(no subject)
The Brattle keeps coming through for me. They provide the best movies and the best audiences.
Tonight, it was the original Planet of the Apes, which I'd never seen. Color me shocked: It's actually good! Or, to be more specific, it's sort of terrible most of the way through, and then turns insanely great in the last five minutes. Knowing what was coming did not blunt the impact of the final shot in the slightest. The audience spent most of the movie laughing openly at the ham-handed social commentary, corny makeup, and unbelievably offensive period sexism; yet we were, as a body, stunned into honest applause at the end. I've never seen an audience do that before. And the whole "you damn dirty ape" bit was actually a big dramatic reveal, one I also didn't see coming even though I've heard the line a million times. That suggests to me that we are dealing with very crafty storytellers. My hat is off.
Also, the show started with a brief lecture by a Harvard professor of biological anthropology, basically sketching the state of play in thought on hominid evolution. (Long story short: If you're trying to make apes into intelligent bipeds, change the climate.) The best part is, he'd never seen the movie either!
Tonight, it was the original Planet of the Apes, which I'd never seen. Color me shocked: It's actually good! Or, to be more specific, it's sort of terrible most of the way through, and then turns insanely great in the last five minutes. Knowing what was coming did not blunt the impact of the final shot in the slightest. The audience spent most of the movie laughing openly at the ham-handed social commentary, corny makeup, and unbelievably offensive period sexism; yet we were, as a body, stunned into honest applause at the end. I've never seen an audience do that before. And the whole "you damn dirty ape" bit was actually a big dramatic reveal, one I also didn't see coming even though I've heard the line a million times. That suggests to me that we are dealing with very crafty storytellers. My hat is off.
Also, the show started with a brief lecture by a Harvard professor of biological anthropology, basically sketching the state of play in thought on hominid evolution. (Long story short: If you're trying to make apes into intelligent bipeds, change the climate.) The best part is, he'd never seen the movie either!