30 DoC: 8 1/2 and Mel Brooks

A while ago, I wrote about how you can connect RAGING BULL in one step to SPACE JAM (seriously). In that same entry, I also suggested that RAGING BULL might be the best-looking black-and-white film ever made.

I might have to eat crow on that one, because 8 1/2 is ridiculously gorgeous.


I'm not the world's biggest Fellini fan, but GODDAMN:




And all of these images take place within the first five minutes of the film!

8 1/2 is justifiably praised for its lush cinematography, its brilliant post-modern analysis of the filmmaker and the film, and for all of the things that make film profs feel tingly inside. Those are all valid reasons, and I love them too, but for me, it's the humour in 8 1/2 that truly sets it apart.

The cliche of older foreign films being sombre, highbrow examinations on death and misery gets shown the lie here: 8 1/2 is steeped in sex, jealousy, and lust, and it's often riotously funny while it does it. The "harem" dream scene is a mini-masterpiece within a masterpiece, lampooning male desire in a scene that wouldn't be too out of place in a Mel Brooks film.

Of course, comparing Brooks to Fellini is a little facetious of me, but not as much as it may seem. Brooks gets a dismissive shake from the the elitists as "the fart guy", and I'm sure there are those who would argue he is more closely linked to say, the Wayans, then Fellini, but his films are brilliant skewerings of racism, scientific rationality, and politics. I mean, he even shot a black-and-white film!

So Criterion, where's the Blu-ray of YOUNG FRANKENSTEIN?

Kidding. Kind of. That'd be totally awesome, though.

Opinion Stated As Fact: Tony Scott Makes CITIZEN KANE Better

Here's the obligatory "CITIZEN KANE is awesome" post on a film blog. In my defence, it did take me over four months to get here, but I will try to get this out of the way as quickly as possible.

Similar to my RAGING BULL post a while ago, I think the easiest way to do this is just to post a few pictures of how beautiful this film is:

I could go into a whole thing about depth of field and American mythmaking, but the truth is, all of those reasons are secondary to why CITIZEN KANE is a classic.

CITIZEN KANE is a classic because it fucks with the most powerful man in the world and gets away with it. It would be like if next week's HAWAII FIVE-O was about Scott Caan, that cunning investigator of human nature, opening a cold case about a missing kid, only to realize that the kid became a drug runner, fled the island, and grew up to become the President of the United States. That's crazy, possibly litigious (although Rupert Murdoch, that Kane of our times, is looking into it), and would never be allowed to happen. But somehow CITIZEN KANE did happen.

And RKO 281, a made-for-HBO movie, makes the story of how CITIZEN KANE came to be extremely compelling. Liev Schreiber plays Orson Welles, and unlike his recent performance in SALT, he appears to be awake during almost all of the scenes of the film. He turns in an actual performance that appears to bring depth and emotion to a human character. His Welles is alternately proud, brilliant, self-conscious, and obsessed with his legacy. It's actually fairly impressive work for any actor, but for Liev, it's particularly surprising.

James Cromwell is on the flipside of this coin as William Randolph Hearst, the publishing magnate that the character of Kane was supposedly based on, and the man who tried to destroy the film. It's quite a sympathetic portrayal, which is surprising, given the power and influence he wielded. John Malkovich turns in a great performance as the similarly-surnamed Herman Mankiewicz, the forgotten man in all of CITIZEN KANE's greatness, and Roy Scheider shows up as the studio boss of RKO. All in all, it's a swell cast. The script moves along at a nice pace and things never feel too biopic-y.

Oh, and did I mention that Tony Scott was an Executive Producer on this? That's how he makes arguably the greatest film of all time even better.

Seriously, how good is RAGING BULL?

I think we can all agree that RAGING BULL is freaking awesome. I can't think of a better looking black-and-white film:

Fun fact: did you know the DP, Michael Chapman, also shot SPACE JAM? And that Jay-Z wrote the immortal Bugs Bunny rap "Buggin'"? Keep that one in your back pocket the next time your friends are playing Six Degrees of Separation.

Anyway, aside from the awe-inspiring visuals, I think what's really interesting about this film is the structure of it: for a story that spans thirty years, it's really a movie made up of long character-based scenes that allow Robert DeNiro to give his finest performance (bearing in mind that I haven't seen EVERYBODY'S FINE). The scene in the prison cell where he goes from punching the wall and screaming "WHY?" to moaning "I'm not an animal" is burned into my consciousness.

A perfectly told story of jealousy and anger, RAGING BULL deserves its reputation as the best movie of the 1980s.