Jason's Blog, page 100

Then, suddenly...

Bonjour Tristesse

Jean Seberg and her dad David Niven are on vacation on the French Riviera. Enter Deborah Kerr. Directed by Otto Preminger.

Ah, rich people! One character is more annoying and spoiled than the other, calling each other "darling", their only problem being sunburned, and you just want to puke. I'm sorry, but it's very hard to care what happens to these assholes. Is there a more British actor than David Niven? Here we're supposed to believe that he's a Frenchman. I haven't read the book, but the film came out in 59, the same year as The 400 Blows, and should probably have been a Nouvelle Vague film rather than an oldfashioned Hollywood drama. Seberg is not bad, though, despite the stilted dialogue she is given, and sometimes looks a lot like Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby (or the other way, since that film came out ten years later).

Another panel, not erased yet

The Hot Rock

Robert Redford is Dortmunder from the Donald E. Westlake novels. Also starring George Segal and Zero Mostel, directed by Peter Yates.

A great, little caper film, from 72, a couple of years after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Redford is at the peak of his Robert Redfordness. The victory skip / walk he does at the end is a real movie moment. Period films set in the early seventies often exaggerate how ugly the fashions were, with wide lapels and garish suits, but it wasn't that bad, at least based on this film. If I have one complaint, it's maybe that they could have tried to find a part, somewhere, for Walter Matthau. Actually, the film would  make a nice double feature with The Taking of Pelham 123.

Sketch

Rain Tree Crow

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Brazil, Night

The Boys from Brazil by Franklin J. Schaffner
It's kind of slow, this film, with German accents galore, and Gregory Peck hamming it up as Mengele. The story is probably more believable in a book than in a movie. But there is some fun in spotting actors that will go on to more famous parts. There's Aunt Mary, Sibyl Fawlty, Alfred the butler, Adolf Hitler in Der Untergang and even a young Steve Guttenberg.

In the Heat of the Night by Norman Jewison
It's a pretty good film. Okay, it's about race, but you're not constantly hit over the head with it, like some films I could mention, cough crash cough. The dialogues ring true, the characters aren't there just to make a point and Rod Steiger and  Sidney Poitier make a cute couple.

Panel, now finished

I decided not to make it rain in the panel, as seen in the half finished version from March 7, but rather put that - the rain- in another panel. It creates mood, rain, so it shouldn't be used all nilly willy. I walked out in the street where I live, found a wall I liked and penciled it in right there, then went back inside and inked it. And yes, those upside down u's, to give the wall some character, I completely stole that from Mike Mignola.

To The Wonder

Ben Affleck, Olga Kurylenko, Javier Bardem and Rachel McAdams look great backlit, in natural light. Directed by Terrence Malick.

Okay, the film looks amazing. The images have the kind of clarity you get when you get a new pair of glasses. There are some lovely, hypnotic sequences, but at some point you wonder, shouldn't there be a story as well? I don't really see one. What do we learn in the film? Women dance and twirl a lot and men knit their brows and look off into the distance. They think in poems. They spend a lot of time in wheat fields at magic hour, looking at horses. They don't wash the dishes or worry about paying rent. It's just hard to relate to anything that happens. They don't feel like real people.

This is probably totally unfair, but I can't help but think that the multiple voiceovers that Malick has used in his recent films are a mistake. I imagine Days of Heaven in that style, how it would completely ruin the film. In his two first films, the voiceover was done by one person, and that voiceover said something about that character. I guess Malick is more into spiritual journeys these days. But sometimes it leaves the viewer on the outside, the key lost somewhere in the wheat field.

Half finished panel 2