to know more about Wagner than I do. I feel so unprepared right now for any kind of twentieth-century analysis; I am not familiar with most of the theories or the major critics and I don't really understand what the teacher wants when she says "Engage with the work." I clearly should be a medievalist. We get to work with manuscripts, and everything is so vague that it's a lot easier to fake your way through it. Plus I already am familiar with most of the historical contexts, at least in England. I need to be better with Scotland and Wales, and with English geography, though.

I still hate reading Joyce. There were a few moments in Ulysses that I could get through - Nausicaa was pretty interesting, and the operatic references were intriguing - but mostly I hated it. I have a better appreciation of Dubliners now, so that's good, and I understand what he was trying to do, and I understand why people find him interesting. He just doesn't work for me. I think Stephen Dedalus is a stupid and whiny character, I am not fascinated by the idea of excretion as creation, and I resent writing that is designed to be incomprehensible. I don't care if it's a parody of Latin histories - the sentences still need to make sense. I can deal with it if I have to diagram them out for them to make sense, even if I may not like it. I cannot deal with things that are designed to be incomprehensible. It is not good art. I got three pages into "Oxen of the Sun" before I broke down and almost started crying. It's an interesting concept; I just can't deal with it. Take your moocows and keep them away from me.

One of my flatmates seems to have problems with the concept that people are different than she is. She doesn't seem to understand why someone would choose getting sleep (and not being hungover) over going out and drinking until you can't stand up. She also doesn't seem to understand why someone would own more books than they need for class, or why someone would want to study something that required them to read on a very regular basis. She also doesn't seem to understand the emotional and energy difference between being 20 and being 27. To be fair, most of my other flatmates don't really understand that difference, either, but at least they accept it. We don't get along terribly well.

I have joined the Postgraduate theatre group here. We are going to attempt to put on "Six Characters in Search of an Author", a very interesting play about the nature of reality and theatre, etc. There were 25 people at the first meeting, ten at the second, and six at auditions. I'm wondering how well this is going to work.

I recently went on a DVD-buying binge, sparked by massive sales at Amazon and a store in town that's going out of business. I need to remember that just because I got more money out of my loan this term doesn't mean that I need to spend all the money. It is nice for my materialistic, acquisitive nature to have a lot of my favourite movies on hand, though.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Thursday afternoon I saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. If you don’t want to know about it, STOP READING NOW.

Seriously. I’m going to talk about the movie in moderate detail. Not great detail because I’ve only seen it once so far, but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone who wants to be surprised.

So if you’re still reading at this point, I can only assume that you want to know about the movie.

Here goes.

It’s definitely better than Temple of Doom. Of course, I haven’t watched Temple of Doom in several years, because it annoys me so greatly and I have to watch much of it on mute so that I can enjoy ogling Harrison Ford without having to hear Kate Capshaw. But Crystal Skull was better than I remember Temple of Doom being.

However, it was not as good as either Raiders or Last Crusade. Those are two very different movies, I’ll admit, that bear very little resemblance to each other besides having several of the same characters and the same basic premise. Raiders is much more action/shoot-em-up while Last Crusade is more comic and almost slapstick. Raiders is quite serious; Last Crusade is much, much lighter.

The thing that Raiders and Last Crusade do have in common that Temple of Doom and Crystal Skull don’t is a Judeo-Christian quest. I’m not trying to be racist or anything like that, and I sincerely apologize if I come across that way. I don’t think the quests in Raiders and Last Crusade are the only reason that they are better movies than Temple of Doom and Crystal Skull, but I do think they are a part of it, for two reasons. First, the predominant culture in the US/UK has a Judeo-Christian background, so the quests are already at least slightly familiar to at least some of the movie-going audience. Second, setting the quests in the context of the predominant culture limits the stereotyping that unfortunately affects both Temple of Doom and Crystal Skull. For example, Temple of Doom is set in India and the things that people remember (other than the annoyingness of Kate Capshaw and the kid who plays Short Round)? Eating monkey brains and pulling out people’s hearts. And in Crystal Skull, technically it takes place in South America, and has to do with ancient Mesoamerican culture. Apart from pictographs, the only representations of that culture are loincloth-clad people who blend in with the wall, move like monkeys, and shoot poison darts.

Crystal Skull is not a bad movie, though. There are a few inside jokes and references, but not so many that it overwhelms the story. Of course, I probably wouldn’t have noticed, since I am a long-time Indy fan. Karen Allen is more than welcome – she’s always been my favourite of the Indy girls. Not that there’s a lot of competition: Kate Capshaw is, as previously stated, annoying, and Alison Doody’s character turned out to be evil. But Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood is more of a partner – she shrieks, sure, but she also attempts to think and fight her way out of situations by herself. And I appreciate the tributes to Denholm Elliott (who played Marcus Brody – he gets referenced and a statue) and Sean Connery (who turned down the film because he’s retired; get over it already online reviewers).

However, it’s not a great movie. Normally I like Cate Blanchett, but she is so ridiculous in this. Her obvious wig and totally fake accent do not help things. And there are oh-so-many “Yeah right” or “You’ve got to be kidding me” moments ranging from Shia LeBeouf sliding his motorcycle along a library floor and getting out from under it without so much as a limp to Ray Winstone’s character’s true allegiances, whatever they might be, to, well, the whole crystal skull reveal. (Aliens? Really? Whose “treasure is knowledge”? Um…..okay.)

They also drop so many things. Like I said, it’s supposed to be based around this Mesoamerican culture, but the poison-dart-blowing representatives of that culture only show up, like three times, never speak, and even though there’s this myth about the crystal skull being guarded by the living dead or something like that, they’re never explained. And, the thing that distracted me the most, during the big chase scene where the evil Soviets are chasing Our Heroes, Marion just…..disappears. She’s driving one of the jungle tanks and I guess she falls behind or something, but she’s off-screen so long that I wondered if they’d forgotten that she was in that scene, or if I’d missed the part where she gets kicked out of the car.

But I liked it, and I would go see it again. I still love Harrison Ford, I enjoy Karen Allen and the relationship between Marion and Indy, and I have a good time watching the fight scenes and archaeology (yeah right) stuff. Everything else, I can ignore.