Firstly, so sorry for the length of this post. I fell victim to what I believe a certain chick flick classic terms "word vomit". Secondly, I've spent far, far too much time making this site more like a traditional webpage. Click on the links at the top to explore. Thirdly, I know you're expecting a theatre kid commentary on this years Tony Awards. I haven't the heart. Suffice to say everything wrong with Broadway-blatant commercialism, celebrity miscasting, the works-was on sad display.
Ah, so, on to my rant:Can you imagine what else could've been done with thousands of feet of celluloid? It could be cut up to provide our impoverished public schools with bookmarks. Someone might melt it down and mold it into cute lil' ping-pong balls. Hell, I'm sure Lady Gaga could craft some eye-popping menagerie out of it. Instead, Hollywood's wasting mountains of the stuff on some of the most incompetent movies ever made. By this time last summer, we had Star Trek and Up, and patiently awaited a knockout new installment in the Harry Potter series. This year, we've suffered through flat-out junk the likes of Marmaduke and Killers, and we've already been let down by depressingly average new entries in the Iron Man and Shrek franchises. It seems as if it may have happened at last-Hollywood's adapted the last material deserving to be made into a film, and run totally dry in the Original Thought Department. Here's to hoping Buzz Lightyear delivers us unto excellence (and beyond!) when Toy Story 3 opens at the end of this month. But thus far, this has been the dumbest, most disappointing, flat-out blah-est summer in film history.
This is the spot where I'd normally bitch out American moviegoers for supporting such cheap, greasy-popcorn pap. But I'm delighted to say...they haven't! Americans are staying away from the movies in droves this summer, and God bless them for realizing that there are infinitely more appealing things they could be doing for two hours than watching Katharine Heigl take another giant step towards career oblivion. I say keep it up. Boycott the cinemas this summer. Pick a film or two to go to if you must, but other than that, STAY AWAY. Lighten the wallets of the studio nutjobs who take us for intellectual jello and attempt to sate us with the same ol' stories.
And now for a confession. I have killed something. What, you ask? Why, the Heavenly Hundred. That's right, I will no longer be posting a sequential list of my hundred favorite films. Before you go have a good cry (which I know you will), the reason for this act of sabotage is this;
I hate waiting! For example, I've wanted to write about this week's film forever, but I've had to wait, cause I'd rank it in my top 40. And God knows how long I've been sitting around patiently waiting to reach a Woody Allen film on the list. Not fair to my inner writer. Not at all. If you say you can undertake a list of such magnitude, you're either lying or heavily, heavily medicated. Furthermore, to make a definitive list is to imply that one's knowledge of cinema will never change or grow. And that, my friends, is a mound of horseshit.
So in short, I introduce to you the Saviors of Cinema....a non-linear list I'll add to weekly. More great films, just a different format.
Done weeping? Good, cause I've got a hidden gem for you this week-
DONKEY SKIN
The 25: Like its star, peerlessly gorgeous and startlingly timeless.
Of all the art forms, film has always been the easiest medium in which to express one's full imaginative vision-try staging Avatar as a piece of theatre (the day I see an ad for Na'vi on Ice in the paper is the day I stop blogging, fyi), or capturing the visual intricacies of Citizen Kane in prose. Now, with the advent of CGI, directors can put whatever they want up on the screen. And, in a way, we've lost something because of it. Once upon a time, one of the most magical parts of the moviegoing experiences was the good ol' head scratch-how did they do that?! Imagine how audiences felt seeing the original King Kong for the first time. Holy shit, there's a giant monkey on top of the Empire State! They didn't know how this breathtaking feat was pulled off, and their imaginations expanded a little bit because of it. In the Peter Jackson remake (which I did enjoy, for the record), that scene is just as epic in visual and emotional scope. But though my pulse quickened, my jaw did not drop. Here's why; I know for a fact that the good folks at WETA Digital animated Mr. Ape, then stuck him on an animated building. The answer to the immortal question "How Did They Do That?!" can no longer encompass a variety of techniques, from stop-motion to clever camera angles. The response is always "oh, they did something with a computer." As such, our generation has been robbed of the crafty wonder of old-fashioned ingenuity. Watch Donkey Skin with the knowledge not a single Macbook was used to enhance a single shot, and feel that wonder for the first time.
A rather unorthodox fairy tale (think if Shrek made a baby with the French New Wave...) by Jacques Demy, Donkey Skin recounts the adventures of a spoiled princess (Catherine Deneuve) who's must retreat into a life of poverty and secrecy in order to avoid marrying her father (Jean Marais). Sounds like Alice Walker in the Middle Ages, but in fact Donkey Skin is one of the brightest films you're ever likely to see. It's filled with shimmering music by the greatest songwriter the movies ever had, Michel Legrand (FOB-Friend of Barbra), studded with gleefully flippant anachronisms (dear God in Heaven, is that a phone? A helicopter?!), and bursting at the seams with unforgettable characters (my personal favorite is the old lady who hocks up frogs every now and then.) But, for me at least, at all comes back to the visuals. Who knows how Demy packed so much giddy, otherwordly detail into every frame, but the fact is, he did; statues move, clothing changes colors, mirrors take on a life of their own, flowers speak, and at the center of it all is one of nature's most enduring visual effects, Deneuve's radiant, unblemished, marvelously expressive face. This is a movie filled with hand-made miracles, and each one wears down your Michael Bay-era skepticism, until at last Demy's primitive, brilliant analog magic lifts you up, up, and away you to into a rarified air of gushing, childlike excitement.
Oh, and there's a donkey that shits gold. Pretty sure they borrowed him from my Temple.
Singular Scene: Deneuve flees to the country in slow motion while the rest of the world seems to freeze around her. To witness this moment for the first time is to remember it forever.
Now you should comment. No, really. Dooo it. Make a narcissist out of me.
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