Tim Burton was the obvious, if not only, choice of director to bring Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street to the screen. Stephen Sondheim’s musical (first seen on Broadway in 1979) has the mix of gore, humor, and quirkiness that Burton has been working with for years. The true fun comes from the fact that this is also a full on movie musical which is an entirely new realm for Burton to play in.
The atmospherics of Sweeney Todd are superb. The filmmakers have drained all but the smallest bit of color from 19th century industrial London. The city's pallor resembles that of Sweeney's victims. It is easy for viewers to lose themselves in the folds of the intricately dreary costumes (Depp in the saddest swimsuit ever filmed is a true highlight).
But this is to be expected from Burton’s crew, who at this point can whip up exquisite goth fantasies in their sleep (and they have the Oscars to prove it). What’s new about Sweeney Todd is the whole singing thing. The results are not entirely Broadway caliber. Johnny Depp’s intensity as an actor is compromised by a singing voice that veers into pop territory too often. Helena Bonham Carter portrayal of Mrs. Lovett (Sweeney’s pie baking accomplice) is delightfully devilish, but she doesn’t sell the songs the way Angela Lansbury did when she originated the role onstage.
These shortcomings actually make this movie more endearing. This film is a risk for Burton and his stars. There would have been no risk in choosing actors who had the proven chops for this score (which is by no means easy even by Broadway standards). Burton took a chance on two actors with whom he is very close. Johnny Depp has worked with the director five previous times; Helena Bonham Carter often stars in Burton’s movies and occasionally bears his children. The comfort level in this group of artists is such that they took professional risks many in Hollywood would shy away from. There is a thrill that comes from seeing A-listers put their all into something uncharted, even when total success isn’t achieved. Leaving the comfort zone is something that that should be encouraged in the movie making community.
In short, Sweeney Todd has a “warts and all” appeal that makes it a solid bet for your home viewing pleasure.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Classics Corner: The Great Dictator
When I am not playing critic extraordinaire, I moonlight as a World History teacher. One of the wonderful aspects of the job is sharing films with my students (and not just because movies have the uncanny ability to silence fifteen year olds). It is an interesting experience for me because I end up watching the movie five times, once with each class. As a result I end up with a better understanding of the piece than I had before I decided to screen it the first place (it also means that I can recite Super Size Me line for line, probably in reverse if needed).
Last week, just as the students were preparing for Spring Break, we watched Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Screening the movie repeatedly left me with a few thoughts about the film, its triumphs, and its flaws.
It is striking how brave The Great Dictator is as parody and as social criticism. It was far easier for Mel Brooks to make fun of Hitler in The Producers some twenty-two years after his demise. It was far less subversive for Roberto Benigni to do it in Life is Beautiful which actually seems quaint by comparison. Charlie Chaplin began his film in 1937 (it was not finished and released until 1940) while the Furer was very much alive and still amassing power. Not only that but it was made at a time when the United States was not directly involved in the war so, unlike many of the Loony Tunes of the period which lampoon the Axis powers, this is not a propaganda piece. Chaplin takes a position far from the one actually used to enter the war: Hitler should be stopped for what he is doing to the Jews, not because of what he might eventually do to the United States. For the time this was quite a bold statement.
Besides being writer and director Chaplin takes on the film’s two main roles: that of a Jewish barber and of Adenoid Hynkel, the Dictator of Tomania. As the World’s greatest clown, Chaplin knows exactly how to harness his skills for maximum satirical effect. The barber’s encounter with the brown shirts and Hynkel’s ballet routine with an inflatable globe stand out as the most humorous and biting pieces of the film. It is wondrous to watch Chaplin’s use of vaudeville, an art so closely linked to the Jewish community, to tear Hitler’s façade as a modern leader to pieces.
The Great Dictator should be considered a masterpiece, but it is a flawed masterpiece. Chaplin’s first speaking role comes from a script that is laborious and redundant. The film’s two hour running time actually defuses the effectiveness of the social commentary (I was able to create an hour and twenty minutes version of for my students, if only I was an editor during the Greatest Generation). In a film about the rejection of fascism, the depiction of Benito Mussolini (Jack Oakie playing Benzino Napolini) as an Italian American goomba doesn’t quite gel. Chaplin’s final speech, when the barber is mistaken for Hynkel and must speak to the masses, is full of great sentiments about equality and peace. The trouble is it is also full of a great deal of awkward phrasing and repetitions.
This film still largely works as a comedy (it had modern day “urban” youths howling), as a warning against totalitarianism, and as an important piece of cinematic history. All would be well served to (re)visit it.
Last week, just as the students were preparing for Spring Break, we watched Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. Screening the movie repeatedly left me with a few thoughts about the film, its triumphs, and its flaws.
It is striking how brave The Great Dictator is as parody and as social criticism. It was far easier for Mel Brooks to make fun of Hitler in The Producers some twenty-two years after his demise. It was far less subversive for Roberto Benigni to do it in Life is Beautiful which actually seems quaint by comparison. Charlie Chaplin began his film in 1937 (it was not finished and released until 1940) while the Furer was very much alive and still amassing power. Not only that but it was made at a time when the United States was not directly involved in the war so, unlike many of the Loony Tunes of the period which lampoon the Axis powers, this is not a propaganda piece. Chaplin takes a position far from the one actually used to enter the war: Hitler should be stopped for what he is doing to the Jews, not because of what he might eventually do to the United States. For the time this was quite a bold statement.
Besides being writer and director Chaplin takes on the film’s two main roles: that of a Jewish barber and of Adenoid Hynkel, the Dictator of Tomania. As the World’s greatest clown, Chaplin knows exactly how to harness his skills for maximum satirical effect. The barber’s encounter with the brown shirts and Hynkel’s ballet routine with an inflatable globe stand out as the most humorous and biting pieces of the film. It is wondrous to watch Chaplin’s use of vaudeville, an art so closely linked to the Jewish community, to tear Hitler’s façade as a modern leader to pieces.
The Great Dictator should be considered a masterpiece, but it is a flawed masterpiece. Chaplin’s first speaking role comes from a script that is laborious and redundant. The film’s two hour running time actually defuses the effectiveness of the social commentary (I was able to create an hour and twenty minutes version of for my students, if only I was an editor during the Greatest Generation). In a film about the rejection of fascism, the depiction of Benito Mussolini (Jack Oakie playing Benzino Napolini) as an Italian American goomba doesn’t quite gel. Chaplin’s final speech, when the barber is mistaken for Hynkel and must speak to the masses, is full of great sentiments about equality and peace. The trouble is it is also full of a great deal of awkward phrasing and repetitions.
This film still largely works as a comedy (it had modern day “urban” youths howling), as a warning against totalitarianism, and as an important piece of cinematic history. All would be well served to (re)visit it.
Thursday, March 6, 2008
Semi-Pro= Semi-Good (I apologize for that)
It is quite possible that a review of Semi-Pro is completely superfluous. If you have seen any of the movies that make up the centerpiece of Will Ferrell’s canon (as opposed to when he branches out in movies like Melinda and Melinda, Stranger Than Fiction or even Elf) you know what you are getting yourself into. If you haven’t seen Anchorman, Talladega Nights, Blades of Glory etc. it is most certainly because you are turned off by Farrell’s particular brand of comedy and do not intend to embrace it now. That being said, here are some observations about Semi-Pro that enthusiasts and detractors can both enjoy.
Will Ferrell and his compatriots have almost become a set of modern day Marx Brothers. Think about it: The actors play roughly the same character in each film (Ferrell’s overconfident buffoon carries the films in the same way Groucho’s over confident wiseacre did). The plot is little more than a backdrop for the bits and jokes (on this note I would say Ferrell and company do a slightly better job than the Marx Bros., I challenge anyone to remember the actual plot of any of their pictures). The humor is identical from movie to movie (Chico always got to play a hilarious piano solo; Jackie Moon’s battle with a bear in Semi-Pro is just like Ricky Bobby’s tussle with a cougar in Talladega Nights). Now there are classic Marx Brothers titles (Animal Crackers, Duck Soup and Horse Feathers being great examples) and there are those that are not nearly as memorable (The Big Store?). When all is said and done, the same will be true of the films of Will Farrell et al. It seems clear that Semi-Pro will not be on the list of films that endures.
Semi-Pro (the story of the Flint Tropics, a rag tag ABA team in the 1970s) just comes off as half-baked. For starters, it is comedy about basketball where the basketball sequences are not funny. Then there is a romance between Woody Harrelson and Maura Tierney that we expected to invest in for very little pay off. The vast majority of the humor comes from the lines and, while there are some great ones (a few of the ad libs come from a delightfully bizarre corner of Farrell’s brain), they are not enough to support a comedy where nothing funny actually happens on screen.
Being a movie about basketball in Detroit, there are more African-American roles in Semi-Pro than any previous Will Ferrell movie. It is a bit disconcerting that the three Black actors (Andre Benjamin, Jay Phillips, and DeRay Davis) who play Flint Tropics aren’t given much comedic material to work with. For the most part, these guys are used for reaction shots to the shenanigans of the white characters. It is sad that the frat boy humor isn’t universal enough to employ the talents of performers of color. When actors in the same movie can’t partake in the same type of humor because of their race. It shows how unnecessarily segregated the world of comedy is.
If you like this type of fare, you will laugh but not as much as you have in the past. If you aren’t on the bandwagon yet, this will not be the film that grabs hold of you so skip it. There simply wasn’t quite enough material for it to be a major motion picture. But have no fear, for playing before Semi-Pro is the trailer for Step Brothers, the next Will Ferrell movie where he plays an overconfident boob who ends up sharing bunk beds with John C. Reilly. Lets hope this more like Duck Soup and less like The Big Store.
Will Ferrell and his compatriots have almost become a set of modern day Marx Brothers. Think about it: The actors play roughly the same character in each film (Ferrell’s overconfident buffoon carries the films in the same way Groucho’s over confident wiseacre did). The plot is little more than a backdrop for the bits and jokes (on this note I would say Ferrell and company do a slightly better job than the Marx Bros., I challenge anyone to remember the actual plot of any of their pictures). The humor is identical from movie to movie (Chico always got to play a hilarious piano solo; Jackie Moon’s battle with a bear in Semi-Pro is just like Ricky Bobby’s tussle with a cougar in Talladega Nights). Now there are classic Marx Brothers titles (Animal Crackers, Duck Soup and Horse Feathers being great examples) and there are those that are not nearly as memorable (The Big Store?). When all is said and done, the same will be true of the films of Will Farrell et al. It seems clear that Semi-Pro will not be on the list of films that endures.
Semi-Pro (the story of the Flint Tropics, a rag tag ABA team in the 1970s) just comes off as half-baked. For starters, it is comedy about basketball where the basketball sequences are not funny. Then there is a romance between Woody Harrelson and Maura Tierney that we expected to invest in for very little pay off. The vast majority of the humor comes from the lines and, while there are some great ones (a few of the ad libs come from a delightfully bizarre corner of Farrell’s brain), they are not enough to support a comedy where nothing funny actually happens on screen.
Being a movie about basketball in Detroit, there are more African-American roles in Semi-Pro than any previous Will Ferrell movie. It is a bit disconcerting that the three Black actors (Andre Benjamin, Jay Phillips, and DeRay Davis) who play Flint Tropics aren’t given much comedic material to work with. For the most part, these guys are used for reaction shots to the shenanigans of the white characters. It is sad that the frat boy humor isn’t universal enough to employ the talents of performers of color. When actors in the same movie can’t partake in the same type of humor because of their race. It shows how unnecessarily segregated the world of comedy is.
If you like this type of fare, you will laugh but not as much as you have in the past. If you aren’t on the bandwagon yet, this will not be the film that grabs hold of you so skip it. There simply wasn’t quite enough material for it to be a major motion picture. But have no fear, for playing before Semi-Pro is the trailer for Step Brothers, the next Will Ferrell movie where he plays an overconfident boob who ends up sharing bunk beds with John C. Reilly. Lets hope this more like Duck Soup and less like The Big Store.
Monday, March 3, 2008
Have you heard of this thing called social networking?
Big News! The Middlebrow Film Society has invaded yourSpace and your Face(book)!
The Middlebrow Film Society now has a presence on both MySpace and Facebook.
Click on the name of your social networking site of choice to see the MFS pages.
Facebook is now home to a MFS group which you simply must join.
The next step is getting all of those cyber-friends of yours to become members of the Society, thus ensuring world domination.
The Middlebrow Film Society now has a presence on both MySpace and Facebook.
Click on the name of your social networking site of choice to see the MFS pages.
Facebook is now home to a MFS group which you simply must join.
The next step is getting all of those cyber-friends of yours to become members of the Society, thus ensuring world domination.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
One That Slipped Away: The Water Horse
The Kids’ Movie is in a troubled state. In recent years too many seem to be filled with sarcasm, pot shots, and hyperbolic performances. It is hard to find a trace of sincerity or gentility in these pictures. The effect of this work can be seen at any amusement park or shopping mall in America. In this setting you will see kids roll their eyes in an exaggerated fashion at their parents, snarl snappy comebacks for simple requests, put their hands to their hips and whine in kewpie doll tones. In my non-professional opinion all of this can be traced back to watching Surf’s Up on endless repeat in the back of the family Suburban.
The Shrek franchise is the current standard bearer of this vile form of entertainment (though Aladdin should be seen as the grandfather of the genre). With pop-culture addled scripts filled with the cheapest of laughs, these movies aim for the same tone as a teen comedy. This constant snarkiness has a jading effect on our youth. Kids should not feel like they are too cool for fairy tales. They should be enjoying them and using them as a springboard for their own imaginations.
A personal story serves the current purpose nicely: I had the pleasure of working with 5th graders the year that Shrek came to DVD (kids do not truly internalize these movies until they own a copy). Let me just say that no one needs to hear a class of white 11 year olds proclaim “I’m makin’ waffles!” in their best Black English accents ad nauseam. No one.
It is because of all of this that The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep is a welcome surprise. This Celtic King Kong story (in which a boy inadvertently raises the Loch Ness Monster in his bathtub) keeps it tongue out of its cheek for the entire film. In place of sarcasm and insults is a story that deals with loneliness, friendship, grief, and the Second World War from a child’s perspective. All of this is conveyed by a solid (not cute) young actor named Alex Etel (Millions). Though the story relies on a few well worn clichés, it also trusts its young audience to be able to handle some serious issues. It is that understanding of the complexity of the young mind that is lacking in Shrek and its ilk.
The Water Horse is based on a book by Dick King-Smith who also wrote the source material for Babe. These films share a similar mentality. A more recent movie that should also be seen by children is Akeelah and the Bee if only because it proves that spelling (and studying) is cool.
The truth of the matter is that kids will watch anything, so why do we adults subject them (and ourselves) to such terrible dreck? There are quality kids’ movies out there; true some are foreign and others are many years old but they exist. Find movies that promote love, sensitivity, and curiosity. Find movies that help kids deal with the realities of life. Most importantly find movies that don’t insult their intelligence.
When The Water Horse comes to DVD on April 8, watch it with a child in your life. They might be a bit scared at points, they may even cry but, I guarantee, they will be positively affected. I also guarantee that they won’t run around the house screaming some ridiculous catch phrase.
The Shrek franchise is the current standard bearer of this vile form of entertainment (though Aladdin should be seen as the grandfather of the genre). With pop-culture addled scripts filled with the cheapest of laughs, these movies aim for the same tone as a teen comedy. This constant snarkiness has a jading effect on our youth. Kids should not feel like they are too cool for fairy tales. They should be enjoying them and using them as a springboard for their own imaginations.
A personal story serves the current purpose nicely: I had the pleasure of working with 5th graders the year that Shrek came to DVD (kids do not truly internalize these movies until they own a copy). Let me just say that no one needs to hear a class of white 11 year olds proclaim “I’m makin’ waffles!” in their best Black English accents ad nauseam. No one.
It is because of all of this that The Water Horse: Legend of the Deep is a welcome surprise. This Celtic King Kong story (in which a boy inadvertently raises the Loch Ness Monster in his bathtub) keeps it tongue out of its cheek for the entire film. In place of sarcasm and insults is a story that deals with loneliness, friendship, grief, and the Second World War from a child’s perspective. All of this is conveyed by a solid (not cute) young actor named Alex Etel (Millions). Though the story relies on a few well worn clichés, it also trusts its young audience to be able to handle some serious issues. It is that understanding of the complexity of the young mind that is lacking in Shrek and its ilk.
The Water Horse is based on a book by Dick King-Smith who also wrote the source material for Babe. These films share a similar mentality. A more recent movie that should also be seen by children is Akeelah and the Bee if only because it proves that spelling (and studying) is cool.
The truth of the matter is that kids will watch anything, so why do we adults subject them (and ourselves) to such terrible dreck? There are quality kids’ movies out there; true some are foreign and others are many years old but they exist. Find movies that promote love, sensitivity, and curiosity. Find movies that help kids deal with the realities of life. Most importantly find movies that don’t insult their intelligence.
When The Water Horse comes to DVD on April 8, watch it with a child in your life. They might be a bit scared at points, they may even cry but, I guarantee, they will be positively affected. I also guarantee that they won’t run around the house screaming some ridiculous catch phrase.
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