p e n g u i n d e v i l

A month ago, while perusing youtube in the search for new trailers to watch, I decided to watch the trailer for Avatar. Now, I don’t know if it just looked like crap because of the quality of the trailer. But it looked like crap. You know, like a ridiculously storied, thoughtlessly actioned, crappily animated disaster. Well, just bad. Of course, as it was rolling towards the billion dollar mark, I had the luck to stumble upon a trailer for the newest Terry Gilliam film. Well, well well.

It, of course, it looks utterly fascinating and brilliant and, as is the case with Gilliam’s films, it is certainly doomed to lose vast sums of money. While the lack of popularity of his films causes me to lose no small measure of respect for humanity, the thought that there are studios out there that are willing to put tens of millions of dollars into his hands to make movies knowing damn sure that they won’t ever make any of it back, gives me some level of nice feeling that there must be some people of character in Hollywood (or at least wanting to make their resume look like it has character). for some folks, who, unlikely as it might seem, I assume are studio executives.

Which leads me to think that while most may be unable to realize what a treasure we have in Gilliam, at least I am not alone in realizing that he its the greatest film director ever (or, at least, the greatest crafter of films), on par with Kubrick, who actually has more movies on “the best dozen films ever” list (Gilliam ties Ridley Scott, but Scott has put out some swill that drops him a notch). Gilliam has not a swill under his belt (except for maybe the Brothers Grimm, which is the only one that I haven’t seen… Aside from this new one).

The tally from “The 11 Greatest films of all time list”, for those who are curious:

Kubrick – 3
Gilliam – 2
Scott – 2
Friedman – 1
Leone – 1
Carpenter-1
Reiner-1
Fleming-1

Oh yes, and the films themselves:

Alien (Scott)
The Adventures of The Baron Munchhausen (Gilliam)
Brazil (Gilliam)
A Clockwork Orange (Kubrick)
The Exorcist (Friedman)
The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Leone)
The Thing (Carpenter)
Dr. Strangelove (Kubrick)
(This is) Spinal Tap (Reiner)
Wizard of Oz (Fleming)
The Shining (Kubrick)
Blade Runner (Scott)

Seriously? Two months with no post? I know that I’m in school and everything, but come on… I’m still watching movies, I should be able to cough up a couple of minutes here while these things are fresh in my mind.

One day, maybe. For now, here is some stuff that isn’t fresh in my mind any longer…

Annie Hall. One of my favorite Woody Allen movies, which makes it one of the best comedies of all time. Of course, yes, the Annie character is oh so very irritating, but Woody is, of course, his usual delightful self.

Pal Joey. Sinatra as the selfish, irresponsible and trouble-making singer who drags a couple of girls up and down along the way (Rita Hayworth and Kim Novak as, respectively, a wealthy ex-stripper widow and a “nice girl”) as he pursues his dream of owning his own club. yeah, he’s a jerk, but it’s a pretty fun movie. And it star Frank Sinatra.

School of Rock. Again. Well yes, a comedy with a heart. And it’s pretty entertaining and Jack Black is great.. And there are some nice soundtrack selections. But I’ve said all of this before.

Bleak House. The new one and I think it’s pretty great. Gillian Anderson does a good job (except for that I can’t stopped calling her Scully). I love Denis Lawson and Anna Martin in it, and I would say that they are the high points except for that everyone else does such a damned good job! Charles Dance as Talkinghorn, Burn Gorman as Mr. Guppy, Timothy West as Sir Dedlock… Just a great cast all around. The trouble is that I find the cinematography to be very obnoxious. The camera zipping around and hiding and filming through doorways. It’s all rather bothersome.

Dirty Dancing. I can’t believe that I actually saw this, after avoiding it for so many years. No, it’s nothing that I ever wanted to see… But it’s actually not bad.

Minority Report. Yes, again. I do like this one. Tom Cruise remains one of the great overrated movie stars (as I think that any movie with him would probably sell as many [if not more] tickets without him), but this is still a great “Social Sci-fi” movie.