it's zombies and they're masturbating, ewwww!
Waiting for my pizza to be warmed up at lunch yesterday, i spied a NY Times film section and was snared by this paragrpah describing the release of Dawn of the Dead:Ultimate Edition: "With his 1968 'Night of the Living Dead,' the Pittsburgh-based independent filmmaker George A. Romero began a mythic cycle that has proved to be as resonant and wide-ranging as such classic horror archetypes as Frankenstein and Dracula. Mr. Romero's lumbering zombies - dead bodies brought back to life for reasons that remain tantalizingly vague - have found cultural echoes from Italy to Hong Kong, and have inspired variations and remakes that continue through today ..."
"tantalizingly vague"! yes! i love this description. genre, myth and imagination all in one undead package.
Also of note in this "new to DVD wrap-up" is a well-deserved flogging of the brothers Coen:
"Joel and Ethan Coen stumbled badly with this facetious remake of Alexander Mackendrick's classic of British black comedy, "The Ladykillers" (1955), which finds even Tom Hanks defeated by the broad, heavy strokes of the brothers' direction."
"Facetious", another great choice of words by David Kerr (and one of the only words in english to feature all the vowels in alphabetical order). I've been hating on them and their caricature-driven carpet- bagging fan boy dribble since Lebowski. Good to see that others are joining in the chant of, O-ver-rated, CLAP, CLAP, CLAP CLAP CLAP!
Next up for the Coen bros is, of course, Paris, je t-aime, which they are producing and directing 1/10th of. "Paris, je t'aime is about the plurality of cinema in one mythic location: Paris, the City of Love. Twenty filmmakers will bring their own personal touch, underlining the wide variety of styles, genres, encounters and the various atmospheres and lifestyles that prevail in the neighborhoods of Paris...It will be a unique collective feature film that will constitute a two-hour cinematographic spectacle whose original structure will make for a dramatically different experience for its global audience." I don't even have to say it, but it will win many awards, esp. overseas, and it will be self-indulgant man-goo.
posted by erik [hueypriest] @ Wednesday, September 08, 2004
2 Comments:
Out of curiosity, did you like The Man Who Wasn't There, Erik? I just saw it and thought that the cinematography was fantastic. Pretty good overall, I thought.
-L'il G
yeah. it's by far their best film of late. Their fillms always look great though - I give them that. Ever the god awful O'brother had an amazing look to it. This is part of the reason they make me so angry, they totally understand how to make the visual aspect of film an important part of storytelling, where so many other filmmakers treat it as an afterthought with flashy shots or forget it entirely.
I just think they started sniffing their own BS a bit too hard. But yeah, truth be told Man who wasn't there, raising arizona, miller's crossing, fargo..all great movies. I guess it is because of those works, not in spite of them, that i hate their recent output so fiercely.
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