videomatica's final reel

Saddest movie news of the year.

woody + god

For a long while, Woody Allen was preoccupied with God - in his stand-up, in his early films, right up through Crimes And Misedemeanors - whether for real or just as a running gag. But whether or not he ever had any doubt about his doubts, it's clear enough now that he's settled on his answer....

Sight & Sound: Gemma Jones is particularly good as Helena (in "You Will Meet A Tall Dark Stranger"). There's a foolishness to her character - in her belief in the fortune-teller - and yet she's happier because of it. You've long mocked such quackery in your films, and yet is there some envy on your part towards people who can believe in it?

Woody Allen: I don't take that optimistic view. Yes, Helena is able to maintain her balance by investing her emotions in a fake and fraudulent psychic fortune-teller, and I do believe that belief in anything is better than no belief at all. But no belief at all is the true state of affairs. If you face reality with honesty, you're facing a world that is meaningless. It's a godless universe. That's very painful and terrifying, but that's unfortunately the way it is.
Helena's infatuation with the fortune-teller is no different than somebody's infatuation with any of the major religions, which are no less specious. They all serve the purpose of deceiving the believer sufficiently to enable him or her to get through life without constantly being anxious about the terrifying and unenviable position everyone is in.

Sight & Sound, April 2011

apr 30 - may 4 | black narcissus

BLACK NARCISSUS (1947, UK, Powell & Pressburger)
Pacific Cinematheque
Apr 30 8:30
May 1 6:30
May 4 7:00

#44 on this year's Arts & Faith 100 selection of films with some sort of spiritual something-or-other maybe going on. The A&F write-up goes like this...

This classic, brilliantly colorful film from Michael Powell and Emeric Pressberger follows five nuns, led by Sister Clodagh, into the Himalayas to start a hospital and school for the local villagers. The battle against the elements and the local culture proves to be a formidable one, though Sister Clodagh’s most difficult tasks comes from within—through the envious Sister Ruth and Clodagh’s own struggle with her calling and commitment.

The film’s location plays an integral role in the overall thematic arc as a battle between competing worlds. Clodagh struggles to reconcile her pastoral memory of the past with the stony heights of her present. The nuns struggle to bring their English Christianity to bear on the lives of the Himalayan villagers. Powell and Pressberger’s stunning use of color helps to underline these dualities, providing a consistent stream of beautiful images both natural and unnatural, lush and rough, pitting worlds against one another in a visual sense. These formal elements serve as fine complements to the narrative of the film, which follows the nuns as they navigate their way between their competing worlds.

Beyond the exploration of these opposing realms, the film also serves as a meditation on the Incarnation, particularly in the notion of Christ’s descent from heaven to earth, His taking on of human flesh, and His service among humanity. The crucifix finds its way into shots repeatedly—appropriate for a nunnery to be sure, but also drawing the viewer to reflect on the intersection of this narrative with the life of Jesus. Black Narcissus is no allegory, but its theological echoes are undeniable.

Here's the Pacific Cinematheque graph...

A sumptuous stunner of studio-set style and seething, repressed sexuality, Black Narcissus is one of the triumphs of British cinema, and one of the great masterpieces in the Powell and Pressburger canon; Jack Cardiff’s amazing colour cinematography, winner of a much-deserved 1947 Oscar, plays no small part in its glories. Five Anglican nuns attempt to establish a mission in a one-time bordello in the remote Himalayas, but find their faith sorely tested by climate, culture clash, and carnal passion. The superb cast is headed by Deborah Kerr as the virtuous Mother Superior; David Farrar as a cynical, sensual British agent; Sabu as the local Indian potentate; and Kathleen Byron as a nun unhinged by desire. The film’s flesh-versus-spirit battle unfolds in a deliriously exotic, studio-set India that recalls the lavish stylizations of the Josef von Sternberg/Marlene Dietrich films of the 1930s.

apr 23 | eat, for this is my body

Not sure that the title's reference to the words of Christ should suggest that this one will necessarily be essential Soul Food. But one's curiosity is nevertheless piqued...

Eat, for This Is My Body (2007, Haiti/France, Michelange Quay)
Pacific Cinematheque
Apr 23 6:30
"Critics have invoked Luis Buñuel, David Lynch and Werner Herzog to describe the extraordinary Eat, for This Is My Body, New York-born filmmaker Michelange Quay’s taboo-breaking, voodoo-infused visual poem to his ancestral homeland of Haiti. Beginning with a spectator aerial-shot swoop into the island country, Quay’s seductive, often shocking film explores power relations — racial, sexual, colonial — through a series of symbolic, surreal sequences set in a decaying mansion."

farewell, my lovely (1975) | pulp magazine glories

Nothing particularly soul foodish about this one, but I'm a nut for both Raymond Chandler and baseball history, so I got quite a kick out of the 1975 treatment of Farewell, My Lovely - perhaps the most faithful of the Philip Marlowe screen adaptations, with a celebrated turn by Robert Mitchum in the lead role.

I love the look of the film, its saturated colours mimicking not so much the black and white glories of film noir as the lurid covers of those pulp magazines where Chandler's genre-defining hard-boiled stories first appeared.

That particular image evokes the paintings of Edward Hopper, doesn't it? The colour saturation and grainy resolution are exaggerated in these images because I was viewing the film on vhs tape, and doing my screen captures by shooting the screen with my digital camera. Not particularly true to the actual cinematography, but I do like the effect: pure pulp.

The title sequence at the beginning suggests vintage postcards of Los Angeles neon.

Credit where it's due...

I kept noticing the score, which is exceptional - reminded me sometimes of vintage noir scores like Anatomy Of A Murder, Touch Of Evil, Experiment In Terror, The Untouchables, other times of Bernard Hermann's chilling seventies noir score for Taxi Driver. Turns out the soundtrack became available a few years ago: I downloaded it from iTunes. (It's the "End Title" and "Main Title" versions of "Marlowe's Theme" you're after, and maybe "Moose Finds His Velma.")

The inspired casting doesn't end with Mitchum. In a brothel scene, one of the hoods looked suddenly familiar.  A review of the credits confirmed: Sly Stallone, a year before his breakout performance in Rocky.

For my money, Charlotte Rampling plays the fatale-est femme in all noir...

But it wasn't till the closing credits rolled that I noticed who played her husband: the only screen appearance (so far as I know) of the legendary crime novelist Jim Thompson, whose bleak pulp fictions were boiled much harder than Chandler's ever were.

"Farewell, My Lovely" was published in 1940, but the 1975 screenwriter must have been a ball fan, because he chose to set his story in the summer of 1941, against the backdrop of Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak.

The baseball angle also leads to the screenwriter's invention of a little black kid, probably over-emphasizing the "who is not himself mean" part of Chandler's famous mandate - "Down these mean streets a man must go who is not himself mean, who is neither tarnished nor afraid. The detective must be a complete man and a common man and yet an unusual man. He must be, to use a rather weathered phrase, a man of honor."

But if the kid's presence in the picture ultimately tips things the slightest bit too far in the direction of sentiment, it can be forgiven for giving us this particular little street scene...

apr 17 | one flew over the cuckoo's nest | cineplex classic films

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
"If he's crazy, what does that make you?"
Directed by: Milos Forman
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Louise Fletcher
Plot: Upon arrival at a mental institution, a brash rebel rallies the patients together to take on the oppressive Nurse Ratched, a woman more a dictator than a nurse.

Sunday, April 17, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST is available on DVD an Blu-ray at Videomatica

Watching for... THE WAY

Edited from
Apocalypse Sheen: The Sheen clan and The Way to redemption
by Craig McLean, April 3 2011
Read the entire article at Independent Woman

Martin Sheen, now 70, and Emilio Estevez, a 48-year-old actor-turned-director, have collaborated on another film odyssey on foreign soil, though this time it has been a more enjoyable experience. The Way is about an uptight father, Tom (played by Sheen), trying to reconnect with his restless son, Daniel (Estevez, who also wrote and directed the film). The younger man, a loner and inveterate backpacker (in his father's eyes a slacker), dies in a storm while trying to walk the Camino de Santiago, the pilgrimage across the Pyrenees in northern Spain.

Tom, a dentist who had waved off Daniel with pointed misgivings about what his son was doing with his life, travels from America to collect the body. Once in Spain, he decides to honour Daniel's memory by completing the 500-mile trek himself, with Daniel's ashes in his backpack. Along the way, he is joined by three ad-hoc travelling companions, all also looking for meaning or fulfilment in their lives: a troubled Canadian woman, an overweight Dutch stoner and a frustrated Irish writer (played by James Nesbitt). And he is forced to look deeply at his own character, his outlook and his lack of faith -- all fuelled by visions of his dead son.

Sheen, who is still married to Templeton, has been sober for 20 years and is now a devout Catholic, having had his faith restored by a series of meaningful conversations in Paris in 1981 with Terrence Malick, the director of Sheen's breakthrough film, Badlands (1973). For Sheen, making The Way has been particularly gratifying. "The whole journey is about showing our brokenness," he says. "It's about opening up and being human. And that's what spirituality really is. It's humanity." . . .

SPOILERS:

Beautifully and elegantly shot, The Way is a straightforward and moving tale of the bond between father and son, a reconciliation between the generations. In this case, it doesn't occur on the mortal plane -- the bereaved father, closed off emotionally, experiences a gentle conversion to his late son's free-spirited approach to life. But given the firmly Roman Catholic context, the film wears its religiosity relatively lightly. Sheen is happy to view Estevez's film as more "pro-life" than pro-Catholic. "Tom is not a practising Catholic, but by the end of the film he has become a believer," Sheen says. "His faith becomes personal. And that's the most important thing about anyone's faith: it has to be personal. If it's impersonal, why bother? It's useless."

Sheen brushes away any suggestion that he might have tried to convert his son during the shoot. "No. If you're going to proselytise, you have to do it with your actions, with your life. I adore Emilio. And God's presence is very powerful in him. He may think of it otherwise, but I see God's presence in his humanity and his joy."

Opens UK May 13, USA Sep 30

Watching For... THE TURIN HORSE (Bela Tarr)

Doug Cummings is a fellow-traveler, movie-wise. His filmjourney blog is quality. Robert Koehler is a frequent contributor. Here are excerpts edited from Koehler's report on the latest Bela Tarr film, which premiered in this year's Berlinale: be sure and read the entire article, here.

The Turin Horse begins with a micro-fiction by Laszlo Krasznahorkai, reminiscent of Donald Barthelme’s short fictions placing historical figures in fictitious situations. The story simply tells of a horse in 1888 being mercilessly beaten by its frustrated owner for not budging, and how Nietzsche, passing by on the street in Turin, leapt in to shield the horse from further abuse. The incident left Nietzsche fundamentally altered, ultimately mute and possibly mad, until he died about a decade later. “Of the horse,” the story as well as the third-person on the soundtrack concludes, “we know nothing.”

The Turin Horse, the film, subsequently provides an answer to this open question, and just as suitably, concludes with another open ending: Of the fate of the aging Hungarian farmer (Ohlsdorfer) and his unnamed daughter, we know nothing. . . .

Ohlsdorfer has a bum arm and hand, so he’s badly dependent on his daughter to help him with chores, and chores are all that fill their days, with rest periods in between of staring out their home’s main window—almost certainly what farm folks in the pre-electric age would do for entertainment, with the window as a screen. . . .

The film’s most overwhelming effect is a raging wind, so ferocious that it makes a kind of strange musical sound and creates a new environment. The wind is already there in the opening shot, but soon, it’s a malevolent force that some will be tempted to interpret as either God or the Devil. (Which it would be if this were a Bergman film; fortunately, The Turin Horse is as far from Bergman as an Adam Sandler movie.) . . .

Then, he arrives. We never know who he is, a neighbor most likely, somebody Ohlsdorfer feels comfortable inviting past his threshold. In the film’s only monologue, he delivers a warning to them, that any chance for a life of “excellence” and “good” is over, chased out by nameless barbarians who’ve ruined everything. He’s a pivot point, a man facing defeat, certainly a foreshadowing of the European disasters to come, but also a universal warning of the collapse of culture. But it’s also undermined in an instant by Ohlsdorfer, who’s been patiently listening to his verbose friend, stops him, calls it all “rubbish” and orders him out the front door. The man could be a parody of every movie drunk opining about the world (or Beckett character who whips enough energy to muster a speech), seeing nothing but darker and darker prospects with every progressive swig, or he could be the kind of visionary who circulate through the worlds of Tarr’s films, phony or not, with some perception of the way the world actually is. Beyond his conclusions that any chance is dashed for the forces of good and excellence to triumph over the forces of rottenness, he’s here to deliver the word: God is dead.

This may be why, even subconsciously, some rejected The Turin Horse in Berlin, and will do so as it trots through one festival after another toward a deservedly legendary position as a key film of our time. The notion that a film would present a case for the non-existence of God is unpleasant to many people, even people at film festivals, where you’re more likely than in many other walks of life to run into atheists. There are the obvious reasons why some (many?) even hate the film. But the fundamental Nietzschean concept of life without a God is as frequently despised now (perhaps now more than ever before) as it was in the author’s time.

Sight and Sound critic/editor Nick James helpfully mentioned to me a specific reference point to Nietzsche in The Turin Horse: The man at the beginning of Nietzsche’s “The Gay Science” who observes a candle going out as proof that God is dead. The critical turning points in the film include an occasion when the gas-lit lamps in the house fail to work anymore, and a large tome read out loud by the daughter, with the passage she reads describing how the churches are being closed by the priests because too much sin has been committed. Tarr refers to the book, a pure invention of Krasznahorkai’s, as an “anti-Bible.” The fascination with this scene, both in the kind of reverential way that Kelemen lights it and frames the daughter and the book, is that the slightly inattentive viewer might actually think that she’s reading from the Bible, but just perhaps an obscure chapter that only Biblical scholars know well. It is, in fact, the third fiction which Krasznahorkai has implanted in the film - this unexpected kind of meta-fiction masquerading as scripture that’s actually a repudiation of religion.

By the arrival of day six, the storm has ended, the apocalypse hasn’t happened. But this meticulously observed choreography of human beings at work and in everyday life, absolutely materialist and fixed by the clock and the course of the sun rising and setting and rising again the next day, gives way to a disturbing metaphysic without God, a darkness that forces the father and daughter into a Beckett space of motionlessness and the elimination of language.

terence malick

apr 6 & 17 | one flew over the cuckoo's nest | cineplex classic films

One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest (1975)
"If he's crazy, what does that make you?"
Directed by: Milos Forman
Cast: Jack Nicholson, Danny DeVito, Louise Fletcher
Plot: Upon arrival at a mental institution, a brash rebel rallies the patients together to take on the oppressive Nurse Ratched, a woman more a dictator than a nurse.

Wednesday, April 6, 7:00pm
Sunday, April 17, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO'S NEST is available on DVD an Blu-ray at Videomatica

mar 17 + 31 | danny boyle | national theatre live: frankenstein

I saw this Thursday. Absolutely extraordinary, I urge you to see it. The design elements are astonishing: no surprise, I suppose, when you consider Danny Boyle is so visual a director, and so bold. I thought often of Electric Company. It's clear that the approach is fully theatrical, very much conceived for the three-dimensionality of the live stage - but also that Boyle (or his cinematographer?) had always in mind just how it should be captured for film: the placement of the cameras is many times breath-taking. And the provocative questions about the nature of the human soul, the potential horror of man playing god, creating life in his own fallen image.

National Theatre Live: Frankenstein
Mar 17 @ 7pm | Additional performance Mar 31

Danny Boyle's stage production of Frankenstein, a play by Nick Dear, based on the novel by Mary Shelley.  Performed by Britain's National Theatre, broadcast live to cinemas.

Silvercity Riverport, Metropolis, Coquitlam
Park & Tilford, Scotiabank
Tickets
Cineplex

Danny Boyle: A rare man in a universe of monsters
Feb 27, The Telegraph

Fittingly for an Oscar-winning film director whom colleagues actually seem to like, the ex-altar boy’s foray into theatre exposes the human side of 'Frankenstein’, says William Langley.

. . . Last week, at the National Theatre, Boyle, the Oscar-winning film director, attempted to take a monstrous step towards rescuing the story from itself. Here was no lumbering Herman Munster-lookalike with spinachy skin and a bolt through its neck. The pared-down, elemental Frankenstein Boyle served up with playwright Nick Dear won rapturous notices, with The Daily Telegraph’s critic Charles Spencer declaring: “At its best, there is no doubt that Frankenstein is the most viscerally exciting and visually stunning show in town.”

. . . He was raised in a sternly religious home in Radcliffe, a down-on-its-luck Lancashire mill town, the son of a steel worker and an Irish-born dinner lady. “My whole life was full of saints, growing up,” he says. “It was a very strict Catholic family. I was an altar boy for eight years. I was supposed to become a priest, and, really, it was my mother’s dearest wish that I should become one.”

At the age of 14, when he was in advanced preparations to enter a seminary in Wigan, the family priest, Father Conway, took him aside and told him he shouldn’t go. “Whether he was saving me from the priesthood or the priesthood from me, I don’t know,” says Boyle. “But quite soon after that I started doing drama. And there’s a connection. All those directors – Martin Scorsese, John Woo – they were all meant to be priests. There’s something very theatrical about it. It’s basically the same job, poncing around telling people what to do.”

. . . In her preface to her novel, Mary Shelley declares that: “I have tried to preserve the elementary principles of human nature.” These, presumably, being the ones junked wholesale during the 200 years that the tale has been turned into hokum. If the National does have a triumph on its hands, it will be because Frankenstein has finally found someone who shares them.

apr 11- 21 | more bible movies on vision

Fire up those PVR's.... (April 4-8 selections here)

David and Bathsheba (1951)
Monday, April 11 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
A grand retelling of the Old Testament story of King David. Though well-loved by his loyal subjects, King David, a war hero, has finally met a force that he cannot contend with: love.
Having fallen for the beautiful Bathsheba, the beloved king must now find a way to handle her husband, Uriah. David sends Uriah, one of his most trusted soldiers, into a deadly battle, which ensures the fate of Bathsheba's husband and begins King David's downward spiral. The once-mighty king's eventual neglect for his kingdom and people incurs the wrath of God, who in turn destroys much of the country.
Photos

Esther and the King (1960)
Tuesday, April 12 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Joan Collins stars as Esther in this biblical melodrama. Set in Persia in the 4th century B.C., recently widowed King Ahasuerus (Richard Egan) is trying to defeat his enemy, Haman, who is leading a campaign of hatred against the Jews. After many intrigues, including the competing affection of another attractive woman, King Ahasuerus marries Esther and defeats the villainous Haman. The film was directed by Raoul Walsh, and also features Denis O'Dea. It also features a mostly Italian cast and crew with Mario Bava helming an Italian language version.
Photos

The Story of Ruth (1960)
Wednesday, April 13 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Plucked from the Old Testament, the story revolves around the character of Ruth, a pagan priestess who serves in her temple under the High Priestess, and who falls in love with a Hebrew man named Mahlon. This love brings her spiritual beliefs into question as she has trouble reconciling her pagan religion with his belief in one invisible deity. By the time they marry, she has decided to convert to Judaism, but her newfound spiritual beliefs are put to the test when Mahlon dies.
Photos

Salome (1953)
Friday, April 15 at Midnight ET /9pm PT
Desperate to save the life of the radical Christian preacher John the Baptist, Princess Salome (Rita Hayworth) pleads to her stepfather, King Herod of Galilee (Charles Laughton), for mercy. Fearing that a prophecy about John being a holy man is true, Herod agrees to grant Salome’s wish after she performs the seductive Dance of the Seven Veils…until the promise of having the beautiful princess to himself overpowers his compassion and he orders John’s execution.
Photos

The Robe (1953)
Monday, April 18 at Midnight ET /9pm PT
The first movie ever filmed in CinemaScope, The Robe Won 2 Oscars® and was nominated for another three. Best Actor nominee RICHARD BURTON stars as Marcellus Gallio, the Roman centurion charged with overseeing the crucifixion of Jesus. But when he wins Christ's robe in a gambling game at the foot of the cross, his life is changed forever. This inspired story set to a spectacular score features an all-star cast including Victor MATURE and Jean SIMMONS, and remains one of the screen's greatest Biblical epics.
Photos

Demetrius And The Gladiators (1954)
Tuesday, April 19 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
In this sequel to "The Robe," Demetrius fights for his life in the arenas of Rome and eventually challenges Caligula for possession of Christ's sacred garment.
Photos

The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) –
Part One: Wednesday, April 20 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Part Two: Thursday, April 21 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Director George Stevens disavowed gimmicks and in his epic retelling of the Four Gospels of the New Testament, set this dramatization in a panoramic framework of splendidly evocative backgrounds, including the astonishing buttes of Utah. Jesus is portrayed by Max Von Sydow in a difficult and highly praised performance. A huge all-star cast (including Charlton Heston as John the Baptist) animate the vast landscape of the film. Based on the Bible, Fulton Oursler’s "The Greatest Story Ever Told" and radio scripts by Henry Denker. Carl Sandburg was a Creative Associate.
Photos

Apocalypse (2010)
Thursday, April 21 at 10pm ET / 7pm PT
Friday, April 22 at Midnight ET / 9pm PT
Distinguished screen actor Richard Harris portrays the aged apostle John, prisoner on Patmos and prey to physically and emotionally depleting visions that he records for posterity - as admonishment and warning to all mankind. Also stars Vittoria Belvedere, Benjamin Sadler, Christian Kohlund, Bruce Payne, and Ian Duncan.

overstreet | iambic admonit

Film buddy Jeffrey Overstreet talks movies and art and stuff on the Iambic Admonit blog - to which Soul Foodie Rosie Perera is a regular contributor.

mar 27 | the wizard of oz | cineplex classic films

The Wizard Of Oz (1939)
"Gaiety! Glory! Glamour!"
Directed by: Victor Fleming
Cast: Judy Garland, Frank Morgan, Ray Bolger, Bert Lahr, Jack Haley, Margaret Hamilton
Plot: Dorothy Gale is swept away to a magical land in a tornado and embarks on a quest to see the Wizard who can help her return home.

Sunday, March 27, 1:00pm

Presented in HD. All tickets five dollars. SilverCity Riverport, SilverCity Coquitlam, Colossus Langley, Scotiabank Theatre. The Classic Film Series presents one great title each month on the big screen from September 2010 to August 2011: details here.

THE WIZARD OF OZ is available on DVD an Blu-ray at Videomatica

becket | the new yorker, mar 14, 1964

click to enlarge

apr 4 - 8 | bible movies on vision

Check out the Bible movies coming up on Vision TV! Anybody got a PVR? Poke around Matt Page's excellent Bible Film Blog for more on all of these titles. Most interesting to me about the John Huston film "The Bible" is that the screenplay is by Christopher Fry, who pretty much led the very significant religious drama movement in England in the middle of last century (A Phoenix Too Frequent, The Lady's Not For Burning, A Sleep of Prisoners, The Lark, The Dark Is Light Enough, etc.)

Jesus (1979)
Monday, April 4 at Midnight ET
The life and words of Jesus Christ, whose followers form one of the world's great religions, come to life in this literal adaptation of the Christian Bible's Gospel According to St. Luke, filmed entirely in the land where Jesus lived.
Photos

The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
Tuesday, April 5 at Midnight ET
Basing his drama on the novel by Nikos Kazantzakis, master filmmaker Martin Scorsese delves deep into the mind and soul of Jesus Christ and the inner torment his experiences after discovering he is the son of God. With Oscar-nominees Willem Dafoe as Christ and Harvey Keitel as Judas, Scorsese received an Oscar nomination for directing this sweeping and vivid masterpiece.
Photos

Jesus Christ SuperStar (1973)
Wednesday, April 6 at Midnight ET
Based on the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice and the hit broadway show, this classic rock opera tells the story of the last 6 days of the life of Christ as seen by Judas in contemporary Israel. Directed by Norman Jewison.
Photos

The Bible (1966) – Part One
Thursday, April 7 at Midnight ET
Conceived by producer Dino De Laurentiis, THE BIBLE dramatizes the first 22 chapters of Genesis in the Old Testament. Legendary director John Huston lends his talents to create a movie of epic proportions. Shot in sumptuous 70mm, the film is as visually rich as the story it tells.
Presented in an episodic narrative, the story starts at the beginning, with Adam and Eve, played by Michael Parks and Ulla Bergyd, respectively. Their tragic story leads to Cain and Abel, which is followed by the story of Noah, who is portrayed by the director himself. The Tower of Babel is next, followed by the story of Sodom and Gomorrah. George C. Scott plays the beleaguered Abraham, and Ava Gardner stars as his wife, Sarah. In the end, Sarah is visited by the three angels of God, as portrayed by Peter O'Toole.
Photos

The Bible (1966) – Part Two
Friday, April 8 at Midnight ET

andrew o'hehir on the adjustment bureau

Andrew O'Hehir dubs The Adjustment Bureau the Pick Of The Week at salon.com. Bear in mind, it's a slow week. Still, kind of a fun movie. Here's an edited version of what O'Hehir had to say: if you want more, and don't mind spoilers, check out the original article.

"The Adjustment Bureau" is a science-fiction romance featuring Matt Damon and English actress Emily Blunt as a couple on the run from mysterious men with hats. Its somewhat awkward blend of Philip K. Dick-trapped-in-"The Matrix" paranoia and cut-rate Augustinian theology, feel clean and organic, if that makes any sense.

The real questions in "The Adjustment Bureau" aren't about what's happening but why the Plan apparently dictates that David and Elise must be kept apart, and whether there's anything they can do about it. Now, those questions engender other questions, and if those sound like debating points drawn from an episode of "The Twilight Zone," or a lecture by some Vatican II-style liberal theologian, you're on the right track. Have David and Elise stumbled into a Miltonic War in Heaven, in which Mitchell is playing the role of Lucifer? If we live in a universe designed by some Grand Poobah who stands outside time, is our sense of agency and free will an illusion? Etc.

OK, as you can see, either "The Adjustment Bureau" falls apart when you start to think about it, or you need to think about it a whole lot deeper and better than I just did. Nolfi makes no effort to conceal the Judeo-Christian roots of his premise (which is also true in the Philip K. Dick short story), and if you object to infusions of pop religion into your science fiction no doubt this movie will drive you nuts. But if you're looking for an end-of-winter cinematic palate cleanser that delivers a sweep-you-off-your-feet love story along with a few gooey, chewy, slightly silly philosophical niblets, then the Plan demands that you see this movie.

Adapted from a short story by Philip K. Dick, whose novel "Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep" was the basis for BLADRUNNER, which also had a theological thing or two on its mind.

mar 13 | passion of joan of arc

PASSION OF JOAN OF ARC
Sunday Mar 13 at Pacific Cinematheque

Is it only a year and a bit ago that The Passion Project was on the Pacific Theatre stage? And the memorable screening at the Cathedral with the premiere of a live score by Stefan Smulovitz?

Astonishing film, the masterpiece of spiritual cinema in the silent era. See it.

mar 11 | of gods and men

Of Gods and Men, the Soul Food movie of 2010, opened Friday March 11 at Fifth Avenue Cinemas. The God-soaked movie that took godless France by storm.  Winner of the Grand Prix at The Cannes Film Festival, didn't even get an Oscar mention.  They really are bone-heads, that Hollywood crowd.

julie taymor | tempest, titus, universe, spidey

Must be tough being Julie Taymor these days. The news on March 10:

After days of rumors, the producers of Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark made the official announcement last night: Director Julie Taymor is out. The problem-plagued musical has also been delayed yet again, this time until 'early summer 2011,' according to the show’s blog... Newser

Also, we Taymor fans have been waiting since last fall for her film treatment of The Tempest to show up on a screen near us, but the longer it takes a movie to get into circulation, the more likely it is to be a disappointment. There are exceptions, but that's common. So I'm nervous.

I LOVED Titus: tough, brave, insane, with its excesses in all the right places; the perfect film of a fascinating mess of a play. The stage version of The Lion King is brilliant, inventive: she made art when you might expect schlock, using an amazing variety of puppets to render the movements of an array of specific animals that populate its African landscapes in a gloriously stylized, always specific way.

A Beatles fan, I was tremendously enthusiastic to see Across The Universe, and truly loved it, though I will say it veered into something pretty sentimental by the end. I was entirely up for the over-the-top cuteness of some of the early sequences: they were all about cuteness and naivete, and Taymor is brilliant at matching style and tone to specific material. And while the characters were types, I was willing to see them as archetypes more than stereotypes. I was with her when the story took an increasingly psychedelic direction, and really with her when it got darker. Only, the film seems to chicken out in the home stretch: instead of leaving things as messy as they should have been, it all got happy again, and the sunshine-lollipops tone that worked so well in the first was pretty cloying for me in the third. I still watch and rewatch the film: it's a favourite. But I wince a bit when things start wrapping up, and blame "studio interference" for the compromise.

The delays in Spiderman make me nervous: maybe Ms Taymor's being made the Judas goat, like a sports manager who gets fired when the team does bad and goes on to coach a string of championship teams. Somebody's got to pay, something must be done to sate the blood-lust of the fans and media, and who knows, maybe it actually works sometimes - "shake things up," "new chemistry," "restore confidence," all that. But often I think it's wrong-headed. Sometimes not.

In the face of all this, and fearing a trajectory, the delays in The Tempest make me queasy indeed, the quease aided and abetted by this chart in the last Film Comment;

click to expand

The best anybody could say is that the film is "of interest," with two "mediocres" and one out-and-out "bomb"? Ouch. Granted, these Film Comment reviewers are a tough crowd, and can be pretty darn snooty. But still, high marks for all the films I've liked the best lately; Blue Valentine, The Fighter, The King's Speech. Unmerited critic feeding frenzy, or a bad sign of something rotting - or at least slipping - in the state of Taymor?

I'll wait to have my own response. Actually, all this makes me more eager to see both the film (if it can get to Vancouver) and the play (if I can get myself to New York): nothing I love better than celebrating a maligned but deserving play or film.

Still...  I do worry about how Julie's doing.