by ·Comments Off on Triplets of Belleville (2003, Sylvain Chomet)

“Is that it, then? Is it over, do you think? What have you got to say to Grandma?”

Watched this again because Katy had never seen (and the mime sequence in Paris je t’aime put me in the mood). Had never seen on video – still just as good as it’s always been. Last-minute before the picture I tried to mislead Katy into having low expectations, so surely she would come out of the movie ecstatic with joy because it is surely one of the best animated features made in our lifetime, but the ploy didn’t work and she told me it’s okay, watchable but a little slow. Poo.

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I love the parts about the tortured psyche of the dog and his awful lifelong relationship with trains. Love how, when the dog is little, he just looks like a full-size dog hit with a shrink-ray. Love the sad look that a disguised gramma gives the biker when she finally finds him (below).

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A newspaper refers to the French Mafia as the suspects in a biker’s death, which is the clue that leads gramma to their lair… I’d forgotten that bit. I guess our biker was never going to win the tour de france anyway… he’s way in back when he is captured (even though he always outruns the others during the mafia-inflicted games). The DVD comes with a silly music video for M, the performer of the title song (lyrics written by Chomet himself).

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IMDB users have sleuthed out some details in the Tour de France scenes and determined that the movie takes place in 1957.

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by ·Comments Off on Phantom of the Paradise (1974, Brian De Palma)

This movie, are you kidding me? 100 percent awesome. Sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, split screens, mobile long takes and a shower scene with a knife. It could only be Brian DePalma’s parody-tribute to Phantom of the Opera.

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Winslow Leach is writing a rock cantata of Faust and auditions it for Swan, the hugest most important record producer in the industry. Swan steals Leach’s cantata and adapts it for his new theater (Paradise), auditions some girls (Leach meets one briefly, Phoenix, falls in love, thinks she has a perfect voice for his songs, etc), then gets Leach falsely arrested and sent to prison, where his teeth are removed and replaced with metal ones for some reason I forget.

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Leach escapes, returns as the Phantom of the Paradise, and kills the dude hired to sing his stuff (“Beef”). But Swan finds Leach and signs a lifetime deal with him to keep writing stuff that Swan will produce… a bad deal for both of them, I guess. After a life/death struggle for creative control and the love of the girl, they both end up dead dead dead.

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Good music, good story, great movie. What in the world happened? Why have I never heard of this before? Why haven’t my coworkers heard of it?

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Best part: the phantom stabs himself in the heart, but can’t die because he’s still under contract.

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by ·Comments Off on Fantasia (1940, Disney)

Fantasia is exactly how I remember it. A drowsy opening, some pretty business, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice, some more neat stuff, then the conductor announces the halfway point and I fall asleep, only waking up for the Night On Bald Mountain segment and the closing credits.

I guess the animation purists love it, but I just find it a pleasant excuse for a nap. Sorry!

by ·Comments Off on Walk The Line (2005, James Mangold)

Joaquin “Lucius Hunt” Phoenix is a Johnny Cash impersonator and Reese “Tracy Flick” Witherspoon is this girl who likes him.

Plays like a bullet-point list of Cash’s early career turned into a movie. Right when I said “I thought “cry cry cry” was his first single, not the folsom song”, someone introduces Joaquin by saying “here’s johnny cash, whose new single ‘cry cry cry’ is burning up the charts” or some such thing. So a series of facts mixed with re-enactments of famous events and made-up scenes and dialogue = an uncomplicated biopic of a man whose complicated life deserved better.

Amusing cameos by a decent Jerry Lee Lewis, a totally unconvincing Elvis and a very convincing Waylon Jennings (played by Shooter Jennings). T-1000 plays the judgemental father, and Madge from Prophecy III: The Ascent plays music legend Mother Maybelle Carter, the whole thing lovingly assembled by the esteemed director of Kate & Leopold. Five oscar nominations and three golden globes don’t lie! This is a class act.

Katy loves it.

by ·Comments Off on 200 Motels (1971, Frank Zappa)

Katy would not have liked it. Not sure that I liked it. But at least I watched it, and now I don’t have to watch it again.

Details so that I won’t have to watch it again:
– Ringo Starr doing a fake interview show dressed as Frank Zappa
– Zappa on drums once, guitar a few times, but mostly absent
– the main guys bouncing delightedly through the movie were Flo & Eddie (?)
– some kind of devil/tempter keeps offering people dumb stuff if they’ll sign in blood
– groupie girls show up from time to time
– ten-minute animated dentist duck segment right in the middle
– Jimmy Carl Black sang “Lonesome Cowboy Burt”
– most of the music/concert scenes were really good
– lots of video (not film: video) effects. Lots. LOTS.
– some kind of druggachusetts episode where the effects were just off the hook

Not a “good” movie by any means, but interesting to see what those guys were up to. Will have to check out the footage from Uncle Meat sometimes, cuz that’s another double album that never made much sense.

Addendum March ’07: after seeing parts of this movie again while working on the DVD project, I like it a lot more. The music, the centerville segment, the endless self-referentiality of it all work together well. Gotta cut it some slack too, after watching the doc and reading about the mess of a production it turned out to be. I even like the soundtrack better now.

by ·Comments Off on Strictly Ballroom (1992, Baz Luhrmann)

Katy picked this out. I liked it, maybe better than either of Luhrmann’s other movies, but still wish we’d watched Henry & June instead.

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Scott wants to dance his own wild made-up steps at the ballroom dance competition but everyone tells him he’s being selfish and stupid and will ruin everything. His own partner goes off with the fancypants guy, and then the fancy guy is dancing with the superstar super girl. Now Scott needs to audition a partner and quick. In comes Fran, dance student at Scott’s parents’ studio who wants to dance Scott’s steps at the competition, and has a few of her own to contribute. A happy ending is had by all. Even though most of the movie looks like it was filmed in a gymnasium, it still manages to look great the whole time. The dancing not so impressive, even the big finale, but at least it’s well presented.

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by ·Comments Off on Purple Rain (1984, Albert Magnoli)

Prince (“The Kid”) has a dad who was a great musician and who likes to beat women. Like father, like son. Prince’s slot performing at First Ave is in danger because the slimy club owner and the slimier Morris Day want to replace him with a girl group – and Prince’s own band members are threatening revolution (hyuck) cuz he won’t play the songs they wrote. What will Prince do?! Not learn to be nice to people, and not stop his dad from killing himself, but he does turn his band members’ demo into the groovy title song, so there’s that. Movie scores points for music, costumes, Prince’s motorcycle, and hot nudity, but loses a lot to dialogue, plot and acting. A concert film (with hot nudity) would’ve been a better idea.

by ·Comments Off on We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen (2005, Tim Irwin)

Better musicians have died from car accidents than from drugs, guns or suicide. The Minutemen… Silkworm… Brainiac… think about it.

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Cool movie. Learned a lot. Forgot most of it by now, a month later, but what can you do? The band I admire most is now either the Minutemen or Half Japanese, depending on whose documentary I watched most recently. Their chapter in “Our Band Could Be Your Life” was exactly the same as this documentary, except without all the celebrity interviews.