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Dec. 19th, 2013 11:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsFor the nineteenth, coyotegoth asked me about three favorite cracktastic movies!
As usual, this is not at all my three favorite for ALWAYS, just three favorites I happen to be thinking about at the time.
One of those will obviously be Dororo, which I am still charmed by a year aftershati first made me watch it. Giant cuddly ghost fetuses! Children with fake limbs made from dead babies! A team-bonding demon-fighting montage set to wacky salsa music! DORORO. What a great film.
Another very weird movie that I love very much is Alex Cox's The Revenger's Tragedy, which someday I will get the time and energy to do a full picspam of.
For now, what you need to know: The Revenger's Tragedy is an adaptation of an extremely gory Jacobean tragedy, set in post-apocalyptic Liverpool, using all of Thomas Middleton's original period dialogue except in very important and dramatic instances such as when angry Liverpudlians set on Christopher Eccleston while screaming "ARE YOU A COCKNEY?" Christopher Eccleston defeats them, of course, and then wanders off to talk to his dead girlfriend's skull for the rest of the movie. Later, Derek Jacobi makes out with the skull and then his face rots off while Christopher Eccleston and his knife-throwing sister hyuck it up because it's the funniest thing they've ever seen.
Wow, how do I describe The Revenger's Tragedy? It's kind of like if Baz Lurhmann's Romeo and Juliet had a baby with the Gormenghast chronicles. And then that baby grew up to be a dedicated Christopher Eccleston/Eddie Izzard hateshipper. It's (intentionally) hilarious, it's (intentionally) gruesome and horrifying, it's (unintentionally, I think?) trapped in a bog of its own symbolism (PRINCESS DIANA!!!!), it's at times completely incomprehensible, IT'S AMAZING. I love it to pieces. I had to read a synopsis after the fact to figure out why all the Liverpudlians were so angry, because this is never explained.
And now, for something completely different: another super weird movie that I super love, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, aka the film that's basically MARY POPPINS FIGHTS NAZIS.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a classic and, for those of you unfamiliar, its plot goes as such:
1. Angela Lansbury is a prim spinster witch in a small town during WWII who gets stuck with three plucky refugees. In short order, she turns at least one of them into a rabbit.
2. Then she hooks up with the dad from Mary Poppins. He attempts to turn her into his lovely assistant, and instead she turns him into a rabbit.
3. Then, EVIL GANGSTERS
4. Then they all go to a land of cartoon animals where the dad from Mary Poppins referees a football game between some lions and giraffes
5. Then they go home, and Angela Lansbury and the kids bring their clothes to life and Angela Lansbury's nightgown goes on a rampage and beats everybody up
6. Then, NAZIS
7. In a surprising plot twist, the dad from Mary Poppins turns HIMSELF into a rabbit
8. Angela Lansbury leads an army of empty suits of armor from atop a broomstick and chases the Nazis away from Britain
9. GENERAL REJOICING
I have lost count of the times I have watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks in my life. Do I ever get tired of watching Angela Lansbury primly defeat every Nazi in a spinster sweater-vest? NO I DO NOT. Bedknobs and Broomsticks is the one film that makes me forget about my rule about watching films with Nazis in on Christmas.
coyotegoth asked me about three favorite cracktastic movies!As usual, this is not at all my three favorite for ALWAYS, just three favorites I happen to be thinking about at the time.
One of those will obviously be Dororo, which I am still charmed by a year after
shati first made me watch it. Giant cuddly ghost fetuses! Children with fake limbs made from dead babies! A team-bonding demon-fighting montage set to wacky salsa music! DORORO. What a great film.Another very weird movie that I love very much is Alex Cox's The Revenger's Tragedy, which someday I will get the time and energy to do a full picspam of.
For now, what you need to know: The Revenger's Tragedy is an adaptation of an extremely gory Jacobean tragedy, set in post-apocalyptic Liverpool, using all of Thomas Middleton's original period dialogue except in very important and dramatic instances such as when angry Liverpudlians set on Christopher Eccleston while screaming "ARE YOU A COCKNEY?" Christopher Eccleston defeats them, of course, and then wanders off to talk to his dead girlfriend's skull for the rest of the movie. Later, Derek Jacobi makes out with the skull and then his face rots off while Christopher Eccleston and his knife-throwing sister hyuck it up because it's the funniest thing they've ever seen.
Wow, how do I describe The Revenger's Tragedy? It's kind of like if Baz Lurhmann's Romeo and Juliet had a baby with the Gormenghast chronicles. And then that baby grew up to be a dedicated Christopher Eccleston/Eddie Izzard hateshipper. It's (intentionally) hilarious, it's (intentionally) gruesome and horrifying, it's (unintentionally, I think?) trapped in a bog of its own symbolism (PRINCESS DIANA!!!!), it's at times completely incomprehensible, IT'S AMAZING. I love it to pieces. I had to read a synopsis after the fact to figure out why all the Liverpudlians were so angry, because this is never explained.
And now, for something completely different: another super weird movie that I super love, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, aka the film that's basically MARY POPPINS FIGHTS NAZIS.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks is a classic and, for those of you unfamiliar, its plot goes as such:
1. Angela Lansbury is a prim spinster witch in a small town during WWII who gets stuck with three plucky refugees. In short order, she turns at least one of them into a rabbit.
2. Then she hooks up with the dad from Mary Poppins. He attempts to turn her into his lovely assistant, and instead she turns him into a rabbit.
3. Then, EVIL GANGSTERS
4. Then they all go to a land of cartoon animals where the dad from Mary Poppins referees a football game between some lions and giraffes
5. Then they go home, and Angela Lansbury and the kids bring their clothes to life and Angela Lansbury's nightgown goes on a rampage and beats everybody up
6. Then, NAZIS
7. In a surprising plot twist, the dad from Mary Poppins turns HIMSELF into a rabbit
8. Angela Lansbury leads an army of empty suits of armor from atop a broomstick and chases the Nazis away from Britain
9. GENERAL REJOICING
I have lost count of the times I have watched Bedknobs and Broomsticks in my life. Do I ever get tired of watching Angela Lansbury primly defeat every Nazi in a spinster sweater-vest? NO I DO NOT. Bedknobs and Broomsticks is the one film that makes me forget about my rule about watching films with Nazis in on Christmas.
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Date: 2013-12-20 05:14 am (UTC)I love Bedknobs and Broomsticks in every respect except one -- that being, of course, the need for our heroine to give up her powers in order to have a happy ending.
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Date: 2013-12-20 02:53 pm (UTC)I always forget that happens, and I'm entirely convinced that Miss Price will go on turning people into rabbits, happy ending or not.
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Date: 2013-12-21 04:26 am (UTC)I'd recommend triple-featuring with Sweeney Todd (which is about half Revenger's Tragedy anyway) except I can't stand the leads in the Burton film, so only if you can get hold of the broadcast version with George Hearn and Angela Lansbury. Their Antony and Johanna are eh, but the rest's impeccable.
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Date: 2013-12-20 05:48 am (UTC)I saw that for the first time as the second half of a double feature with Julie Taymor's Titus (1999).
It was one of the best double features I have ever seen. And it was for a class in grad school.
I've seen it since and it's still great. I know everyone else on the planet imprinted on Christopher Eccleston as the Ninth Doctor, but he'll always look like Vindice to me. I am also unreasonably fond of the actor who plays his brother, despite the fact that objectively he doesn't do very much; he looks like the one sensible person in this whole congeries of whatthefuck, but of course he's not, any more than Castiza. Derek Jacobi has a great deal of fun eating the scenery until it turns on him. Eddie Izzard has chemistry with everything onscreen.
Bedknobs and Broomsticks, aka the film that's basically MARY POPPINS FIGHTS NAZIS.
I watched that movie for the first time in decades in 2006. I had to write a lot about it in order to process what I had just seen.
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Date: 2013-12-20 03:20 pm (UTC)Didn't I actually meet you at a Revenger's Tragedy screening, in fact? With
Also, I love that you spent that whole entry talking about the character dynamics, because that is really what I love about Bedknobs and Broomsticks - it's all the weirdness and the prickliness and the pieces that don't fit coming together to make a sort of bizarre family around the edges of these extremely bizarre circumstances (why are there even Nazis? WE JUST DON'T KNOW), which makes for exactly my favorite kind of feel-good fiction.
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Date: 2013-12-20 06:14 am (UTC)Which makes me think I ought to recommend you Ulrike Ottinger's Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia, but that might be cruel, because it is not obtainable through conventional channels, and my copy came from a promoting-women-in-cinema group who usually sell to universities. But said group is in NYC and you are both in NYC and a film archivist, so.
Johanna d'Arc of Mongolia is a movie containing VAST QUANTITIES OF YIDDISH MUSICAL THEATRE SET ON THE TRANS-SIBERIAN RAILROAD. And starring Delphine Seyrig as the WORLD'S MOST REGAL PROBABLY TIME-TRAVELLING LESBIAN COUNTESS. There are also Mongolian shamans (it was the first film ever made in Mongolia), A BROADWAY SINGER TOURING AT THE BEHEST OF THE MINISTRY OF CULTURE, and a VERY WORRIED GERMAN TOURIST LADY WHO IS CONCERNED THAT THINGS KEEP NOT BEING IN HER GUIDEBOOK. Also camel-riding, the world's politest train-hijacking, and a set piece involving a dinner which I do not know how to describe. In short, it is basically the greatest movie ever made, and the conjunction of the three films you mentioned above happened to bring it to mind.
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Date: 2013-12-20 12:26 pm (UTC)Becca, if you ever access this movie, you need to invite me to the viewing party.
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Date: 2013-12-20 03:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 07:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 09:32 am (UTC)I've never heard of the film and wish we'd had that available at the time rather than a performance by a boys' grammar school ten miles away.
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Date: 2013-12-20 03:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 12:20 pm (UTC)McGONAGALL, waving her wand at statues: I've always wanted to try that spell.
My MOM: Why? What does that spell do?
ME: Substitutiary locomotion, Mom.
MOM: *satisfied*
My PARTNER: ...wait, what's that?
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Date: 2013-12-20 12:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 03:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-12-20 12:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 03:31 pm (UTC)AND MY LOT
ARE BOUND TO COMBINE
as Angela Lansbury shows that her burlesque skills have not faded over thirty years
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Date: 2013-12-20 01:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 03:32 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-12-20 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 02:48 pm (UTC)But the fact that nobody has mentioned this yet makes me think that maybe (1) I'm misremembering, or (2) the cartoon cannibals were in another movie (is there a sequel?), or (3) Disney released a version with the offensive bit cut out. That would be great.
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Date: 2013-12-20 03:36 pm (UTC)Research indicates that the horrible stereotypical cannibal island appeared in the book, but was elided from the film, so kudos, Disney! For once, your editorial department did exactly as it should. (I read the book as a child too, but I don't remember it at ALL.)
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Date: 2013-12-20 03:51 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 06:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
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Date: 2013-12-20 06:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-20 06:51 pm (UTC)Then she suggested, as an alternate, X-Men: First Class. We agreed, and switched it on.
What we were not aware of was that X-Men: First Class begins with tiny Magneto in a concentration camp. IT'S AN IMPOSSIBLE RULE.
(Then when the movie finished, we switched off On Demand. The end of Bedknobs on Broomsticks was playing on the channel we had originally been on . . . straight at the scene with the Nazis.)
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Date: 2013-12-20 07:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-21 06:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-22 09:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-12-22 10:47 pm (UTC)