Posted on July 28, 2015 at 3:21 pm
A fascinating look at what made Warner Brothers cartoons work. Surprisingly, within these anarchic worlds, there were a lot of rules. This video has some very thoughtful commentary, including Leonard Maltin and Steven Spielberg.
Posted on July 24, 2015 at 11:23 am
My friend and fellow critic Michael Mirasol has shared another of his brilliantly edited supercuts of movie moments, and this is one of his best. There’s nothing the movies do better than chases!
Posted on July 11, 2015 at 3:55 pm
In my book, The Movie Mom’s Guide to Family Movies
Little girls and bigger ones see a lot of what I call “makeover movies:” in a crucial scene Our Heroine gets a new dress and hairstyle (or just takes off her glasses) and her life changes. Sometimes she transforms herself, as Ella does in “The Bells are Ringing” , causing her to have enormous conflicts and self-doubt. More often, she is transformed by someone else. Cinderella gets a dress to go to the ball, where the prince falls in love with her. Sleeping Beauty’s ballgown is so crucial that the fairies’ fight over its color literally leads the bad fairy to her hideaway. The modern counterparts are Eliza Doolittle, who, like Cinderella, goes to a ball in borrowed finery (and accent) and dazzles everyone there (“My Fair Lady” ) and “Gigi” who is actually groomed by her grandmother and great-aunt to be a very elegant prostitute, trained almost like a geisha in manners and skills for pleasing a man. Over and over, we see the heroines rewarded for being passive pleasers.
Transformation themes have been a central part of stories long before there were movies. The examples above were fairy tales before they were on screen. And girls and women are not the only ones who are transformed; superheroes all have origin stories that are a form of makeover, though they are changing to fantasy versions for themselves, and not to get positive attention from the opposite sex.
VOX has a nice commentary on makeover movies.
Posted on July 8, 2015 at 1:34 pm
My friend Jen Chaney is one of the most knowledgeable and insightful writers about movies and pop culture I know. Her new book is an oral history of “Clueless,” based on interviews with writer/director Amy Heckerling and the stars and crew. It is brilliant and funny and one of the best books I know about how movies get made and why they matter. “Clueless” is by now a cultural touchstone, featuring lines of dialogue that have entered the lexicon, iconic fashion, some surprisingly accurate future predictions about technology and behavior, and star-making performances from its young actors. The book is called As If!: The Oral History of Clueless as told by Amy Heckerling and the Cast and Crew
Those in the Washington DC area can see Jen at one of these events.
July 11: Politics & Prose, reading and signing
July 16: American Film Institute Silver Spring, Clueless screening and Q&A
Posted on June 23, 2015 at 3:53 pm
Before “Inside Out,” there was another animated film that explored emotions and psychological and cognitive development. Based on the pioneering work of psychoanalyst Erik Erikson
This is a more abstract, demanding film than “Inside Out,” but for those who want to continue to explore ideas about the way our emotions and memories guide our lives, this is well worth a look. Listen for Meryl Streep’s voice, early in her career, in this clip.
