Some More Movie Nights: Parte Trois
It has been a while, but Movie Nights has proceeded.
As my viewing companion noted to me, Live Journal has taken our idea of a shared movie where the viewers may comment upon the movie as it pleases them without bothering anyone in a movie theater and made a community of it.
Good Viewing to them and you are welcome to the idea.
Recent movies were:
How To Steal a Million (1966) directed by William Wyler
Miss Audrey Hepburn is a career girl in 1966 Paris. I never understood just what her career was, but she kept assuring all the other characters that she had one and had to get up early in the morning to perform it, whatever it was. It had flexible hours and days and weeks, so I think that "early to rise" phrase was just a polite expression to let her leave whatever she didn't want to stay.
Unlike Georgie (see above), Miss Hepburn had no girl friends or roommates but she did have a father who was an art forger. And like a girl friend, he insisted on living his life the way that he wanted to---making money off auctioning his art forgeries. Pop, who had the bushy eyebrows that Mr. Bates would acquire in his later life, made one forgery too many and he ignored all the chemical analysis that goes into authenticating art. So to save Pop, Miss Hepburn decided to steal the forged statute before it could be authenticated. Peter O'Toole figured into this part of the movie and the romantic part of Miss Hepburn's character's love life.
The movie is all throw away, but Miss Hepburn looked Fabulous in her Givenchy clothes and hats and patterned stockings. Mr. O'Toole had the bluest eyes that matched the art and set decoration, it concentrated on primary colors. And there is a clever mirror sequence and a How To Get Out of a Locked Closet When You Are In It And Don't Have the Key sequence that is interesting and fun.
July 24, 2014
My viewing companion and I just completed our Charles Boyer Film Festival.
We viewed The Earrings of Madame de..., All This And Heaven Too, and Gaslight.
Mr. Boyer was a French born Hollywood star of the 1930s through the 1960s. He began his film career in France in the 1920s and came to Hollywood in the 1930s when Europe began its March to World War II.
Mr. Boyer had liquid dark eyes that both caught and hid themselves from the camera. He had a beautiful baritone voice with the loveliest (but easily understood) French accent. He was handsome, but not too handsome and in his manner, it was apparent that he enjoyed and respected women. He could be mocking and satiric but never mean like an American Tough Guy of the movies. He had range as an actor. He could convince as a man deeply in love or just faking it for his own benefit. He could command, but he could crumble before the onslaught of a woman Mad in Love. And the viewer believed him in both incarnations. He was also an actor who could listen to the other actors and respond in character perfectly to their own words and actions. Sometimes the viewer watched him listening to another character just to set the scene and understand the subtext of the scene and the relationships. Mr. Boyer was never boring.
All three movies also had the best directors of the era and one of the movies, Gaslight, had an absolutely stunning cinematographer.
The Earrings of Madame de... is a Max Ophuls' directed French film of 1953. Mr. Ophuls began his career at the UFA studios in Germany, but had to leave as the Nazis gained power and put their anti-semitism into law and civil society. He was one of the UFA refugees who gave Hollywood its unmatched Glory in the 1930s through 1950s before American McCarthyism mimicked the flight of the talented from Germany and UFA through the blacklist and witch hunting of 1950s Hollywood. Mr. Ophuls also directed another one of our Movie Night picks, Letter From an Unknown Woman. His name is spelled Opuls in that one.
In The Earrings of Madame de..., Mr. Boyer plays an aristocratic general and the husband of Madame de... Madame needs some money to pay the bills for all her shopping extravagances and she goes through her boudoir and closet to find something to pawn or sell. Everything, even her silver fox furs are just too precious to give up, but not the huge chandelier diamond earrings that her husband gave her for a wedding gift. So the diamonds go back to the jeweler for the debt money. And right there, you begin to understand the dynamics of that marriage.
The jeweler knows his trade and craft and sells the diamond earrings back to Mr. Boyer, the General and husband, who is disappointed that his wife would sell them, but he gives a Gallic shrug about it and gives them to his mistress as a "Good bye to Love" gift, who is headed to Monte Carlo and Istanbul for some gambling sport. "Unlucky at Love, lucky at Gambling", the mistress is the exception to the rule and sells the huge diamond earrings for gambling debts. The General is not at all discerning in his choice of women, neither seems to care too much about him. But he is Charles Boyer and charming and French, but a little stiff in the spine and clenched in the butt.
The earrings merry-go-round continues and they end back up in the General's wife's possession. Her diplomatic Italian lover gives them to her as a love gift and suddenly those earrings, not worth the keeping as her husband's gift, are the most important possessions of herself. She must be able to wear them all the time and in the open. When they were her husband's gift, they had never been out of the jeweler's box. Now those earrings have joined the World Smart Set and must be seen everywhere in every country and every opera and ball and dinner and dance. Those earrings are out to Love! and Live!
The problem is that the General never bothered to tell his wife that the jeweler made a tidy profit selling those earrings back to him. And Madame the wife told the General that she lost the earrings after she sold them back to the jewelers. Who let the earrings out of the box? And how do they get back into Society, if not the box? That is what the movie is about.
While watching All This And Heaven Too, my viewing companion and I kept wondering why that boring American pastor was hanging around the magnificent Bette Davis. It was apparent to us that she had met her match in the Charles Boyer character. They were perfect for each other. Both had those huge glinting dark eyes that absorbed each other into their deep and dark pools of Love. That American guy was just some pest that kept hanging around and miraculously avoided being swatted to death.
As it turned out, Mr. Boyer's character's household held the one who was the one who was swatted to death, and the movie was based on a fictionalized account of an American authoress' great grandmother who was involved in a nineteenth century scandal in France and immigrated to the US to get away from all the nasty fallout. Now what does that remind us of, children?
In this one, Mr. Boyer's character had a crazy Mad wife who neglected her children and wouldn't stay in the Attic and used the Church and the Priests to try and control her husband. Miss Davis was the rational woman in this one, but she still had those liquid eyes.
Anatole Litvak, another European refugee admitted into the pearly gates of Hollywood, directed this.
The conclusion to our Charles Boyer Film Festival and French Appreciation Fest was the George Cukor directed Gaslight.
Mr. Boyer was the villain in this one. Instead of a crazy Mad wife who got that way on her own, he had Ingrid Bergman (my viewing companion and I were trying to decide who was the prettier, Miss Bergman or Greta Garbo) as his weak and stupid wife whom he was driving mad, but in an understated but forceful manner. My viewing companion found him very creepy in this one, but I was more forgiving. It is that French baritone sliver tongue and those great dark eyes that seduced me every time, just like they did to Ingrid.
But the outstanding element of this film, other than the acting of Mr. Boyer and a very young Angela Landsbury (I told my viewing companion that Angela would solve this mystery and make all right again) and Miss Bergman, was the cinematography of Joseph Ruttenberg.
This was Hollywood black and white photography at its Apex of Perfection. The cinematography had a tactile Feel to it. The blacks were as soft yet deep with sheen like velvet, the whites glowed with the perfect smoothness of satin, and the gray of the London fog felt like the loose threaded gauze of hospital unrolled bandages. A Woman decked in diamonds (which Mr. Boyer's character showed an addictive craving for) glittered like faceted sharp yet smooth marcasite. When Mr. Boyer's character spoke worshipfully of diamonds, they were there glinting hard in the depths of his eyes.
While my viewing companion railed against the misogyny and villainy of Mr. Boyer's character, I raved about the cinematography. I think that she is going to report me to the Feminist Society. I could be in some trouble for my attraction to Surface values.
All movies are highly recommended and Mr. Boyer should be the subject of a movie revival. Hallelujah! Me and My Viewing Companion are Witnesses!
October 3, 2014
The Immigrant (2013)
My movie viewing companion wrote an intriguing and thoughtful essay about this film. I recommend it.
And I recommend the film. Finally a Woman's Film that respects women and reveals their inner life and value and soul. This is a rare beast, watch and wonder in awe that its creation was achieved.
For some reason, this film was difficult to find---no iTunes or Amazon versions of it. And it was very rare on the streaming sites. Only DVDs were obtainable. Why is that, I wonder? To answer my own question, Netflix and Hulu+ seem to have put dibs on it, so it is behind their pay walls. It is like the film, you can't have it or her (Miss Cotillard's character) without paying its/her Pimps for the priviledge of its/her company. Phooey!
April 7, 2015
Mother of George (2013)
Mother of George? Mother of the Goddess!
My viewing companion is a great fan of Michonne on The Walking Dead. She wanted to see this movie because Danai Gurira, who plays Michonne, stars in the movie as a newly married Nigerian immigrant in Brooklyn who desparately wants a baby because:
My viewing companion who was very disappointed with this movie, she compared it to another stinker, Revolutionary Road which went nowhere, and she finally said after asking every ten minutes, "Is this movie over yet? Are we there, at THE END, yet?", that the movie was The Bold and Beautiful, but not as compelling as that great TV soap opera. And talking about soap operas, I told her, "This movie is like an opera, but one where no one can sing in tune."
And then I said, "This movie is a subplot of a TV soap opera, the uninteresting one, while we wait for the good ones about whether Didi will leave Dodo who is carrying his quintuplets but has not gained a pound despite hauling them around the hospital while she stalks Didi because she is sure that he murdered the family cat during a vivisection gone wrong. Anyway, Didi is nailing the cutest nurse around which raises the suspicion of the head nurse, and we all know how she got her name in the hospital, who is stalking her cutest nurse and thinking maybe now is the time to change gender, and meanwhile the other cutest nurse that Didi is interested in is a male surfer in disguise because he is a terrorist for Moldavia independence and religious oppression." As you can see, we were very talkative text messangative during this movie, we even discussed the upcoming season 5 of Game of Thrones. We want to see Sansa Stark kick some ass, as if.
But let me say something positive about this movie. It was beautifully photographed in color. All the characters were Africans and African-Americans and their skin was shot as if they were valuable gold or silver. The only other time that I saw such beautiful skin tones for people of color was in the Ridley Scott movie, Black Hawk Down. In that movie you could see that the African was Black Gold, hence the bartering of her body in the slave trade. Skin tones were a treasure in both these movies.
The lighting and lenses and setup must be different for different skin tones (I am not technically proficient about these things and welcome comments from those who are) and most movies are set up for the paler skin tones and do no favors to the darker ones. It is so lovely to see a movie that knows how to photograph people of color and make them beautiful and so desirable.
But photographing in color is more difficult than in black and white and deep focus is difficult if not impossible to achieve even in this day. This movie had beautiful colors but the focus was capricious. My viewing companion and I could not figure out if that was intentional or just a technical difficulty. Plus this film was shot through windows and glass that further obscured the weak characters and plot for no good reason. It was easy to lose track and identification of who was doing what in the very poor and thin plot.
An instance of the blurry focus of the film occurs in the husband and wife's living room when they discuss the fertility doctor. The husband says no that he will not go and drinks a cup of tea. His hand on the tea mug and the watch on his hand is in focus, but his face is blurred and the body language of the hand and watch tell the viewer nothing.The viewer cannot see his face so that tells nothing too. As we concluded, this was so much Artiness for nothing of any value.
Not Recommended unless you want to know how to photograph people of color.
April 13, 2015
The Seventh Seal (1957) directed by Ingmar Bergman
December 14, 2015
My viewing companion and I have been watching some movies together, but we have not been posting about them.
Last night, we watched The Man From U.N.C.L.E (2014) written and directed by Guy Ritchie.
I don't know what has happened to Mr. Ritchie, he used to be able to produce a good action flick for the Men in the audience, but still make it watchable (just ONCE on a date night) for the Women.
My viewing companion chose this film because of the eye candy and she does know her eye candy: Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer (whom we were calling Pretty Eyes because we couldn't be bothered to remember his name) are lovely boys to look at. But let me warn you, they don't take off any clothes in this film. There is no plot to speak of or remember. I couldn't remember the plot 20 minutes into the film and I have no idea what happened in it. But that doesn't matter because No Nekkid Guys!
Miss Alicia Vikkander, who is the Hot Star of the Year, was pretty and she put on clothes that were gorgeous. They were all 1960 style tailored and colorful outfits that Audrey Hepburn was famous for wearing in her 1960s Stardom. Miss Hepburn wore them beautifully and Miss Vikkander wore them just as well as Miss Hepburn. Miss Vikkander has some of Miss Hepburn's fey and charming qualities with a delicate long neck and wide brown eyes. Miss Vikkander is Hot both professionally and physically these days.
And now you know just how bad this movie was when I spend all my post discussing the beauty of Miss Vikkander and her clothes. What happened to the Pretty Boys with No Clothes?
Not recommended at all.
Look up the stills from the film and admire Miss Vikkander's wardrobe.
Other Movie Night Entries:
The Original
Parte Deux
As my viewing companion noted to me, Live Journal has taken our idea of a shared movie where the viewers may comment upon the movie as it pleases them without bothering anyone in a movie theater and made a community of it.
Good Viewing to them and you are welcome to the idea.
Recent movies were:
- Georgie Girl: This is a 1966 Swinging London British film starring gorgeous Charlotte Rampling (who is still gorgeous in her maturity), Alan Bates (when he had more hair than eyebrows), Lynn Redgrave, and James Mason (who refused to ever wear makeup for the camera even when he was young and more gorgeous than Miss Rampling and who was never afraid to act the Fool or the Unredeemable Villain). The movie is about unwed motherhood in the sixties (the pill was out but not in Miss Rampling's character, hence her pregnancy). Miss Redgrave's character, Georgie, takes on the unwanted baby and baby daddy (Mr. Bates who is charming but wearing on the viewer and finally on Miss Redgrave---that is his character. Mr. Bates is a very good actor who can do that). And Mr. Mason is the older, wealthy man who sees something in Georgie that no one else, even Mr. Bates' character, does. Every one gets what they want in the end, but is it happiness? Who knows? It's a fun trip to the Lover's Island.
- Frances Ha: This is the single girl in the big city and dance troupe in New York City. Her best friend does get married and thinks about having a baby, but Frances is going on another path. It is just that for every step backward in her life and career, Frances jetéés half a mile to the left and right. Frances is a not very good dancer who has choreography talent. She just has to re-arrange her life and life plans to accommodate her limitations and her aspirations and her expansive abilities. Frances gets her career not a man in the end.
How To Steal a Million (1966) directed by William Wyler
Miss Audrey Hepburn is a career girl in 1966 Paris. I never understood just what her career was, but she kept assuring all the other characters that she had one and had to get up early in the morning to perform it, whatever it was. It had flexible hours and days and weeks, so I think that "early to rise" phrase was just a polite expression to let her leave whatever she didn't want to stay.
Unlike Georgie (see above), Miss Hepburn had no girl friends or roommates but she did have a father who was an art forger. And like a girl friend, he insisted on living his life the way that he wanted to---making money off auctioning his art forgeries. Pop, who had the bushy eyebrows that Mr. Bates would acquire in his later life, made one forgery too many and he ignored all the chemical analysis that goes into authenticating art. So to save Pop, Miss Hepburn decided to steal the forged statute before it could be authenticated. Peter O'Toole figured into this part of the movie and the romantic part of Miss Hepburn's character's love life.
The movie is all throw away, but Miss Hepburn looked Fabulous in her Givenchy clothes and hats and patterned stockings. Mr. O'Toole had the bluest eyes that matched the art and set decoration, it concentrated on primary colors. And there is a clever mirror sequence and a How To Get Out of a Locked Closet When You Are In It And Don't Have the Key sequence that is interesting and fun.
July 24, 2014
My viewing companion and I just completed our Charles Boyer Film Festival.
We viewed The Earrings of Madame de..., All This And Heaven Too, and Gaslight.
Mr. Boyer was a French born Hollywood star of the 1930s through the 1960s. He began his film career in France in the 1920s and came to Hollywood in the 1930s when Europe began its March to World War II.
Mr. Boyer had liquid dark eyes that both caught and hid themselves from the camera. He had a beautiful baritone voice with the loveliest (but easily understood) French accent. He was handsome, but not too handsome and in his manner, it was apparent that he enjoyed and respected women. He could be mocking and satiric but never mean like an American Tough Guy of the movies. He had range as an actor. He could convince as a man deeply in love or just faking it for his own benefit. He could command, but he could crumble before the onslaught of a woman Mad in Love. And the viewer believed him in both incarnations. He was also an actor who could listen to the other actors and respond in character perfectly to their own words and actions. Sometimes the viewer watched him listening to another character just to set the scene and understand the subtext of the scene and the relationships. Mr. Boyer was never boring.
All three movies also had the best directors of the era and one of the movies, Gaslight, had an absolutely stunning cinematographer.
The Earrings of Madame de... is a Max Ophuls' directed French film of 1953. Mr. Ophuls began his career at the UFA studios in Germany, but had to leave as the Nazis gained power and put their anti-semitism into law and civil society. He was one of the UFA refugees who gave Hollywood its unmatched Glory in the 1930s through 1950s before American McCarthyism mimicked the flight of the talented from Germany and UFA through the blacklist and witch hunting of 1950s Hollywood. Mr. Ophuls also directed another one of our Movie Night picks, Letter From an Unknown Woman. His name is spelled Opuls in that one.
In The Earrings of Madame de..., Mr. Boyer plays an aristocratic general and the husband of Madame de... Madame needs some money to pay the bills for all her shopping extravagances and she goes through her boudoir and closet to find something to pawn or sell. Everything, even her silver fox furs are just too precious to give up, but not the huge chandelier diamond earrings that her husband gave her for a wedding gift. So the diamonds go back to the jeweler for the debt money. And right there, you begin to understand the dynamics of that marriage.
The jeweler knows his trade and craft and sells the diamond earrings back to Mr. Boyer, the General and husband, who is disappointed that his wife would sell them, but he gives a Gallic shrug about it and gives them to his mistress as a "Good bye to Love" gift, who is headed to Monte Carlo and Istanbul for some gambling sport. "Unlucky at Love, lucky at Gambling", the mistress is the exception to the rule and sells the huge diamond earrings for gambling debts. The General is not at all discerning in his choice of women, neither seems to care too much about him. But he is Charles Boyer and charming and French, but a little stiff in the spine and clenched in the butt.
The earrings merry-go-round continues and they end back up in the General's wife's possession. Her diplomatic Italian lover gives them to her as a love gift and suddenly those earrings, not worth the keeping as her husband's gift, are the most important possessions of herself. She must be able to wear them all the time and in the open. When they were her husband's gift, they had never been out of the jeweler's box. Now those earrings have joined the World Smart Set and must be seen everywhere in every country and every opera and ball and dinner and dance. Those earrings are out to Love! and Live!
The problem is that the General never bothered to tell his wife that the jeweler made a tidy profit selling those earrings back to him. And Madame the wife told the General that she lost the earrings after she sold them back to the jewelers. Who let the earrings out of the box? And how do they get back into Society, if not the box? That is what the movie is about.
While watching All This And Heaven Too, my viewing companion and I kept wondering why that boring American pastor was hanging around the magnificent Bette Davis. It was apparent to us that she had met her match in the Charles Boyer character. They were perfect for each other. Both had those huge glinting dark eyes that absorbed each other into their deep and dark pools of Love. That American guy was just some pest that kept hanging around and miraculously avoided being swatted to death.
As it turned out, Mr. Boyer's character's household held the one who was the one who was swatted to death, and the movie was based on a fictionalized account of an American authoress' great grandmother who was involved in a nineteenth century scandal in France and immigrated to the US to get away from all the nasty fallout. Now what does that remind us of, children?
In this one, Mr. Boyer's character had a crazy Mad wife who neglected her children and wouldn't stay in the Attic and used the Church and the Priests to try and control her husband. Miss Davis was the rational woman in this one, but she still had those liquid eyes.
Anatole Litvak, another European refugee admitted into the pearly gates of Hollywood, directed this.
The conclusion to our Charles Boyer Film Festival and French Appreciation Fest was the George Cukor directed Gaslight.
Mr. Boyer was the villain in this one. Instead of a crazy Mad wife who got that way on her own, he had Ingrid Bergman (my viewing companion and I were trying to decide who was the prettier, Miss Bergman or Greta Garbo) as his weak and stupid wife whom he was driving mad, but in an understated but forceful manner. My viewing companion found him very creepy in this one, but I was more forgiving. It is that French baritone sliver tongue and those great dark eyes that seduced me every time, just like they did to Ingrid.
But the outstanding element of this film, other than the acting of Mr. Boyer and a very young Angela Landsbury (I told my viewing companion that Angela would solve this mystery and make all right again) and Miss Bergman, was the cinematography of Joseph Ruttenberg.
This was Hollywood black and white photography at its Apex of Perfection. The cinematography had a tactile Feel to it. The blacks were as soft yet deep with sheen like velvet, the whites glowed with the perfect smoothness of satin, and the gray of the London fog felt like the loose threaded gauze of hospital unrolled bandages. A Woman decked in diamonds (which Mr. Boyer's character showed an addictive craving for) glittered like faceted sharp yet smooth marcasite. When Mr. Boyer's character spoke worshipfully of diamonds, they were there glinting hard in the depths of his eyes.
While my viewing companion railed against the misogyny and villainy of Mr. Boyer's character, I raved about the cinematography. I think that she is going to report me to the Feminist Society. I could be in some trouble for my attraction to Surface values.
All movies are highly recommended and Mr. Boyer should be the subject of a movie revival. Hallelujah! Me and My Viewing Companion are Witnesses!
October 3, 2014
The Immigrant (2013)
My movie viewing companion wrote an intriguing and thoughtful essay about this film. I recommend it.
And I recommend the film. Finally a Woman's Film that respects women and reveals their inner life and value and soul. This is a rare beast, watch and wonder in awe that its creation was achieved.
For some reason, this film was difficult to find---no iTunes or Amazon versions of it. And it was very rare on the streaming sites. Only DVDs were obtainable. Why is that, I wonder? To answer my own question, Netflix and Hulu+ seem to have put dibs on it, so it is behind their pay walls. It is like the film, you can't have it or her (Miss Cotillard's character) without paying its/her Pimps for the priviledge of its/her company. Phooey!
April 7, 2015
Mother of George (2013)
Mother of George? Mother of the Goddess!
My viewing companion is a great fan of Michonne on The Walking Dead. She wanted to see this movie because Danai Gurira, who plays Michonne, stars in the movie as a newly married Nigerian immigrant in Brooklyn who desparately wants a baby because:
- her culture demands it? No one was demanding in this movie at all. I was hoping that her Mother In Law would be a Queen Bitch about it but the lady wasn't even a worker bee.
- her desire has always been about the babies. There are no children in this movie. This is supposed to be about the making of a family (with child) and the starter family (the husband's family) has no children. What are these people going to do with a baby if they get one?
- she has no worth as a woman without a baby. She was doing fine and making money on her own and dressing beautifully without baby spit on her lovely homemade clothes.
- her husband demands a baby or else!!!!! He will run away and make her so sorry. Sorry, the husband doesn't seem to care much about it. He won't even go to a fertility doctor about it. He might be found to be the one at fault which is damaging to a male ego, but, you know, he doesn't really care that much about it at all. He runs away for another reason.
- this movie has got to be about something, so why NOT a woman and a baby? Because women are made to make babies and that is the Sole and Great Purpose of any Woman's Life!
My viewing companion who was very disappointed with this movie, she compared it to another stinker, Revolutionary Road which went nowhere, and she finally said after asking every ten minutes, "Is this movie over yet? Are we there, at THE END, yet?", that the movie was The Bold and Beautiful, but not as compelling as that great TV soap opera. And talking about soap operas, I told her, "This movie is like an opera, but one where no one can sing in tune."
And then I said, "This movie is a subplot of a TV soap opera, the uninteresting one, while we wait for the good ones about whether Didi will leave Dodo who is carrying his quintuplets but has not gained a pound despite hauling them around the hospital while she stalks Didi because she is sure that he murdered the family cat during a vivisection gone wrong. Anyway, Didi is nailing the cutest nurse around which raises the suspicion of the head nurse, and we all know how she got her name in the hospital, who is stalking her cutest nurse and thinking maybe now is the time to change gender, and meanwhile the other cutest nurse that Didi is interested in is a male surfer in disguise because he is a terrorist for Moldavia independence and religious oppression." As you can see, we were very talkative text messangative during this movie, we even discussed the upcoming season 5 of Game of Thrones. We want to see Sansa Stark kick some ass, as if.
But let me say something positive about this movie. It was beautifully photographed in color. All the characters were Africans and African-Americans and their skin was shot as if they were valuable gold or silver. The only other time that I saw such beautiful skin tones for people of color was in the Ridley Scott movie, Black Hawk Down. In that movie you could see that the African was Black Gold, hence the bartering of her body in the slave trade. Skin tones were a treasure in both these movies.
Click to viewThe lighting and lenses and setup must be different for different skin tones (I am not technically proficient about these things and welcome comments from those who are) and most movies are set up for the paler skin tones and do no favors to the darker ones. It is so lovely to see a movie that knows how to photograph people of color and make them beautiful and so desirable.
But photographing in color is more difficult than in black and white and deep focus is difficult if not impossible to achieve even in this day. This movie had beautiful colors but the focus was capricious. My viewing companion and I could not figure out if that was intentional or just a technical difficulty. Plus this film was shot through windows and glass that further obscured the weak characters and plot for no good reason. It was easy to lose track and identification of who was doing what in the very poor and thin plot.
An instance of the blurry focus of the film occurs in the husband and wife's living room when they discuss the fertility doctor. The husband says no that he will not go and drinks a cup of tea. His hand on the tea mug and the watch on his hand is in focus, but his face is blurred and the body language of the hand and watch tell the viewer nothing.The viewer cannot see his face so that tells nothing too. As we concluded, this was so much Artiness for nothing of any value.
Not Recommended unless you want to know how to photograph people of color.
April 13, 2015
The Seventh Seal (1957) directed by Ingmar Bergman
December 14, 2015
My viewing companion and I have been watching some movies together, but we have not been posting about them.
Last night, we watched The Man From U.N.C.L.E (2014) written and directed by Guy Ritchie.
I don't know what has happened to Mr. Ritchie, he used to be able to produce a good action flick for the Men in the audience, but still make it watchable (just ONCE on a date night) for the Women.
My viewing companion chose this film because of the eye candy and she does know her eye candy: Henry Cavill and Armie Hammer (whom we were calling Pretty Eyes because we couldn't be bothered to remember his name) are lovely boys to look at. But let me warn you, they don't take off any clothes in this film. There is no plot to speak of or remember. I couldn't remember the plot 20 minutes into the film and I have no idea what happened in it. But that doesn't matter because No Nekkid Guys!
Miss Alicia Vikkander, who is the Hot Star of the Year, was pretty and she put on clothes that were gorgeous. They were all 1960 style tailored and colorful outfits that Audrey Hepburn was famous for wearing in her 1960s Stardom. Miss Hepburn wore them beautifully and Miss Vikkander wore them just as well as Miss Hepburn. Miss Vikkander has some of Miss Hepburn's fey and charming qualities with a delicate long neck and wide brown eyes. Miss Vikkander is Hot both professionally and physically these days.
And now you know just how bad this movie was when I spend all my post discussing the beauty of Miss Vikkander and her clothes. What happened to the Pretty Boys with No Clothes?
Not recommended at all.
Look up the stills from the film and admire Miss Vikkander's wardrobe.
Other Movie Night Entries:
The Original
Parte Deux