Sweet Arabian Skins This, to my mind, is a terrific concoction. It has no story to speak of. Oh, there’s some motion and noise but they are only there to give us something to look at while the three main notions unfurl, all of which are magically competent. There are the songs. Disney can do… Continue reading Aladdin (1992)
Tag: p2009
Comments first posted in 2009
Ballerina (2006)
Control There are no films like dance films. Dance is one of the few things that is inherently cinematic, especially when the camera moves, perhaps with energy. Ballet on the other hand is not friendly to film, at least the classical Russian model. The choreography is designed to affect the patron sitting, watching from one… Continue reading Ballerina (2006)
Ayurveda – Art of Being (2001)
Cinematic Cosmologies I suppose there are an infinite number of coherent structures that pockets of people have invented to explain the world to themselves. All of these will be of deep sophistication. All will be constrained by the hard wiring in the human mind and what we can handle conceptually. Each will be further constrained… Continue reading Ayurveda – Art of Being (2001)
Avatar (2009)
Pocahontas of the Southern Hemisphere This comment is on the IMAX 3d version. There aren’t many stories, are there? There are not many good storytellers either. Nor, it turns out, many filmmakers who can make even moderately big movies with a single governing imagination. That is the first quality I will report of this: that… Continue reading Avatar (2009)
As You Like It (2006)
Katachi Words Here’s one of the most intriguing challenges in all the lands of imagination. Shakespeare invented much of what it means to be a modern human. But he did so in a very constrained way of communicating. The plays were all about language and geometry on how the come to us, and within that… Continue reading As You Like It (2006)
The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975)
Good Three-way Storytelling I’m usually appalled at how vintage Disney (of about 1940-80) ignored the basics of good storytelling, relying instead on cinematic gimmicks. Sometimes it worked, sometimes not, but when you just simply don’t invest in good storytelling, you plant poison that somehow catches up with you. The primary reason that I remembered this… Continue reading The Apple Dumpling Gang (1975)
Angels and Demons (2008)
The Simplest Professor, Antimatters Pointing out that Ron Howard is incapable of making a good film is too ordinary and obvious a thing to say. This time he got a cinematographer that at least frames things well. You don’t have to read me to learn that this thing is dull in all the ways that… Continue reading Angels and Demons (2008)
American Strays (1996)
Cutie Cleaner Quentin Tarantino gets under my skin, where Richard Rodriguez does not. It is a corner of myself I do not quite understand. If you have QT wonder, this could help. Tarantino places the viewer as a sort of museum visitor. He has this virtual video store of references, sometimes well arranged. You are… Continue reading American Strays (1996)
American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (2006)
A Little Humour Gosh, I was surprised at finding something clever. Yes, most of this is a stroll through a museum of obsolete 7th grade hummer. This is so tame and lame that it blends into the background like so much graffiti. The “nudity” is goofy. But there is a secondary spine in this that… Continue reading American Pie Presents: The Naked Mile (2006)
Jade (1995)
Sprung Rites I think this may have been successful in its day, simply because of the sex. There is the appearance of some sex acts on the screen presented in a couple voyuerist contexts, but I think the target was a much deeper appeal: a whole world driven by insatiable, conventionally deviant female sex drive.… Continue reading Jade (1995)