The Filmcake

December 7th – December 13th

The Tale of the Fox (Le Roman de Renard) – See previous post.

Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs - Haven’t seen this one in a very long time. This time it was from the Blu-ray release which looked quite good. And the disc looks to loaded with lots of interesting extras. An argument can certainly be made for the sexism present in the movie, but its longevity works to its advantage. This movie was released over 70 years ago–there have been plenty of worse offenders in the years since.

2001 - First time watching this on Blu-ray. I didn’t do a side-by-side comparison with the DVD version, but it didn’t seem dramatically better. I did notice that the blacks looks really good. Sometimes blacks can look grainy and grey; here the blacks looked black. The main reason for purchasing this Blu-ray edition (I already own the DVD) was because of the additional special features included on this one. On a side-note, my dog Sammy Davis Junior Jr. was absolutely enraptured with the beginning “Dawn of Man” sequence.

New World Order - An almost frustratingly evenhanded look at conspiracy theorists (including Alex Jones) who fixate on the Bilderberg group and the 9/11 Truth movement. While you are always aware that these people have taken a selective portion of distorted facts to come up with their own “truth,” you can also sort of understand what makes some people feel so strongly about such ridiculous things. Still, I would have liked some voices of reason, to illustrate the invalidity of these various conspiracy theories.

Humpday - A Mumblecore response to the Neo-Neo Realist Old Joy from Kelly Reichardt. There are certainly similar thematic elements in both movies even if they are different in tone and setting. Still those differences act to show where Mumblecore and Neo-Neo Realism intersect and diverge and also how poor both of those words are at describing the movies that are ascribed to them. Interestingly–perhaps to me only–is that Joshua Leonard (one of the leads in this film) was one of the original trio in The Blair Witch Project.

Annihilation Earth - A horribly awful Syfy Original. Bad story, bad casting, bad acting capped off with special effects that were also just bad. About as far as they went with the special effects was badly superimposing either smoke, fire, or explosions on what had already been filmed. In the world where the movie exists, Earth is obliterated. So for people in that imaginary world, any memory of this movie has ceased to exist. Lucky for them.

Herb & Dorothy - On one hand, this documentary feels very touching and sweet. This old couple who make relatively little money working for the government amass a quite impressive contemporary art collection. A singular passion leads to them being amongst the most important collectors in the art world. But on the other hand, it almost seems unfair. It seems like these people just used some sort of dogged perseverance as well as playing up their eccentricities and age to guilt artists in to selling them art on the cheap. So, I was conflicted about Herb & Dorothy Vogel throughout a good portion of this documentary. But upon learning that they continued to insist on not profiting from their collection in favor of sharing it with the world, even when it would have been both beneficial and warranted to do so, I couldn’t help but think of them as a pair of true heroes.

The Dorothy and Herbert Vogel Collection: Fifty Works for Fifty States is currently on display at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art through May 30, 2010. The fifty works donated to OKCMOA by the Vogels will then become a part of the museum’s collection.

Rushmore - What a great movie. Without a doubt it’s one of my Deserted Island picks. It sort of lies in that same area with Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction whereupon subsequent viewings really demonstrate how much of that filmmaker’s “language” has seeped into contemporary movies off all stripes. Can’t wait to watch this as a double feature with Mike Nichols’ The Graduate, a movie upon which this one itself seems to derive.

November 30th – December 6th

Fantastic Mr. Fox – After the letdown that was The Darjeeling Limited, Wes Anderson returns with an animated tour de force. I need to see it a few more times (the same goes, admittedly, for Darjeeling), but this one very well may end up for me as Anderson’s best. While I have no familiarity with Roald Dahl’s book upon which this was based, I think Anderson and company have done a remarkable job. They have perfectly combined the nostalgia of stop-motion animation with the quirkiness that make up the Wes Anderson canon. It’s a stop-motion form that suggests nostalgia for those 1980′s weekend mornings catching Ray Harryhausen’s delightful animation for Clash of the Titans on television. And Anderson’s familiar style shines through in a way that is not overly twee. I’m already a Wes Anderson devotee, but it certainly seems he finally nails it with this mix of nostalgia and quirk. The twee works better here than it has in any of his previous work.

Like with Spike Jonze’s Where The Wild Things Are, this is one movie I absolutely cannot wait for on Blu-ray with some sort of Criterion Collection treatment. I can’t wait to pour over commentary and production diaries and featurettes. This is a world I cannot wait to dive into more deeply. The puppetry, miniaturized costumes, and set decoration have absolutely caught my imagination.

I also think there is some pretentiously affected, yet tongue-in-cheek essay to be written analyzing this animated feature with Lars Von Trier’s Antichrist. I mean, c’mon, they both have foxes. They both contain a disturbing Willem Dafoe. They both feature dismemberment of some sort. Man’s role within nature, man’s inherent sinful nature, blah, blah, blah…

In the meantime, there’s this mashup.

Upon further research, I am surprisingly fascinated by the role of the fox in literature. I was completely unaware of the relevance of the Reynard literary cycle with the fox character as trickster. The original Dahl story for Fantastic Mr. Fox and even Disney’s 1973 version of Robin Hood owe to this literary tradition (man, I really want to see Disney’s Robin Hood again…it’s been too long). Ladislas Starevich’s The Tale of the Fox (Le Roman de Renard) from around 1930 features the Reynard cycle done with puppet animation. A truly amazing animated feature, The Tale of the Fox certainly was an inspiration for Wes Anderson’s cinematic retelling of the Dahl story. The look of the animals, some of the scenery, and even some of the humor must have been borrowed from this Starevich film. If you end up loving Anderson’s Fantastic Mr. Fox as I did, you should certainly check out this older gem (which can presently be found on YouTube — it begins with Part 1 [of 6]):