Easter Leftovers
March 25th, 2008
I’ll have photos from holiday sojourn on Cape Cod later, but in the meantime I wanted to point to Commander König’s eerie and beautiful Easter-inspired photo series.
I just happened to mention Phish’s 1998 Prague shows the other day — turns out, the second night is being officially released on LivePhish today. You can listen to the Ghost for free. Some other time, I’ll tell you about how we stayed at an expat commune stalked by a mysterious “sickness” and the mirthless lectures on materialism I received from a future Park Slope real estate agent. I still have the poster we managed to rip off a downtown wall without being arrested by the Czech secret police.
Screening-wise, it’s been a slow week. I walked out of Olivier Assays’ Boarding Gate after it became clear that the tats on Asia Argento were the only interesting thing about it. Instead, I’ve been obsessing over my There Will Be Blood DVD — much more on this later.
Boarding Gate. Olivier Assayas, 2007. N/R
The Golem: How He Came Into the World
March 24th, 2007
Before he made this 1920 version, director Paul Wegener, who also stars as the monster, had already adapted the Jewish folk tale about the Golem in 1915 and 1917. Individual moments of this third incarnation are great, but in a decade filled with fantastic movies, they’re somewhat few and far between. You know the story: the Rabbi breathes life into a clay statue to protect the ghetto, but he doesn’t read the fine print, and the Golem exacts a terrible price. 1920 was a long time ago (especially in movie years), and the film is worth appreciating as a museum piece and early horror classic more than something you’d watch for kicks. Some of The Golem prefigures Frankenstein and so forth, but from our vantage, most of it doesn’t feel terribly inspired. For one thing, it’s much too slow, and you could be excused for setting the DVD player to double speed and providing your own soundtrack. I do wish there were more movies with Rabbis who cast spells–and I don’t mean Matisyahu.
Der Golem, wie er in die Welt kam. Paul Wegener, 1920. ***
After the jump, the entire movie via Google Video. It’s ok for taking a look, but if you’re serious about watching it, you’re much better off with the Kino DVD–it’s a restored version with better intertitles and tints.
Casino Royale
November 15th, 2006
Everybody’s wondering whether or not Daniel Craig makes a good James Bond, but of course he’ll do nicely. The truth is, the role of 007 doesn’t really take much more than a cold stare and the capacity to look snazzy in a dinner jacket. The real question: what about Eva Green? We’ve adored the French ingenue since her debut in Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, and truth be told, she was the real reason we attended yesterday’s screening at New York’s Ziegfeld theater. Casino Royale starts out very strong, with gritty bathroom fights and a breathtaking, Ong-Bak-inspired chase through a construction site.
Just when the film starts losing steam, Green appears to save the spy from his own smugness. As Vesper Lynd, the smart but reserved accountant who lords over Bond’s finances while he plays high-stakes poker for terrorist funds, Green’s not only the most intriguing Bond girl since Sophie Marceau, she’s also the most important since George Lazenby got hitched to Diana Rigg in On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Their banter’s charming, the outfits are glamorous, the villian’s creepy, and the locations are splendid as always (even if they borrow Natalie Portman’s space retreat from Attack of the Clones.)
In other words, the ingredients are right, and Casino Royale had the potential for a truly great Bond movie. The franchise, which is really an endless series of remakes, always tends toward bigger, louder, and more cartoonish installments (Die Another Day was a superhero comic book), and every decade or so, the producers feel obliged to dial down the nonsense and reintroduce grit and a real sense of danger. Director Martin Campbell succeeds on this score, but he doesn’t know when to stop.
If Casino Royale had kept to a lean, mean 90 minutes, it could have been the perfect James Bond flick. But it just keeps on going, and after two and a half hours, all the drama and tragedy Campbell is obviously aiming for have bled from the movie, leaving us with nothing more but a headache and the familiar catchphrase. You’d be better off–and you’d see more of Eva Green–if you just rewatched The Dreamers, twice.
Casino Royale. Martin Campbell, 2006. **
