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Jul. 31st, 2023 11:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsDue to a convergent lineup of social plans I accidentally ended up watching four four full-length movies last week, which makes up almost a full third of the movies I've seen all year long.
These films were, in order, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996), Arrival (2016), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), and Barbie (2023). I keep trying to think of some category that would bring them all reasonably together in conversation with each other and falling short. Three out of the four of them could plausibly be titled 'Arrival', but it really doesn't work for R+J; three out of the four of them are adaptations of famous and award-winning works of literature, but it really doesn't work for Barbie; three out of the four of them feature the heroine rejecting an unappealing love interest who's obsessed with her but it really doesn't work for Arrival; I guess all of them are deeply concerned with death in one way or another but tbh what isn't these days?
Romeo + Juliet: along with many others of my generation, I watched this in high school and remember enjoying it, but my specific memories mostly focus on the comedy factor of the teacher scurrying up to turn the television around when Romeo and Juliet had their love scene. A very fun film and I'm extremely glad to have rewatched it! I want a local theater to double feature it on the big screen with Alex Cox's Revenger's Tragedy (2002), I think that would be a great time. Over the course of the filmsaramily proposed that perhaps it is Mercutio who is caught in a Shakespearean tragedy timeloop and the events of R+J are just one of many, many ways that he's ended up a side casualty of the Montague/Capulet conflict, which I find both compelling and plausible. Prologue and outro as a TV newscast is still one of the best ways that anyone's ever done it.
Arrival: This came up in the context of a conversation about translation, and then it came out that neither Beth [a professional translator] nor I had seen it, and our friends decided this needed to be fixed immediately. I'm glad to have seen it now! Having read the much quieter short story (a decade and a half ago) I did sort of squint at the Dramatic Escalating International Conflict present in the film but I do understand that film has its requirements, and it's extremely fun to watch the expert way the film -- while playing absolutely fair with its conceit -- makes use of its understood narrative devices within a time-based medium to lead the viewer into mistaken assumptions until the time comes [or fails to come] to put the pieces in their proper place.
Nosferatu the Vampyre: WHAT a ride this was. Nosferatu (1922) is an old friend to me (the paper I wrote on it in college is the highest praise I've ever gotten for an academic project, though, as is typica of this sort of thing, I have no memory of writing it since the process of doing so occurred entirely between the hours of 2 and 5 AM the night before it was due); we'd last seen it some months previous and made a vague plan at the time to follow it up with Herzog's remake, which we have now finally gotten around to doing. It's far more faithful to the 1922 film than I expected, which makes for an odd and compelling viewing experience in and of itself -- 1922 filmic sensibilities being quite different to 1979 filmic sensibilities being quite different to 2023 filmic sensibilities -- but also chooses some brand new details to be transcendently weird about. Personal favorite elements include:
- the small child who dutifully cranks out mediocre violin tunes in front of Dracula's castle every morning and is deeply unperturbed when Jonathan Harker crash-lands out a window in front of him
- the large array of extremely beautiful and glossy rats
- the moment when Nosferatu first makes an attempt on Lucy (here swapped with Ellen | Mina for Some Reason) and she immediately out-weirds him so much that he retreats in confusion; obviously all LucyEllenMinas are perfect but as far as I know this is the only one who managed to chase away a Dracula with the power of Goth monologue alone
Barbie: A fun time! More or less what I expected, by which I mean a charming and clever film that walks itself right up to the line of charmingly satirizing its major corporate backers without in fact undercutting them in any way. Margot Robbie is delivering an incredible performance. Mattel is happy to have a Little Chuckle at its own expense, as long as we all understand that Mattel is Genuinely Committed to the Mission of Female Empowerment at Heart. Will sell so, so many Barbie toys.
These films were, in order, Baz Luhrmann's Romeo + Juliet (1996), Arrival (2016), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), and Barbie (2023). I keep trying to think of some category that would bring them all reasonably together in conversation with each other and falling short. Three out of the four of them could plausibly be titled 'Arrival', but it really doesn't work for R+J; three out of the four of them are adaptations of famous and award-winning works of literature, but it really doesn't work for Barbie; three out of the four of them feature the heroine rejecting an unappealing love interest who's obsessed with her but it really doesn't work for Arrival; I guess all of them are deeply concerned with death in one way or another but tbh what isn't these days?
Romeo + Juliet: along with many others of my generation, I watched this in high school and remember enjoying it, but my specific memories mostly focus on the comedy factor of the teacher scurrying up to turn the television around when Romeo and Juliet had their love scene. A very fun film and I'm extremely glad to have rewatched it! I want a local theater to double feature it on the big screen with Alex Cox's Revenger's Tragedy (2002), I think that would be a great time. Over the course of the film
saramily proposed that perhaps it is Mercutio who is caught in a Shakespearean tragedy timeloop and the events of R+J are just one of many, many ways that he's ended up a side casualty of the Montague/Capulet conflict, which I find both compelling and plausible. Prologue and outro as a TV newscast is still one of the best ways that anyone's ever done it. Arrival: This came up in the context of a conversation about translation, and then it came out that neither Beth [a professional translator] nor I had seen it, and our friends decided this needed to be fixed immediately. I'm glad to have seen it now! Having read the much quieter short story (a decade and a half ago) I did sort of squint at the Dramatic Escalating International Conflict present in the film but I do understand that film has its requirements, and it's extremely fun to watch the expert way the film -- while playing absolutely fair with its conceit -- makes use of its understood narrative devices within a time-based medium to lead the viewer into mistaken assumptions until the time comes [or fails to come] to put the pieces in their proper place.
Nosferatu the Vampyre: WHAT a ride this was. Nosferatu (1922) is an old friend to me (the paper I wrote on it in college is the highest praise I've ever gotten for an academic project, though, as is typica of this sort of thing, I have no memory of writing it since the process of doing so occurred entirely between the hours of 2 and 5 AM the night before it was due); we'd last seen it some months previous and made a vague plan at the time to follow it up with Herzog's remake, which we have now finally gotten around to doing. It's far more faithful to the 1922 film than I expected, which makes for an odd and compelling viewing experience in and of itself -- 1922 filmic sensibilities being quite different to 1979 filmic sensibilities being quite different to 2023 filmic sensibilities -- but also chooses some brand new details to be transcendently weird about. Personal favorite elements include:
- the small child who dutifully cranks out mediocre violin tunes in front of Dracula's castle every morning and is deeply unperturbed when Jonathan Harker crash-lands out a window in front of him
- the large array of extremely beautiful and glossy rats
- the moment when Nosferatu first makes an attempt on Lucy (here swapped with Ellen | Mina for Some Reason) and she immediately out-weirds him so much that he retreats in confusion; obviously all LucyEllenMinas are perfect but as far as I know this is the only one who managed to chase away a Dracula with the power of Goth monologue alone
Barbie: A fun time! More or less what I expected, by which I mean a charming and clever film that walks itself right up to the line of charmingly satirizing its major corporate backers without in fact undercutting them in any way. Margot Robbie is delivering an incredible performance. Mattel is happy to have a Little Chuckle at its own expense, as long as we all understand that Mattel is Genuinely Committed to the Mission of Female Empowerment at Heart. Will sell so, so many Barbie toys.
