ANIMATED EXTRAVAGANZA 1 : OK LET'S START WITH A FUTURE CLASSIC - "WALL-E"!

I’m now going to let you in on a little secret. I am a very VERY big softie indeed, so much so that I was slightly nervous about watching Wall-e. No, I can explain. I just skimmed the beginning of the synopsis you see. Dead planet. Cute little robot all by himself. He doesn’t know where anyone else is. I shuddered long and hard, decided it would probably make me cry, pushed it way back to the bottom of my “to watch” pile and actively ignored it, if you see what I mean. My friends ranted and raved about it, it won an Oscar ®, heck it won a whole host of awards, I still didn’t care. Well “Requiem For A Dream” is also a brilliant movie but you may well need a course of anti-depressants or a few sessions of counseling after watching it. So there I was, happily pretending “Wall-e” never happened when this years’ Oscar® nominations were announced. I had stumbled across Wall-e a couple of days earlier. I stuffed it back to the bottom of the pile of course but the argument that the fact that you might need counseling or anti-depressants is NOT a valid argument for not watching Requiem For A Dream had occurred to me. And I was sadly behind on watching this year’s nominations, so there really didn’t seem to be much of an excuse anymore… I sighed deeply, armed myself with a mug of tea (the British cure for shock) and plenty of tissues and hunkered down in front of the television set. Feel free to call me an idiot. What can I tell you, I should have trusted Pixar Studios.
Now, let’s get our story straight. Wall-e is indeed a cute little robot living on a dead planet earth. He lives on Planet Earth, 800 years from now. He has a happy if rather monotonous existence; his only friend is a little beetle and Wall-e goes around by himself tidying up New York City. Well there is a lot of city to tidy up, mountains of trash and discarded objects everywhere but at least all the human beings have left (all though God only knows where to and how). Wall-e trundles around collecting objects that seem interesting to him and watching old musicals (Hello Dolly to be exact) when he is off duty. Wall-e would like to fall in love, just like in the movie but he is all alone (except the beetle) so that is very much that. Until… One day a loud, noisy and rather scary spaceship leaves behind another robot. She is called EVE, she is white and she is nothing like anything Wall-e has ever seen… It’s love at first sight for Wall-e, Eve is slightly more dubious but it seems to be going well, until… Eve is stricken by a mysterious disease, shuts down and is taken back by the giant spaceship. Now, having found true love, wall-e is darned if he’s going to lose it that quickly so he stows away on the spaceship to “save” Eve. He soon finds himself in the middle of something quite epic. The future of mankind depends on Wall-e and Eve; they must save the humans from what probably is their most dangerous enemy. Themselves…
You probably know or have guessed that the undertones of the film (none too subtle at that…) the environment, saving the planet and being pro-active about it. As in getting off your backside and actually doing something (you’ll see EXACTLY what I mean when you watch the film). There have been many films of many different genres on the topic. Indeed it is a topic that cannot grow old or stale until we actually DO something to save our poor planet but that is beside the point. The point is, there have been VERY few films as good as Wall-e. The characters are sweet to “t”. The new worlds created… Well, it’s Pixar, vintage Pixar… I always admired that corporation now I know why some people are out and out fans of it. I SHOULD know I’m now officially one of those fans! It will stretch your imagination to the limits and it will make you think about what we very well may become in 800 years if we go on like this. Heck, it might even push you into trying and doing something to stop it. Personally I would much prefer this to be forever thought of as a wonderful tribute to human imagination as opposed to a film “full of foresight”… If you see what I mean…

ANIMATED EXTRAVAGANZA 2 : UP!

Well, we started this week off with Pixar studios I don’t see why we shouldn’t go on with them =) No interesting story as to why I never watched this though. Nope, sheer negligence I’m afraid. But, it was the day after I watched Wall-e, and I was searching for something to watch for the day (during my sabbatical, I have adopted a “one film a day” policy. Unless something very exceptional happens, I try and definitely watch one film every day). And now since I’m hot on my new “themes” line, Up literally bounced out at me (for those of you who watched it, it was a bit like Russell “me, me, me!” =) ). It made me laugh, it made me cry… A beautiful film. Just goes to show there is a lot more to cartoons than meets the eye. So much so, I’m actually planning on doing a second week of them, studying the more unusual ones, but more on that later. It won’t be next week anyway ;)
Now, Up. Unless you moved to the moon recently, even if you don’t know the full story of the film, you will know that Up is about a flying house. Yes, an old man who ties tons of balloons to the flying house and makes it fly. It’s all over the posters and the teaser shown in cinemas. Now, let’s put that into context shall we? The old man is Carl Frederickson. He is one of the lucky ones who was blessed with true love. His wife Ellie and he were childhood sweethearts. They never had kids – not for lack of trying – but they truly loved each other and were happy. They had many things that united them and one of them was a childhood hero; the great explorer Charles Munson. When she was a child, Ellie wanted to move her house to Paradise Falls in Venezuela. Once grown up, the dream seemed slightly more improbable of course but they do their darndest to get there. They don’t manage however, and then Ellie passes away leaving Carl on his own and completely lacking in… Well many things, but above all a meaning to his existence. Then he remembers something: the promise he made to Ellie all those years ago. He was going to take her to Paradise Falls, and the house with them. As he is facing eviction and a forced trip to the retirement village, Carl decides the only sensible thing to do is to tie balloons to the house and make off. So he does just that. However, nothing in life is straightforward and the best made plans come unstitched at the seams. Carl’s begin when he realizes he has inadvertently brought someone with him on his porch… Then a pack of talking dogs, a strange bird and Charles Munson get mixed up in the whole thing. At the age of eighty-something, Carl is about to embark on one of the greatest adventured of his life…
I was once again struck by the power of animation as I watched this film. And the distance it has come since “Steamboat Willy” (that, in case you didn’t know, was the first name of the character we now know as “Mickey Mouse”). Cartoons were seen merely as children’s entertainment before whereas now, they can be used both to create new and wonderful worlds and characters and to convey very complicated sentiments. Take Up for instance. Without and dialogue and with the use of a very neat yet deep and meaningful sequence, we learn that Ellie has a miscarriage and thus Carl and Ellie are unable to have children. Ellie is heartbroken but Carl nurses her back to life, and reminds her of their dream of going to Paradise Falls, giving her a new lease of life. All this in a couple of minutes, touchingly put with all the appropriate sentiment. Then of course there’s the comedy factor. I mean not every actor in show bizz is good at mimics and accents; everyone has their own specific talent. With animation however, a host of caricatures and features become real – well pretty close to real anyway! This doesn’t mean serious topics cannot be undertaken, I mean I was so touched at one point I actually burst into tears and they were by NO means tears of joy or laughter… Love in its many forms is ever present in the film as is an INCREDIBLE adventure… Not to be missed…

ANIMATED EXTRAVAGANZA 3 : DICK TRACY!

Ok, ok I know. Technically, this is NOT an animated film. But even if it’s not actually a cartoon, it was part of a cartoon strip. Heck, it was adapted from a cartoon strip! Come on be honest, anyone who was familiar with Dick Tracy before Warren Beatty brought him to life knew him in cartoon form. (I should have specified of course, out of the many incarnations of the cartoon detective, we are interested today in the 1990 incarnation vie Warren Beatty – another example of someone directing a film and playing the lead in it… However, since this is Dick Tracy we’re talking about, he naturally gets the limelight so there’s nothing much to complain about… Humph… ). And besides, have you actually seen the movie? Remember all the villains? Big Boy, Mumbles and the rest of the mob? They were all made up to look like cartoons for crying out loud, the films won an Oscar® for its’ art direction! By the way ,if you watch this one, please note how sometimes the shots of the town look like cutouts or drawings… The brightly colored costumes too… I loved it, LOVED it… But less of my rambling on and on, you want to hear about the film.
Dick Tracy… You all know him, out on the streets, fearlessly fighting the bad guys, saving the day, putting the mobsters in jail… Well, things turn a bit nasty for him when the notorious Big Boy Spaldoni (played by a very made up and superbly “over acting” Al Pacino) takes over the underworld making himself the boss of a very powerful, dark empire. He is preparing to hold the entire city to ransom and Tracy is the only one who can stop him! Tracy has problems however. His long term girl friend Tess Trueheart wants to settle down and for him to take a nice, safe desk job. There’s “the kid” a nameless orphan he has rescued from the street but who he can’t seem to get rid of. Then there’s a rather stunning gangster’s Moll (played by an equally stunning Madonna) who is desperately trying to get him… Not in the “gangster” sense though. Will Tracy save the day? Or has he finally met his match in Big Boy Spaldoni?
You can take this movie in a number of ways and one of them is almost definitely a spoof gangster film. I mean yes, it has all the classic marks of Dick Tracy, heck, Warren Beatty is a pretty good choice for Tracy; he even looks like him. But one can’t help seeing the irony in Al Pacino playing Big Boy Spaldoni. He splutters, he is bad tempered he is one of the funniest mafia bosses ever to hit the screen and all this portrayed by the guy who played Toni Montana and Michael Corleone… I roared with laughter. Dustin Hoffmann has a nice little part as Mumbles – caricature of another kind of gangster, you will see what I mean when you watch it. As for Madonna and the songs well… Combine her voice and the talent of the famous score writer Dany Elfman small wonder the film won the Oscar ® for best song… What else can I tell you? Good guys vs bad guys, car chases, beautiful dames, big guns… The 50’s, best of the 50’s… You will LOVE it…

ESSIESPICS GOES BACK IN TIME!

Well Hello!

I hope you're all doing well since last week! You may have noticed I rather like this theme idea. And none of you have exactly complained about it so I'm carrying right on with it. This week's theme is "time travel". Not necessarily sci-fi movies but movies that are real period pieces. You know, the ones that transport us back to a certain era in some way (allthough I naturally HAD to throw in Back to the Future, that's a given =)) And well there's a bit of a family connection in one of the posts too, see what you make of it =)

see you next week - happy watching!
Essie

BACK IN TIME - THE 1910'S - "AND QUIET FLOWS THE DON"

I am happy to report that after much effort, I am beginning to stem my “wholesale” film watching tendencies. Take this little gem for instance. Well the point is, it is NOT a little gem; at 330 minutes long it is divided into three parts. I watched it in three days despite the temptation and am happy to say it was the RIGHT choice. Each part is about 100 minutes long, the length of a decent film and besides, so much is going on that you need the time to “digest” it all so to speak. Having shared this little personal triumph with you, I will now get on with the film.
Now, this is an adaptation from the Nobel winning novel of the same name by the Russian writer Sholokhov. I am not too worried about it being an adaptation though. It is a Russian adaptation and it was shot in 1957 and 1958; not long after the events that were depicted so we can imagine that between the book and the film we have before us quite a realistic picture of life in rural Russia at the beginning of the century. The story is set in a little Cossack village. Traditions are strong and ways of life have been handed down for generations unchanged. The year is 1914; the First World War hasn’t begun yet. Scandal hits when married woman Akseniya openly starts having an affair with Grigory a hot headed young Cossack known for his emotions and temper. Before they can think how to put their lives in order though, the war strikes and shortly afterwards, the Soviet revolution. The Great War, the internal struggles that continue long into 1919 throw our heroes and their fates around like toys; death is everywhere as neighbors are set against each other along the lines of “white” and “red”. As the entire village struggles to find its place in the new order ,can true love triumph over it all? Or is there no place for such emotions in the new world order?...
This film touched me on many levels. First of all, to restate what I said in the introduction, it was shot merely 40 years after the events described. So the whole thing was pretty much part of living memory at the time. There is one scene, for instance, of the Cossack battalion charging across the plains. Now in case you didn’t know, the Cossacks have great renown as warriors and horsemen. They charged, on horseback issuing war cries and wielding long swords. Such a sight is part of period drama for us now, but at the time, they actually remembered what this looked like. It’s as close as we will ever get to seeing such things and I think this is very sad.
The story also describes wonderfully how the common people are tossed about in turmoil, lives are ruined and destroyed as great men argue with great words… The chaos brought by the revolution is concretely Russian here but the emotion can be transposed to any country in the world and any time of political turmoil… I cried desperately on more than one occasion during the film.
I have to say though; there is a slightly more personal reason too for my liking this film. My great grandfather was Russian. At the time of the communist revolution of 1917, he and his family were what is called “kulags” ; they were landowners; the owners of a big farm with many workers on it. The communists didn’t like the idea as you can well imagine. My great grandfather and one of his brothers escaped to Turkey to save themselves. They were a large family (9 siblings in total) but my great grandfather never saw his parents or his other brothers and sisters again. Some years later, he fell out with his brother too and they didn’t speak to each other for the rest of their lives. However, the story doesn’t end that sadly. He fell in love you see, the real deal too, converted to Islam and got married. They had a son (my grandfather) who in turn had children of his own and Ayza (we think this is how his name would be spelt in the Latin alphabet) spent his twighlight years playing with his grandchildren and telling them stories of the big farm in Crimea.
Unfortunately, no one in the family remembers Ayza (later Ali Rıza Efendi)’s Russian patronymic or surname, but we do have a picture of him and his young wife in the sitting room. I thought of him a lot as I watched this film, hence the short biography. This post is dedicated to his memory…

BACK IN TIME - THE '50S - "CINEMA PARADISO"

Now, this film warmed me to the cockles of my heart. It’s a story about growing up and discovering; discovering life, discovering oneself and generally growing up. The year it was released, in 1988, it cleared the table, Oscars®, Cannes, César Awards, the David Di Donatella awards and many besides… When you look at the subject matter, you might think that it is a classic case of the cinema honoring itself – it is the story of the discovery of the cinema too (and possibly one of the reasons I felt so close to it) but it is A LOT more than that. It is a tribute to another era, the era of classical cinema…
Salvatore Di Vito is one of the most successful directors in Italy. He lives in Rome and spares little thought for his hometown; a tiny village he hasn’t visited for 30 years… A telephone call he receives one day will jerk him back there however. A very old friend has died. Salvatore is swept up by memories and we follow him back to the 1940’s, an era where the cinema was the only form of entertainment for a small village. Films were in black and white, sound was a novelty and Salvatore – Toto back then - was a very naughty little boy forever getting into trouble and forever pestering Alfredo, the long suffering fellow working the projector in the local cinema. Toto wants to learn how to operate the machine, Toto wants the old scraps of film lying around and Toto is forever under Alfredo’s feet. In time, the two will become fast friends and Alfredo will guide Toto, as he grows up, through some of the most difficult decisions of his life…
We have all watched “coming of age” movies of course. But this one IS special. We see Toto portrayed by various actors at various stages in his life, but the little 7 year-old Toto is by far the SWEETEST little kid I have seen in a long time… The story is naïve and touching in one way, and in another very poignant, even today. It’s all about what to do with one’s life, difficult and life changing decisions and all the things that shape and mold us as we grew up.
Besides, again, it reminds us of a different era, no? Before home entertainment systems and DVDs, the cinema ruled. Like the opera of the 19th century people went there to see and be seen. Movie stars were huge. In small villages like this one, people centered their lives round the cinema; there is one scene where people almost break the door down clamoring for another showing – can you imagine that happening today at any cinema? You’d just put the DVD back on, right? A worthy tribute to the past of a great medium and a must-watch for any cinephile…

ENOUGH OF THE PAST! LET'S GO "BACK TO THE FUTURE!"

OK, so I’m ashamed I even have to mention this one as one of the films I have recently watched but what can I tell you… Some of the holes in my film knowledge are truly massive. Well I’m glad I watched it. Quite apart from the fact that the film is HILARIOUS, it is the granddaddy of all time travel films and a BRILLIANT 80’s time capsule to boot!
Marty McFly (Michael J. Fox – sad to think the poor guy caught Parkinson’s disease later on in life, such a brilliant Hollywood actor!) is a teenager living in the USA, in the 80’s, in a small town. He rides his skateboard, likes rock music, and plays in a band… Oh HE is the good friend of the local eccentric, a mad scientist under the name of Prof. Emmet Brown. Now, Prof. Brown is well known for his failed inventions, but one fateful night, he actually succeeds. He succeeds in building nothing less than a time machine (we all know what THAT looks like right? Come on, even I knew about the old Delorian…). However, as things do, things do not go according to plan. Marty inadvertently finds himself all alone in 1955. The time machine’s fuel is left back in the present (read 1985) as is the professor. When, on top of all this, Marty inadvertently prevents his mother and father meeting, he has a far more serious problem on his hands… Now, apart from fixing the time machine and getting back to the future, he also has to make sure he has a future to get back to…
It is all we expect a Hollywood film to be. Steven Spielberg, good actors, a Hollywood ending… I can see why it became… Well, it’s almost a franchise isn’t it? And it sprung so many archetypes in the years that followed. Time travel. Flying cars. Mad scientists (not exactly a new theme but you have to admit a lot of mad scientists in movies today seem to be distant cousins of Prof. Brown.)It was the first time many things were done, and done brilliantly. A typical example of good old fashioned family entertainment.
And although the film is suitable for the younger members of the family as well, the older members will find it especially nostalgic, because first of all the film is set in 1985 (and that brings back a flood of memories to anyone who was alive in the 80’s, even the tail end of it like me) and then of course in 1955, fun to watch whether you like films from that period or it brings back memories to you as well… You’ll like this one. Don’t wait as long as I did to watch it.