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Reviews
Le ciel est à vous (1944)
Film is a German production in the Occupied Zone, not Vichy
After the German conquest of France in 1940, Hitler decided to create a 'Hollywood' style Nazi film industry to entertain the enslaved populations of Europe. ReichsMinister of Propaganda Goebbels formed & financed the Continental Film Co. of Germany, and it signed up a bunch of collaborating French actors based in the Occupied Zone in Paris where the film was produced. Vichy was mentioned in the film, but there was no film industry in the Unoccupied zone, it was just shown there. To the extent that this successful film fulfilled the aims of the Reich Ministry of Propaganda, French efforts in the film were collaboration. Or,if you wish, French efforts were Resistance in order to preserve what was left of French culture.
The point of view just depended on who held the knife at your throat when the question arose.
The Dark Knight (2008)
Read the book: Beyond Good & Evi l- Friedrich Nietzsche(1885)
Its all there, the heroes, the artificiality of Belief, the fear of loss of an absolute morality by the masses, a solution to the problem of Evil in our Nietzschean 21st century. Old Nietzsche really hated Chrisianity, totally disliked the German bourgeoisie, and considered other philosophies just plain wrong. The hard part of dealing with translations of his books into English is that so many of the words have become clichés: 'ubermensch' did not mean people who were physically strong, it actually meant what we would call self-motivated or self-realized. He wasn't anti-semitic and considered German anti-semitism an example of bourgeois delusion in German culture. He wrote a number of books with odd titles, like 'The Gay Science' where the phrase God is dead appears (a better translation is 'The Happy Science', another example of bad translation).
September Dawn (2007)
Is history bunk ?
Reality forces us to live and deal with the present, the here and now, and history is only interesting, but it is not a force. There is no inevitablity to history and its so-called trends. The idea of 'blood atonement' for historical acts is crap. Now, if Ebert wants to believe that that most members of all sects desire peace and non-violence, than he is wrong, but Mormons are definitely NOT a sect that presently seeks to murder non-believers. Morman voters in Utah consistently return to power politicians who are loyal Americans, lovers of democracy, and never want to kill non-believers. They are the very picture of a normal State in the United States. Where September Dawn steps over the line is to suggest that somehow the pre-Civil War hostilities between Utah Territory and the United States have some resonance today: that suggestion is incorrect, and the 19th century war has no relevance to how people should behave toward Utah or the Mormans today. And it is too hard to get past the polemics of the movie to get to the interesting history it contains.
10 Items or Less (2006)
Location, location
The whole film is premised upon Freeman being a stranger is a strange land, stranded in some isolated working class, dysfunctional neighborhood. In reality, the exterior shots, most of the film really, was filmed in and around Terminal Island and the hills in & just outside San Pedro. Lots of containers (the shipping kind) and cranes, and the stark, industrial landscape is supposed to be a million miles distant from Freeman's upscale world in Brentwood. The reality is that Palos Verdes Estates, every bit as upscale as West LA, is located not two miles from where those shots were made (just on the other side of the hills) and Freeman would have been quite familiar with that neighborhood and not isolated and stranded in some working class wasteland as the actor in the film. He was almost within walking distance of other wealthy actors, just like himself.
Night at the Museum (2006)
Clueless Stiller
Protagonist Stiller plays this dumb & dumber,unsympathetic parent in a custody battle fantasy whose main characters are a perfect kid with a bitch on wheels mother + goofy clownish stepfather. The graphics are underwhelming. The saving grace is a near total absence of courtroom scenes. What is it about child custody battle movies ? If the idea of betrayal and lost love makes great drama, why is its messy aftermath so hard to make interesting ? In real terms, this child had no good parents or caretakers, and the film totally missed this point. Van Dyke, Rooney, and all the extras do terrific work and are worth the price of admission. The screen just lights up when they are in view, and fads when the main characters appear.
Man of the Year (2006)
Great movie-structured consistently, excellent ending
Do not be misled by comments that state that the movie feels like it changes tone abruptly after the first 40 minutes - it doesn't. And the first half does not feel like a comedy, instead it seem to me to be a film showing a comedy show being created and broadcast. There is a difference between a comedy show and a film documenting the broadcasting of a comedy show - the latter is a documentary and only incidentally funny. And that is the tone of the entire movie, it is the story of a putative election being told by Walken in flashback and presented as a documentary. And it is in this sense that the ending is consistent with the beginning and with the movie as a whole and the reason the film works so well. The only sad thing is that actors show their true ages so much ... Walken is too realistic as an aging man in poor health and Robin Williams not nearly as spry as he used to be.
Stratosphere Girl (2004)
The young Eurogirl's fantasy & a great movie
This is a story about a Belgium high school girl's start in her career as a comic strip author just as she graduates, and what she did, or was trying to do, to land her first contract to produce a strip out of her workshop in her mother's house. Most of the movie is about her nascent storyline, with her as the hero who must triumph, as she draws and works out the Manja-style comic strip. Now, most of her story involves seedy adult Eurotrash working in the Tokyo sex trade and the the Japanese men who exploit them in porno rituals to entertain corporate salary-men. The presence of the young Belgium high school girl provides a startling, even unsettling note since she looks not a day older than 15 years. The first clue that the story is imaginary is seeing that child anywhere near the Tokyo Ginga district. In one odd scene she objects to dressing up as a 9 year old, and all the while on her the costume appears not out of place. There is some soft-core porn. This is a great film, and a great way to see a modern EU coming of age story. The entire perspective of the film is grounded in Geneva, in spite of the Tokyo locale.
Intruder in the Dust (1949)
Oxford, Miss was the site of locations shots
This film was set, filmed, and premiered in Oxford, Miss., the hometown of W. Faulkner, the locale of the 1948 book. Most of the extras were locals. I've been to Oxford, and it has greatly changed. This film features Will Geer as the sheriff;he was later blacklisted. It was the writers and actors of social dramas such as this film, and Grapes Of Wrath, that were targets of the HUAC a few years later. I don't recall if the actor playing the young Mallison boy (Claude Jarman Jr) did anything after the TV series Centennial (1978), but he was terrific in this earlier film. And do not miss Elizabeth Patterson who later played in Little Women.