Tag Archives: lawrence of arabia

Some Brief Questions About the Movies

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One of the best things about films–both good and bad–is that they inspire us to inquire. We ask while watching them: Did it really have to happen that way? Or maybe: What’s with the lighting in that scene? How does so-and-so get out of that scrape? We’re always exploring this universe. There always are questions that come up during the course of a picture.

Recently, I began to wonder if the ones I’m asking while watching certain flicks are the same as those being posed by other viewers. Perhaps we’re all thinking similarly … or perhaps not. In that interrogative light, here are my latest musings, as unattached to each other as they may be:

Does anybody really like the character George Berger in Milos Forman’s film version of Hair?

Which is more disturbing: The discovery in David Lean’s Lawrence of Arabia that Gasim, the man T.E. Lawrence saved from death in the desert, has murdered another man, or Michael Corleone’s lie to his wife Kay in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather about killing his sister’s husband?

Would Stanley Kubrick’s Spartacus be a heckuva lot better without Alex North’s excruciatingly bombastic score?

What would have happened in Kenji Mizoguchi’s The Life of Oharu if the eponymous character had rejected the advances of her suitor at the beginning of the film?

Where did Antoine Doinel go at the end of Francois Truffaut’s The 400 Blows? How about Kevin at the end of Terry Gilliam’s Time Bandits?

Couldn’t Louis Mazzini just have gone back into the prison to retrieve his memoirs at the conclusion of Robert Hamer’s Kind Hearts and Coronets?

I’m just wondering. How about you?

 

 

Skip’s Quips: Losing No Sleep Over My Guilty Pleasures

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Blog Sketch 082813Don’t hate me because I watched Major League II on TV. Hate me because I kinda enjoyed it.

Yep. Just like Peter O’Toole’s character in Lawrence of Arabia. Except without all of the scary sadistic connotations.

Maybe it’s a masochistic enjoyment of sorts. After all, Major League II can’t be said to be a great movie. It isn’t even good. Actually, it’s rather bad. The script is blah. The cinematography is unimaginative. The performances are along the lines of “what am I doing in this picture? I should’ve tried out for Forrest Gump.”

Yet there are some humorous lines here and there. And I’m a sucker for baseball movies. It’s definitely a guilty pleasure; I’ll admit that freely.

There’s no shame in that, right? Or in watching Marked for Death whenever it’s on? All right, maybe there’s a little shame in that. But nothing to lose sleep over.

Kurosawa observed it rightly: The Bad Sleep Well. Or in this case, those who watch junky films and enjoy them as guilty pleasures.

I know I’m not alone.

Skip’s Quips: Bad Lines in Good Movies

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Blog Sketch 082813No film is perfect, and even great movies have scenes or lines that could be better.

I was thinking about this recently while watching Ghostbusters on TV. It’s hardly a masterpiece, yet it remains a terrific comedy and has held up well nearly 30 years after its debut. Still, despite a sharp, hilarious script, it contains a line toward the end that disappoints me to this day: “I love this town,” shouted by Ernie Hudson’s Winston Zeddmore after the ‘busters save New York City from a supernatural catastrophe.

Blah. Surely there was a funnier way to express triumph than a maudlin acknowledgement of Gotham’s greatness.

Of course, it’s not a movie-breaker, but it brings to mind other frustrating lines from the cinema’s greatest flicks. For instance: the immortal “leave me alone” in Lawrence of Arabia, spoken with great self-pity by Peter O’Toole’s T.E. Lawrence in a dialogue with Jack Hawkins’ General Allenby—who, as if in recognition of this pathetic order, notes that it’s a “feeble thing to say.” I guess it’s hard to count this in the annals of bad lines completely, as it’s followed up in an organic way, though it still rings overdone. So does a much-revered scene in the otherwise extraordinary film The Seven Samurai where Toshiro Mifune’s Kikuchiyo, charged by a dying woman with saving her baby, collapses into the stream surrounding the village and cries along with the infant, lamenting how the same thing happened to him. It’s just a bit too much in a movie noted for its tight script, though it does give some insight into the reckless character’s origins.

These are just a few examples. They don’t ruin the films overall. Yet it’s interesting to see how high our estimation is of them … if we can carp about lesser lines within. Further proof of the merits of these justly praised pictures.

Setter’s ‘Spectives: The ‘Wind’ Beneath My Consideration

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Setter Drawing for Blog 082613I’m a Gone with the Wind denier.

I deny that it’s a great film. I deny that it’s even enjoyable. And I deny that it should be shown on TV as much as it has been … or, for that matter, at all.

Saturated with racism, it’s a relic that defies viewing. Someone should lock it up and store it away, à la Raiders of the Lost Ark. Yet every so often, it appears on the small screen, as if it’s a tradition akin to watching March of the Wooden Soldiers on Christmas.

Whose tradition are we following here? The tradition of offending people?

I believe in dissociating the creator from his or her art. But GwtW‘s so infused with cordial hate that it infects the film as a whole. You can’t separate the parts.

And I’m still wondering why it gets the green light on the tube.

Many people like it. Some feel it’s a masterpiece. I don’t. From a cinematic perspective, it smacks of tripe. Soapy, tiresome tripe. Oh, yeah: It’s long, too, and not long in a good, Lawrence of Arabia way. You feel every minute of it.

I’m in the minority on this, and normally I accept that. In this case, however, I don’t. GwtW shouldn’t be shown on TV, and its racism alone should be reason enough. The fact that it’s plain tedious offers further proof that we should blow it off.

Thank Goodness We Haven’t Seen These Movie Sequels…Yet