tom stoppard's anna karenina directed by some guy whp's name i don't remember



the trailer, at the movies, had looked spectacular, and i love the novel, and i like tom stoppard, so i HAD TO watch this.

at first it was QUITE FUCKING GRATING to adapt to the conceit that the whole movie is staged-- on a stage. kindasorta. at times the stage opens and you're in the fucking steppes. and then i thought: "oh, tom fucking stoppard, it's you and your fucking postmodernism you!" (that's the guy i was just talking about the otehr day who stuffed his plays with "theory," but i couldn't remember his name... well it is tom stoppard... anyway...)

so what happens here is that instead of getting some sort of realist recreation (like you had for example with fanny and alexander where the world is "there" in front of the camera) there is a fuckload of signifying, here. neither showing nor telling but rather "pointing at"-- bits of acting and staging that signify "here the person travels to the farm", "now they have moved to a restaurant", "and now these two are both horny." and there's a bunch of shots of little toy trains. kinda like an old godzilla movie. well, it's a kind of "telling", but it's quick.

it really breaks the conventions of narrative cinema and it's highly annoying...

...at first.

because, if you have read the novel, you know it's a massive motherfucker that takes forever to read (i read 1-2 chapters per day over a summer). and you know how movies adapt massive novels-- pick a thing or two, shine a light over it and obscure the rest, bam, it is done.

but here no! here every main piece of plot was covered! very little was missing! and this was done by-- signifyin'

****** SPOILERS GALORE NOW FURIOUSLY ENSUE **********

yes, tolstoy's disquisitions about oblonsky's calves weren't there; and levin's tortured dreams and meditations weren't spelled out word by word, but they were-- signified! you know what i mean? there was something always pointing at these things. so that if you knew the novel you could say "ah, here's where levin realizes he had been thinking wrong but living right" or, "oh shit, look at kitty's old dumb parents, all phegmy," etc.

******************SPOILERS NOW ENDED************

now how this looked like to someone with no knowledge of the novel whatsoever, i don't know. probably contrived and highly theatrical, like a baz luhrmann movie, and at times you almost expected them to break into song and dance, but fortunately (for me anyway) they didn't. regardless, all this posturing was still meaningful. plus, keira knightley's delicate neck/jawline and enormous canines are always fun to contemplate (as roland barthes made it clear-- the closeup is the reason for movies to exist).

so where was i going with this? oh yes. a high level of artificiality that serves the story well, i think. tom stoppard! you clever fucker!

the sets by the way were fucking exquisite.

3.5/5 maybe?? it was a long shot all along. and quite heroic. and it looks fucking great.

*******ONE LAST FAT SPOILER FOR THE ROAD *********

oh shit, i almost forgot-- the only part that really was lacking at the end and looked like fucking treason was they did not have vronsky going to war (in a train, of course, what else) and grinding his teeth full of deathwish. fuckers! that-- that was wrong, that. that! he doesn't just run away into the next pussy! not this time! hronged us you have with that wrong plot. does not compute. fuckers!

The guy who directed that (Joe Wright) also did Atonement. That was a great film and all it's clearly done by somebody who knows what they're doing in terms of directing.

YESSS!!!!

That was the first Bresson film I ever saw and immediately made me want to see everything by him. 10/10 is right.

I just started watching Von Trier's the Kingdom, pretty impressed so far. It's kind of a cross between a hospital drama and Twin Peaks.

generally I hate films unless they are overbearingly shit, but tarr's film reminds me so heavily of tarkovsky, whose work I love, in that there is always an overarching misery to it; any semblance of hope is stifled, it's not even explored at all, but rather it's just drowned in the density of the atmosphere. he also has that same ability to conjure up these really beautiful images which are juxtaposed with the fact that they are blatantly horrible, painful.

generally I hate films unless they are overbearingly shit, but tarr's film reminds me so heavily of tarkovsky, whose work I love, in that there is always an overarching misery to it; any semblance of hope is stifled, it's not even explored at all, but rather it's just drowned in the density of the atmosphere. he also has that same ability to conjure up these really beautiful images which are juxtaposed with the fact that they are blatantly horrible, painful.

i never liked it much but it had a semi-cult following. i think a lot of people were fans in this board. i can watch it, but it's just not very challenging for me-- it's one of those types of shows that always ends in a "lesson". getting schooled on the art of living by tv writers isn't exactly my thing, especially when they do it so overtly ("life is like a box of chocolates... bla bla bla bla some stupid bullshit"). but i can find some entertainment in it so it's not a total loss. C-?

It is a pretty bizarre series overall. Pretty low budget in places but I suppose you could kind of expect that of early 90's Danish television.

It's quite slow to start with but once it gets going its great. Shame they never made the final series because two of the main actors died.

I would recommend it though.

Unforgiven

so... do you not forgive it???

Haha, no. I love it.

i just had hernia surgery so my girlfriend got a bunch of dvd's from the library for me (she's the best!) while i recover and one of them was the movie AWAY WE GO. it was godawful, they tried to make EVERY single goddamn scene so meaningful by playing like nick drake type music in the background. when everything is SOOO heavy in every scene it kind of dilutes everything. it was awful!

End of Watch

I enjoyed this more the first time I saw it. Michael Pena is still great though. I hope he gets a proper leading role some time.



Missing in Action

Does a gun still work after it's been under water? Chuck Norris' does.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vZQpGcNWVI

Sunshine State

Bits of this are great but by the end of it I felt like I'd watched an adaptation of a Carl Hiaasen novel that'd had all the humour taken out.

^^Murmer, I pretty much agree with everything you say about Man Escaped. Although I wouldn't worry too much about spoilers, given the film's own title effectively gives the ending away.

I saw the new Evil Dead yesterday and it was incredible.

Have they kept the scene with the tree branch?

watch this instead