jürgen fauth’s muckworld

Since I’m behind the curve on most items in this Konsum roundup, the soundtrack for today’s post is provided by Talking Heads, performing “The Great Curve” in Rome in 1980. You can download a DVD of the entire show from Dimeadozen.

4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days
As apparently the last critic in New York City to see the freshly Academy-snubbed 4 Months, 3 Weeks, and 2 Days, I don’t have much to add to the universal acclaim the film has garnered — only this: if you take a look at the Rotten Tomatoes page, you’ll see adjectives like “excruciating,” “harrowing,” “wearing,” “wrenching,” “bleak,” and “unblinking.” All of those fit, but it seems to me the terminology applied to blockbusters like The Bourne Ultimatum isn’t inappropriate, either: 4 Months is also an edge-of-your seat thriller.
4 luni, 3 saptamani si 2 zile. Cristian Mungiu, 2007. ****

Woman on the Beach
My favorite at NYFF06 — at least until INLAND EMPIRE showed up — is currently playing at Film Forum. Reason enough to take another look. Lo and behold, it’s still a wonderful film. J. Hoberman.
Haebyonui yoin. Hong Sang-soo, 2006. ****

The Duchess of Langeais
An About.com review of Rivette’s Balzac adaptation starring Jeanne Balibar and Guillaume Depardieu is forthcoming.
Ne touchez pas la hache. Jacques Rivette, 2007. ****

The Wire, Season 1
Yes, we’re ridiculously far behind, so I can barely participate in the conversation at this point. Anybody who’s been following this blog knows that I’m a sucker for structure, and The Wire’s intricate plot lines left my head spinning. Looking forward to catching up with the remaining four seasons, like, this weekend. ****

30 Rock
I love every single character on Tina Fey’s show, from Alec Baldwin’s head of TV and microwave programming to nutso Tracy Morgan and Kenneth the Page, and I haven’t seen a TV show that delivers as many smart laughs per minute since the first season of Arrested Development. 30 Rock makes me happy. ****

Californication
Thoroughly enjoyable HBO series about a sex-and-booze addicted writer (David Duchovny) who is still in love with his ex-wife (Natascha McElhone), and whose novel God Hates Us All was adapted into the “Tom and Katie” vehicle Crazy Little Thing Called Love. ***

How do we relax from the New York Film Festival’s two-movies-a-day schedule? With an old classic, of course, courtesy of the Criterion Collection. Jim Jarmusch’s episodic 1991 taxi cab confidential moves around the globe while Tom Waits growls and hasn’t lost a bit of its spirit and charm. Especially after seeing a film as cynical as Sidney Lumet’s Before the Devil Knows You’re Dead, I was struck by how good-natured and kind Jarmusch’s vision was.

In the confined spaces of cabs in Los Angeles, New York, Paris, Rome, and Helsinki, strangers are meeting strangers and, with the exception of the “bishop” who has the ill fate of running into Roberto Benigni, good things happen. I was especially pleased to note connections between the episodes and to other movies that I’d previously missed. Since this is a Criterion DVD, I shouldn’t have to mention that the quality of the transfer is first rate. Jarmusch won’t watch his own movies after they are completed, so there is no director’s commentary, but he does answer fan questions. Other extras include commentary by the DP and location sound mixer, a Belgian TV interview with Jarmusch, and essays by Paul Auster and others.

Night on Earth. Jim Jarmusch, 1991. *****

The new Greek and Roman Galleries at the Met — and Frank Stella on the roof. More from the Times.

For some reason I was under the impression that Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra was silent, but of course it’s not. How else could Claudette Colbert trade cheesy come-ons with noble Romans? Production design is sumptuous, and since this film is much shorter than Mankiewicz’s 1963 version with Liz Taylor (or Rome, for that matter), the plot zips by: the Queen of Egypt has just barely finished rolling out of the rug when a bearded Brutus decides to rid the republic of J.C., here comes the Queen’s barge, Actium, the asps! Colbert is more flapper than ancient monarch, and that’s fine by me–she may well be my favorite Cleopatra yet. Whenever she’s off-screen, the movie drags, but her seductions of Julius Caesar and Marc Antony are great camp.

Cleopatra. Cecil B. DeMille, 1934. ****

• Filmsite.org transcribes some of the dialogue

Friends, Bloggers, Countrymen: I come to praise Brando, not to link to a YouTube clip of his posthumous performance in Superman Returns. This star-studded 1953 production–directed, like Cleopatra, by Joseph L. Mankiewicz–provides everything you’re looking for in a Shakespeare adaptation: statues, togas, striking profiles, and superhuman eloquence.

James Mason plays moody Brutus, John Gielgud his fellow republican conspirator Cassius, Louis Calhern the doomed tyrant Caesar, and Deborah Kerr has a scene as Brutus’ wife Portia. Brutus is the play’s central character, but it is Marlon Brando, in the role of Marc Antony, who rules supreme. He’s introduced with his shirt off, looks impossibly regal in a robe, and ends up smiting his enemies in full armor–and when he opens his mouth, he spouts some of Shakespeare’s best speeches.

The merits and problems of this adaptation are so obvious that even ol’ Bosley Crowther got it right: “The vibrant illusion of mighty doings flows strongly from the screen” but:

Breathes there a high school junior who doesn’t know that the high point of the play is Mark Antony’s stirring oration over the body of his friend? With Mr. Brando delivering this oration in a brilliant, electrifying splurge of bitter and passionate invective about two-thirds of the way through the film, the remaining decline and fall of Brutus and Cassius seem spiritless and drab. If ever there was an anti-climax in a film (or a play), it is here.

Julius Caesar. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953. ***

• Julius Caesar (Movie) on Wikipedia
• Julius Caesar (Play) on Wikipedia
• Cleopatra
• HBO’s Rome
• Just in time for the Shakespeare Blogathon!
  

Prompted by the grand finale of Rome, we took another look at Cleopatra, which is one of those movies I can rewatch every few years. Compare-and-contrast is a fun enough game, and Marcy, who was never entirely sure which of the HBO characters were fictional, was entertained by noting differences in motivation and plot. Every frame of Cleopatra must have cost more than an entire episode of Rome, but the storytelling is much more contemporary on HBO. The movie nearly bankrupted Fox because it was designed to trump TV by outspending it. Forty years later, it has been shown up by… a TV show. But the images are still twice as wide, and the characters twice as grand.

Here’s what fascinated me, though: the palatial sets, outlandish backdrops, and outsized drama of Cleopatra resemble another, much more recent epic about larger-than-life figures. Along with forties serials, The Hidden Fortress, Ray Harryhausen and all the other usual suspects, there is no doubt that the Cinemascope epics of the fifties and sixties, and specifically Cleopatra, served as a blueprint for the Star Wars films. Archetypes in ever-morphing hairdos and caped costumes acting out eternal tragedies and reciting awkward, overwritten lines of dialogue — especially Revenge of the Sith, the episode in which the galactic shit hits the fan, is the spiritual and cinematic heir of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’s four-and-a-half-hour epic.

Read on for more about Star Wars, Grindhouse, and why Jar-Jar Binks is cooler than Stuntman Mike. Also, lots more screenshots.

Read the rest of this entry »

It’s rare that a TV show ends before it has outstayed its welcome. Rome, which offered equal parts history, soap opera intrigue, gore, and soft porn, has run its course now, and the adventures of Vorenus and Pullo will be missed. The series covered the events of Joseph L. Mankiewicz’ Cleopatra — one half per season — and, with the ascent of Augustus, segues nicely into I, Claudius. The vibe of Rome, of course, was often more Caligula than Robert Graves. I’m sad it’s over. ****

Previously.

From Cleopatra, Liz Taylor’s arrival in Rome:

From Rome, Mark Antony’s arrival in Egypt:

From Caligula, Helen Mirren’s dance:

After December’s mad movie binge, we’re catching up with some TV. This HBO show, which carries the names of John Milius and Michael Apted in the credits and is shot in Cinecitta, improves vastly on the production values of I, Claudius, though not necessarily on acting and drama. It begins earlier–season one tells of Julius Caesar’s rise and fall from the Battle of Alesia to the Ides of March. Interwoven with the familiar tales of the powerful are the stories of two common legionnaires, which adds an element of surprise to recorded history. Blood flows freely, betrayal, lies, murder and literal backstabbing are as common as dirt, and there’s incest, too. Cleopatra (who doesn’t much resemble Liz Taylor) has only been in an episode or two so far, but I’m sure we’ll see more of the drug-addled conniver when season two starts on January 14. ***

[tags]tv, rome, hbo, 3 stars, history, italy, julius caesar, vercingetorix, cleopatra, michael apted, john milius, blood[/tags]