films seen

[calimac]

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story - milwaukeesfs hated this, but while his criticism is valid - the scenes actually made from the book are the best part, but it drops these in favor of becoming a "making of" film that's too long and too tedious - I still enjoyed it overall. I can't claim to have read all of Tristram Shandy (has anyone?), but I know it well enough to be impressed at this filming of an "unfilmable" book. The trick is to find something that, in film terms, is the equivalent of what the novel does in book terms, and they did. If it wasn't all successful, neither was all of the book. If the book-based parts of the film are all about Tristram's birth and preceeding events, so is the book. Despite the tedium, there are some very clever bits, some of them in the "making of" parts - the description of the book as "a postmodern novel before there was any modernism to be post about," and the strangely funny over-credits sequence of the two leads doing dueling Al Pacino imitations. And, there's a brief appearance by Stephen Fry, always the best thing in any film where he appears.

Grizzly Man - should this have won Best Documentary instead of the penguins? Maybe not. Timothy Treadwell was the man who loved Alaska brown bears so much he wound up getting eaten by one, but Herzog's insistent psychoanalysis of the guy is a little over-egged, and his patient delivery and German accent, as if he were the prime disciple of Freud, make it worse. Most of the film consists of documentary footage shot by Treadwell himself with his own narration. He had the style and appearance of an over-excited surfer dude, and a little of him goes a long way. What convinced me that Treadwell was using the bears as a substitute for some kind of connection he wasn't getting anywhere else was a creepy scene, uncommented on by Herzog, in which Treadwell lovingly caresses a fresh steaming pile of bear dung, marvelling that it had just been inside one of his favorite bears. Clearly he wanted to hug those bears, and the dung at least wouldn't bite. What Treadwell really needed was a teddy bear, but he had one, as we learn from an interview with his parents, from which we also learn that his father is a dead ringer for Eugene Levy in one of his Dad roles.

Oddly, there's very little on the educational/publicity work that Treadwell did during the winters. He mentions in one of his tapes having appeared on Letterman. Descriptions of the film had led me to believe that interview appeared therein, but it wasn't on the DVD I rented.

Pride & Prejudice - not the Colin Firth dives into a lake version, nor the Matthew Macfadyen and Keira Knightly make out on the porch at Pemberley version, nor even the Bollywood version, all of which I'd already seen, but the Mormon version. Set among present-day BYU students (the five girls are housemates, and only Kitty and Lydia are sisters; no parents appear), it's occasionally charming in a Lizzy McGuire way but largely inept. Directing is stiff and awkward, the fantasy scenes (Elizabeth imagining what she wants to do) lack fizz, and there's all kinds of unexplained holes in the plot. Elizabeth appears to be an undergraduate but she also says she's 26: not impossible, but not explained. At one point Caroline Bingley leads Elizabeth to think she's engaged to Darcy, though she isn't: it's never made clear if Caroline is psychotic, if Elizabeth just misunderstood the allusion, or what. Mary sings "My Bonnie", very badly and over and over again, to try to entertain a party when the sound system goes out, and everybody hates it but they just stand there and make snide comments instead of doing something else. Charlotte Lucas shows up very briefly, but she doesn't need to be there at all as Mr. Collins marries Mary instead. Jane Austen is actually mentioned, but nobody remarks on the amazing similarity of their lives and names to one of her books. The best scene, if it can be called that, is the petulant diatribe that Mr. Collins (an earnest church-going boy) gives at the church after being turned down: "I had a funny encounter with a girl in this congregation, who will remain anonymous, but for the sake of the story let's call her Elizabeth B. No: E. Bennet."

Comments

[bibliofile.livejournal.com]

That version of Pride and Prejudice sounds bizarre. I can understand changing elements to make a book fit the screen. Not all the changes make sense, though.

[divertimento.livejournal.com]

If I remember right, the interviews with Letterman were part of the
theatrical release, but permissions weren't given for video release
of that broadcast material, so they aren't on the DVD of Grizzly Man.