movies!

[ellen_datlow]

Friday night I watched Gypsy with Natalie Wood, Rosalind Russell, and Karl Malden. It's close enough to the show (both the production with Bernadette Peters and Patti Lupone) to be eerie but different in a few weird ways. The child who plays Baby June in the movie never gets any older than she is at the beginning, so when she runs away one thinks of a (very) underage kid running away. She doesn't run away with Tulsa but someone else--Tulsa is the young man who dances for Louise and since he's the one who obviously has talent and gumption for him not to be the one who runs away with June doesn't quite work. Louise, who starts as a child actress then becomes Natalie Wood is right...but the contrast with the almost adult Louise and the still child-like June creates in the viewer a disturbing cognitive dissonance.

In any case Russell was excellent but not nearly as loony as we need the character to be today. And the ending is much softer than in either live performance. Rick Bowes says it's the way the interpretation of the play has changed over the years. It used to be a somewhat realistic view of vaudeville and how show business was pretty brutal. It's not about the relationship between Rose and her daughters.

Also watched Enchanted Friday and I loved it!! Call it a guilty pleasure or call me daft but I found it utterly charming. And Amy Adams is great. The songs were much better in context than on the stage performed at the Academy Awards.

Saturday night I watched Ong Bak: The Thai Warrior about the stolen head of Buddha from a village and the young man who swears to bring it back or die trying. Pretty schematic in plot but it had some nice fight scenes.

Today I went to see Vantage Point the multi-point of view thriller with Dennis Quaid, Forrest Whittaker, William Hurt, Sigourney Weaver (in a very minor role), and some gorgeous hunks. It was terrific till about three quarters of the way through when it just kind of fell apart and became unbelievable and then worse-- at the end-- soppy. But it had one of the best car chases I've ever seen--better than those in Bourne. Glad I saw it as I'd wanted to since I saw the trailers.

Comments

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I never saw trailers for Enchanted but if they showed Disneyfied cartoon critters (which is how the movie begins) that would have turned me right off!

I saw To Live and Die in LA and all I remember about it was how bleak it was.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

I recall the Enchanted trailer showing the cartoon critters and then doing the extraordinarily overdone needle-dragged over the record sound effect and a switch over to Big City Life and snarky sass and oh, is that bile rising in my throat? Why yes it is. I get the feeling that was a pretty wildly inaccurate impression of the movie.

To Live and Die in LA was, in fact, a giant pile of bleak with a healthy drizzle of bleak sauce and a nihilistic cherry on top (and really strange to watch on an airplane). I didn't see it when it was new -- in fact, I only watched it a few months ago.

Handily, much of the scene is up on (http://youtube.com/watch?v=RtgWDtGjPRU) YouTube. It's not quite as good as I remembered, but I think that's because it works better in the context of the movie, and the scene represents just an impressive disintegration of the characters being chased.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I don't think I saw To Live and Die in LA when it first came out either. I think I must have seen it on my video (when I still used one). I do remember the ending really shocking me with its nihilism. It's one of those movies that I'd have to be in a really good mood in order to watch it again.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

Amusingly, I knew it mostly because of its soundtrack, which is neat in a cheesy '80s kind of way.

The thing that was really impressive about the ending for me was -- due to the way I watched it, in bits and pieces -- there's the big climactic hoedown which is kind of cathartic and stuff, and I had to stop watching it for a while and wondered what kind of difference a few minutes of remaining movie would make... And then when I watched the rest the pretty straight forward (if downer) end takes a nosedive into personal awful when the kind of good-guy cop gives up being kind of good and turns into a monster. At least it ends with the bisexual lover of the antagonist getting away prosperous. But yeah, it was not a movie that left me cheerful.

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I think it his (the good cop's)final abusiveness towards the prostitute that did it for me.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it was just ugly.

I ended up feeling like Willem Dafoe's character was actually the protagonist, since the guys the story follows were the ones doing all the obvious bad. (Yanno, other than making loads of fake money).

[ellen-datlow.livejournal.com]

I almost want to see it again to possibly see if I feel that's the intention...but nah...too much of a bummer.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

The phrase kirizal came across that I've been appropriating left and right is "for those with a surfeit of will to live."