Archive for Ağustos, 2009
and Camera 3 in San Jose). Th…
Written by ferrisbuellersdayoffblog on 30 Ağustos 2009 – 10:06 -and Camera 3 in San Jose).
The wacky, earthy new comedy import “Window to Paris” by Russian
director Yuri Mamin has plenty of political and social meat to chew
on. Clever, sometimes a little too wild-eyed in its spirited chaos,
the offbeat offering is nonetheless a picnic of European culture
clash.
The clash is an uneasy and giddy mix of Russian and French
culture, symbolizing East and West. Rummaging through obvious
differences in the post-perestroika era, Mamin loads his comedy with
provocative satire. The central questions: Just how are Russians
suppose to get on the bandwagon of capitalism, and how much should
they forsake their history to play catch-up in the modern world?
Even for audiences not interested in East-vs.-West splits, mergers
and awkward interminglings, “Window to Paris” is a wonderful romp.
It’s as loaded with character as it is with inspired satire — a
bright piece of work whose capricious details are often as telling as
its purposely unsubtle big visions.
SO MANY CHURCHES
A wide-eyed Russian first visiting Paris, for example, can’t help
but notice the huge number of churches in a city clearly infatuated
with materialism. With boyish wonderment, he observes: “So many
churches and yet they don’t believe in God.” It’s an offhand remark,
but one of many charged details scattered through the film’s nutty
story line.
At the center of “Window to Paris,” opening locally today, is a
charming, wistful Danny Kaye-like Russian actor named Sergei Dontsov.
Dontsov plays Nikolai, a joyous music teacher in a St. Petersburg
school. We see him leading students like the Pied Piper, enthralling
them with dance, music and stories. Bashful in some ways, clownishly
innocent, Nikolai is childlike himself.
Of course, big changes have come to
Russian Sergei Dontsov and Frenchwoman Agnes Soral explore the
pleasures and perils of Western culture in `Window to Paris’
Russia, and one of them is a feverish interest in Western-style
business. The arrival of computers at school leads Nikolai to protest
that “the new fascinations” in management and marketing threaten
the arts.
A dour school administration fires Nikolai because he’s a rebel.
He is thus forced to try living on the dole in a Russia of crumbling
institutions and financial bankruptcy.
Maybe Nikolai can survive as a piano tuner — he always
carries his tuning wrench with him, and director Mamin has great fun
showing how far a tuning wrench can get you in life, especially when
it’s mistaken for a handgun.
Nikolai meets a small band of noisy, hard-drinking musicians who
work in a local instrument factory but try to beat back cynicism by
performing in the
square for boisterous recreation. They are led by an overweight,
undisciplined man named Gorokhov (Victor Mikhailov), who knows of a
room for rent in his building.
It takes a leap of faith — and a few more glasses of vodka
(liberally poured throughout) — to discover the magical side of
Nikolai’s new room: It literally opens onto a rooftop in Paris that
allows the delighted teacher and his unrefined buddies to explore the
city’s feast of capitalism, elegance, food, arts, and, for
softhearted Nikolai, romance.
The rooftop happens to belong to a smart, pretty
taxidermist named Nicole (Agnes Soral), who wants no part of the
uncouth intruders from St. Petersburg. Of course, her place and her
life are so tidy, so stuffy, you might say, that she could use a
little stirring up of messy pas
sions — just the sort of thing a nice man like Nikolai could bring.
Illusions and realities are deftly intertwined in this
Russian-French co-production. Mamin (“Neptune’s Holiday”) delves
into subjects he has relished in previous films as his stubbornly
unrefined Russians, victims of a failed system, scrutinize the
materialistic paradise of Paris.
Mamin has great fun jabbing at the Russian plunge into capitalism
as his characters run amok among street vendors and gourmet delights,
and generally make merry, even to the point of dragging home a little
Citroen as a trophy of human progress.
Of course, they uncover how twisted the riches of the West can be,
too — when Nikolai applies to become a concert master at an elegant
hall, he discovers a shockingly degenerate attitude among the
patrons.
A SOBERING REALITY
Mamin is great at having fun, but finally a sobering reality
shadows the magical merriment. Though “born at the wrong time in a
miserable, corrupt country,” as one character reflects, the St.
Petersburg culture tourists must come to the realization that they
can’t really escape their heritage, nor should they necessarily want
to.
Cannot, the film asks, these temporarily lost people try to work
with what they have? The odds seem impossibly against them, but if
this film’s account of its characters is a window to real life, Mamin
is on to one great virtue of his people — they have an undeniable
human spirit. And with that goes hope.
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; Screenplayooged is an appa…
Written by ferrisbuellersdayoffblog on 28 Ağustos 2009 – 20:25 -Download Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince online
; Screenplayooged is an appallingly unfunny comedy, and a fecund illustration of the as a matter of actual fact that in clover can’t acquire you laughs. Its stocking spilling with big names and production values galore, this updating of Dickens’ A Christmas Carol into the world of cutthroat network television is, one episode singly, able to generate only a some mild chuckles.
Scrooge here is an utterly venal network chief whose taste runs beneath the lowest common denominator, has no friends, sacks any underlings who dare to disagree with him and possesses a personal history based entirely upon having watched TV since infancy. Unfortunately for the film, things ring false from the start because Bill Murray’s cruelty seems very arbitrary, unfunny and ultimately unconvincing.
Murray’s network IBC is preparing to broadcast a live version of A Christmas Carol (with, in a good bit, Buddy Hackett as Scrooge), so it is against this backdrop that Murray’s own journey through his past and toward his personal salvation takes place.
Lunatic taxi driver David Johansen spirits Murray back to his deprived childhood in 1955. By 1968, Murray is working as an office boy when he bumps into the idealistic Karen Allen and takes up with her. Within three years, however, the love of his life has left, and so starts Murray’s ascent from portraying a dog on a kiddies’ show into the top executive suite at the company.
Pic’s comic highlight unquestionably is Carol Kane’s appearance as the Ghost of Christmas Present. Kane dispenses verbal and physical punishment on her victim with sadistic glee.
1988: Nomination: Best Makeup
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News about
Written by ferrisbuellersdayoffblog on 28 Ağustos 2009 – 16:15 -Prepare to enter the visual masquerade of an Arabian Nights tale in
The Thief
of Bagdad
. Behold the sights of teeming markets, impressive palaces,
malevolent genies and magical mysteries. In this wonderful story we travel with
Ahmad (John Justin) and Abu (Sabu) as they attempt to rescue the beautiful
princess from the clutches of the pestilential Vizier Jaffar (Conrad Veidt).
At first the story is told in flashback by Ahmad, who has been blinded by
Jaffar, as he searches for his love, the Princess. We find that Jaffar
originally deposed Ahmad from his royal seat with the intention of killing him
and taking control. However, Ahmad managed to escape with the help of the young
thief, Abu, to Basra and freedom. Here he fell in love with the Princess, in a
delightful sequence where he pretends to be the genie in the pool, and she with
him. Unfortunately Jaffar also desires the Princess and thwarts Ahmad again,
tempting the Princess' father with magical toys, blinding him and turning Abu
into a dog.
Here we enter the present where the Princess has fallen into an enchanted
sleep, pining for her true love. Ahmad wakes her only to find that she is
immediately kidnapped by the evil Jaffar and taken away by ship. Soon Ahmad
and Abu give chase but Jaffar is too powerful and almost destroys them with his
spells. Only with the help of an entrapped genie are the firm friends able to
turn the tables on Jaffar and restore Ahmad to the throne, with the Princess
as his bride.
Throughout this movie the incredibly vivid colours of the Technicolour process
dazzle us and draw us deeper into this larger-than-life fantasy. In classic
fashion Ahmad and Abu overcome stupendous obstacles with a mixture of guile,
wit, friendship and courage as they battle the thoroughly nasty Jaffar. By the
end of the movie we've had a great trip, although some of the special effects
are fairly cheesy, filled with captivating characters and the triumph of good
over evil.
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Hello, Dolly! (1969)
Written by ferrisbuellersdayoffblog on 27 Ağustos 2009 – 09:10 -Once upon a time dramaturgist Thornton Wilder wrote a amiable, unworldly little romantic-comedy farce set in the 1880s called “The Merchant of Yonkers” (1938), which he later revised and retitled “The Matchmaker” (1954). It was a unpretentious stage success, followed by a charming motion picture construction in 1958 with Shirley Booth, Anthony Perkins, Shirley MacLaine, Paul Ford, and Robert Morse.
In 1963 the play’s title was changed to “Hello, Dolly!” and along with the counting up of bestow sets, costumes, music, and lyrics, it became the longest-running Broadway musical up until that time after time. It was a smash stir.
Then, in 1969 Hollywood got hold of the euphonious, added even more performers, bigger sets, fancier costumes, and in what had to be people of the biggest casting blunders in the CV of cinema (on a scale with putting Lucille Ball in “Mame” a few years later) signed a young Barbra Streisand to play the greatest job. Why was that a mistake? Because the leading character in the dispatch, Dolly Levi, is intended to be a much older chick, presumably in her fifties or so, whose budget of many years has died and left-wing her penniless. She supports herself as, to each other things, a matchmaker, a woman who arranges marriages for people; and who at the half a second is attempting to arrange a marriage for herself to the town’s richest citizen, the grumpy Horace Vandergelder, a fifty-something local merchant. Ms. Streisand was in her mid twenties at the pro tempore of the shaping. The silent picture bombed.
If one looks violently adequacy and listens long enough, one can still discern a few faint echoes of the sweet, innocent little romantic-comedy farce Wilder originally wrote, but such remnants are far and few between. Largely, in “Hello, Dolly!” a particular gets to witness a huge, bloated, overly extravagant, big-screen spectacular and ponder the reasons why a babies, fetching, and highly marriageable Dolly Levi would be chasing a midway-aged Walter Matthau as Vandergelder, unless she was only after his money. The take charge of boggles as the all in all spot of Wilder’s account is bewildered.
So why was Streisand miscast in a in the main so obviously unsuited to her life-span when Carol Channing, who had played Dolly on the stage, was so good and available, and others, be partial to Elizabeth Taylor and Julie Andrews, were considered for the role? At the time, Streisand was the biggest singing star in the world. The thought of box-office receipts will do that to filmmakers.
The speedily setting for the movie is 1890 and the locales are Yonkers, New York, and Reborn York Municipality. The acme plot involves Dolly’s attempts to inject oneself herself into Vandergelder’s obsession; and the subplots mean Vandergelder’s attempts to keep his niece Ermangarde (Joyce Ames) from eloping with an artist, Ambrose Kemper (Tommy Tune); and Vandergelder’s clerks, Cornelius Hackl (Michael Crawford) and Barnaby Tucker (Danny Lockin), pursuing their own romantic adventures with a milliner, Irene Molloy (Marianne McAndrew) and her assistant, Minnie Fay (E.J. Peaker). I was disappointed that “pudding” did not come in the script.
Needless to say, a plenitude of songs and dances populate the proceedings, most of Jerry Herman’s tunes being quite less than historic. They categorize, in chronological order, “Just Leave The whole shooting match to Me,” “It Takes a Woman,” “Out There,” “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” “Ribbons Down My Back,” “Dancing,” “Before the Parade Passes By,” “Yes, Further York,” “Elegance,” “Love Is At most Love,” “Hello, Dolly,” “It Exclusively Takes a Moment,” “So Long, Dearie,” and a finale that reprises essentially everything. Fortunately, Ms. Streisand is in resplendent voice for her numbers.
The showstopper, of course, is “Hello, Dolly,” which the filmmakers milk for all things it’s worth, extending it respecting almost a dozen minutes. It’s sung at the Harmonia Gardens Restaurant, in the space a modestly fashionable section but in the movie a real cheteau. Everything in this movie is bigger than life. When Dolly enters the restaurant, she’s given a welcome that would have been the envy of the Queen of Sheba. In the middle of the generous number, Louis Armstrong makes an appearance as a bandleader and sings along with Streisand, but a moment later he’s gone from the scene. Why? First, because he had made a light on single of the tune up in 1964 and the filmmakers wanted to capitalize on it, and, impaired, because he signed on in support of only his part of the tale, finished it in less than a day’s shooting, and left.
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