Wes Anderson's 'Fantastic, Mr. Fox' based on book by Roald Dahl
by Sam Juliano
The upsurge in comments at Wonders over the past week can be solely attributed to the diverging opinions of Allan’s placements of some popular 90’s films in the countdown: Good Fellas, American Beauty, Pulp Fiction and Schindler’s List. While the majority of internet voters and pollsters have named any or all of these in their own Top 5 or Top 10, Allan raises some eyebrows with his much lower rankings, though he still acknowledged they are great films, even masterpieces. The result of the discourse brought in some of the site’s traditional heavy-hitters, including Joel Bocko, Tony d’Ambra, John Greco, Dave Hicks, Bobby J., David H. Schleicher, Troy Olson, Kevin J. Olson, Qalandar, Mad Hatter, Jon Lanthier, Samuel Wilson, Judy, Dee Dee, Jamie Uhrer, Just Another Film Buff, Shubhajit, Margaret, Dennis, R. D. Finch, Film Dr, Andrew Wyatt, Joe, Frank Gallo, Peter, David Noack and others. The Schindler thread was one of the site’s Hall of Fame entries, attracting 110 comments, so many most brilliant.
I managed to see four films theatrically this week, as well as an American Opera, which I saw at the New York State Theatre at Lincoln Center on Sunday afternoon. The opera, Hugo Weisgel’s Esther, was a torturous atonal work that recalled Schoenberg, a crushing melody-less grinding bore that is basically an encore of the 1993 staging. The venture gives opera a bad name, and only elitist masochists seem poised to withstands this sonic assault of discordance. I have always supported City Opera, and am pleased with the resurgence in sales for the 2009-10 season, (and appreciated famed soprano Lauren Flanagan in the lead) but I hope this one doesn’t reappear anytime soon. What sane person would listen to this drivel and come out singing its praises?
On the movie front here is what I saw:
Richard Kelly (Donnie Darko) directed this film based on a Richard Matheson short story, and it devolves into a narrative mess, but the main deceit – the “choice” – in an intriguing plot hook, and there are enough ideas to make the film intermittenly interesting.
2012 is another Roland Emmerich disaster opus that is overlong, ludicrously implausible even for this genre, poorly written and in the end a film that is forgettable within an hour after leaving the theatre. I convinced myself beforehand that I’d still have a good time, but there was nothing but laughable tedium here.
It was nice to have the engaging Q & A with actor Joseph Gordon Levitt (The Lookout) and the film’s director at the IFC, but the film Uncertainty wore out it’s welcome, and the two story threads dis not quite come together. There were some fine individual chase scenes on the streets of Manhattan, and the location shooting was eye-catching, but there was really no story to tell here.
The extraordinary children’s writer Roald Dahl, whose sardonic and sometimes sadistic humor turned some potentially ordinary stories into work’s of great philosophical insight and irreverance, was the sourse of Wes Anderson’s mostly ingenious animated stop-motion film that is only marred by the “Americanization” of some of the material and a dead patch in the middle. The visual innovation and voice work by actors like George Clooney and Meryl Streep is outstanding.
Around the blogosphere there’s some great stuff:
John Greco is winning all kinds of praise (people are saying it’s his best piece ever!) for his new review of Scorsese’s Mean Streets at “Twenty-Four Frames: http://twentyfourframes.wordpress.com/2009/11/15/mean-streets-1973-martin-scorsese/
That splendid guy from Oregon, Troy Olson, references Wonders several times in a two-part post (here’s the second) on the films that he feels are contending for his soon-to-be-submitted Top 25 list:
http://troyolson.blogspot.com/2009/11/best-of-90s-marathon-continuation-1.html
Our new friend “Just Another Film Buff” is far more than a film buff–he’s a film scholar in fact, and his newest essay on Andre Bazin deserves wide exposure: http://theseventhart.info/2009/11/15/book-nook-what-is-cinema-vol-ii/
Our great friend Dave Hicks continues on with his annual countdown with City of God as his top choice for 2002 at his place: http://goodfellamovies.blogspot.com/2009/11/2002-city-of-god-fernando-meirelles-and.html
Our man from Sydney, Tony d’Ambra continues his Film Noir “Cities” series with a look at Chicago at FilmsNoir.net:
http://filmsnoir.net/film_noir/cinematic-cities-chicago-city-noir.html
Dee Dee is still featuring a great post on author Eric Beetner at her place: http://noirishcity.blogspot.com/2009/11/overrated-vs-underrated-cutting-through.html
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