Coming to a theatre near you
Tis the season to be jolly, and also the season of holiday movies. I know some of you may not watch tv enough to see all the trailers, so I just wanted to share this holiday bounty with you:
The Nativity Story
Just in time for Christmas, here we give you an action-adventure melodrama all about the birth of Jesus now (eventually, we'll have a two-hour movie to cover every event in his life).
...I actually kinda wanna see it, though maybe not in theatres, because it may be boring. Still, most of you know how I feel about the whole Jesus story (ie, he's one of my favorite literary characters). And I like Mary a lot. Though I'd be worried about disliking her portrayal.
Rocky Balboa (ie, We Ran Out Of Roman Numerals)
[No picture, sorry--I'm a fan of neither Stallone nor wrestling]
Were five Rocky movies not enough for you? Were you itching for the chance to see a middle aged Sylvester Stallone reprise a role he's already nearly done to death? Did you want to see the "best-of" iconic shots from all the previous movies packed into a brand new nostalgia trip? Then you're in luck! Obviously, filmmakers have been thinking the same things and have decided to come out with a sucker-punch Rocky movie just when you thought you were safe.
Something interesting for serious, now--
Perfume: Story of a Murderer
(I don't like the American poster for this, so I am posting the German one.)
For any of you who don't know, this movie is based on the wonderful novel Das Parfum by Patrick Suskind. I don't know how to describe the book without going into spoilers, but it is breathtaking and gruesome, beautiful and grotesque. Most reviewers trumpet its originality, but I am not sure I would really say that it is--it's obviously inspired in style and aesthetics (and maybe even its philosophy) by the fin-de-siecle Decadent authors. It carries a strong Huysmans influence, as well as a Flaubert one, and dips back to Balzac. (I am not sure if there are any German authours the novel emulates, other than the slight Hoffman influence that no-one can escape from.) Like Huysmans' A Rebours, which in my opinion it most closely resembles, it gets somewhat bogged down in the middle by the sheer weight of its description, but it picks up speed towards the end.
The "originality" so heralded by the reviwers, though, has to do with Suskind's decision to devote the entire book to the sense of smell, which is so underused in literature. The main character is born without a smell of his own, but he is an olfactory genius, caring for little else, and the novel follows him on his quest to create the perfect perfume through 18th century Paris and its environs--scent by scent. There were efforts to make this into a movie before, but Suskind considered the novel largely unfilmable, as the transferance from page to screen would necessarily privilege the visual, which would go against the whole point. Stanley Kubrick originally wanted to direct it, but eventually even he decided that it was impossible. Still, I am glad that it was filmed, even if this undercuts Suskind's project of subverting the primacy of sight as our primary mode of perception.
In any case, I hope it will be as beautifully filmed as it was written. This had better be one gorgeous, gorgeous movie. I so have been waiting for it.
You should all read the book, though.
The Nativity Story
Just in time for Christmas, here we give you an action-adventure melodrama all about the birth of Jesus now (eventually, we'll have a two-hour movie to cover every event in his life).
...I actually kinda wanna see it, though maybe not in theatres, because it may be boring. Still, most of you know how I feel about the whole Jesus story (ie, he's one of my favorite literary characters). And I like Mary a lot. Though I'd be worried about disliking her portrayal.
Rocky Balboa (ie, We Ran Out Of Roman Numerals)
[No picture, sorry--I'm a fan of neither Stallone nor wrestling]
Were five Rocky movies not enough for you? Were you itching for the chance to see a middle aged Sylvester Stallone reprise a role he's already nearly done to death? Did you want to see the "best-of" iconic shots from all the previous movies packed into a brand new nostalgia trip? Then you're in luck! Obviously, filmmakers have been thinking the same things and have decided to come out with a sucker-punch Rocky movie just when you thought you were safe.
Something interesting for serious, now--
Perfume: Story of a Murderer
(I don't like the American poster for this, so I am posting the German one.)
For any of you who don't know, this movie is based on the wonderful novel Das Parfum by Patrick Suskind. I don't know how to describe the book without going into spoilers, but it is breathtaking and gruesome, beautiful and grotesque. Most reviewers trumpet its originality, but I am not sure I would really say that it is--it's obviously inspired in style and aesthetics (and maybe even its philosophy) by the fin-de-siecle Decadent authors. It carries a strong Huysmans influence, as well as a Flaubert one, and dips back to Balzac. (I am not sure if there are any German authours the novel emulates, other than the slight Hoffman influence that no-one can escape from.) Like Huysmans' A Rebours, which in my opinion it most closely resembles, it gets somewhat bogged down in the middle by the sheer weight of its description, but it picks up speed towards the end.
The "originality" so heralded by the reviwers, though, has to do with Suskind's decision to devote the entire book to the sense of smell, which is so underused in literature. The main character is born without a smell of his own, but he is an olfactory genius, caring for little else, and the novel follows him on his quest to create the perfect perfume through 18th century Paris and its environs--scent by scent. There were efforts to make this into a movie before, but Suskind considered the novel largely unfilmable, as the transferance from page to screen would necessarily privilege the visual, which would go against the whole point. Stanley Kubrick originally wanted to direct it, but eventually even he decided that it was impossible. Still, I am glad that it was filmed, even if this undercuts Suskind's project of subverting the primacy of sight as our primary mode of perception.
In any case, I hope it will be as beautifully filmed as it was written. This had better be one gorgeous, gorgeous movie. I so have been waiting for it.
You should all read the book, though.