Doctor Zhivago-Hot Take

-


 Doctor Zhivago (1965 UK) Its #WTFWednesday and todays entry is this epic film centered around the Russian revolution of the turn of the 19th century. Omar Shariff and Julie Christie star as lovers caught up in the times. By all accounts this is a pretty stunning film. The production design was out of this world and so was the cinematography. It also won an Oscar for the soundtrack. Just the mention of it starts the internal music player in your head. It is that memorable. With all that I turned it off. So why is it in the WTF category? Full disclosure I have a personal history with this film. I was about 10 years old and my parents went to a revival screening of this film. I wanted to go. Even at 10 I loved film. But nooo I wasn't grown up enough for this film. I was so salty over that. Still am. When I turned 18, I rented it just to be a spiteful brat and say it was stupid and glad I didn't go. So I did that. Now that I am older and more mature I watched it again and put away the baggage. I still hated it. With Cinematography, Production Design and Music I was blown away. Wow!! It won well deserved Oscars in those categories. But here is where the film falls apart for me. Shariff has an affair with Christie cheating on his very lovely wife who birthed children with him. The affair comes out of nowhere and really left a bad taste. The wife was played by Geraldine Chaplin, Charlie Chaplin's daughter. What a toxic putz. I was yelling at the T.V. How is this romantic when Charlie Chaplin's daughter gets so hosed? What about her and the children? Find it if you must watch it on HBO and available to rent on most streaming. 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Bound- Noir Hot Take

-
Image
  Bound (1996 US) Todays second entry for #FemaleFilmmakerFriday is this Wachowski sisters neo-noir masterpiece. Jennifer Tilly and Gina Gershon concoct a scheme to steal money from Tilly's mob boyfriend. Tilly rocks as the femme fatale. It just felt like she was loving this role. Gershon plays the sap and she knocks it out if the park. It’s really hard to shoot noir style in color. The Wachowskis pulled it off with muted color production design and black to get the proper contrast and shadow. I'm not a big fan of the current trend of having bright colors and crushed blacks to get the contrast. Happy colors don't scream noir. It screams Teletubbies. Wikipedia says the budget was 6 million but I heard 3. Why is that important? Lower budgets are really going to cut down on so many things including locations. There was limited locations in this. Either way audiences liked it and it made money at the Box Office. It’s on Tubi and Pluto for free and rentable on other streaming pl
Read more

Shrek-Hot Take

-
Image
 Shrek (2001 US) Its #FemaleFimmakerFriday and today's entry is this now classic animated kids film directed by Vicky Jenson and Andrew Adamson. An Ogre sets upon rescuing the princess from a tower guarded by a dragon. If you are interested in going to see Dungeons and Dragons you will find there is a similarity to Shrek with D&D being just a bit more mature and live action. Jenson was not the first choice of director in charge of story. Kelly Asbury was first choice but departed to work on another film. Jenson and Adamson had their work cut out for them as a lot was going wrong including their star Chris Farley had passed away. Jenson was in charge of story and she was tasked with finding the right tone and story for the film. She did great and the film won an Oscar for Best Animated Feature. You can clearly see her influence on the film: for instance the princess does not really need rescuing. When I first saw that I was like, "wow! I didn't know they could do that?&
Read more

Brick-Noir Hot Take

-
Image
  Brick (2005) This Neo-noir stars Joseph Gordon Levitt and was written and directed by then first time feature filmmaker Rian Johnson (Star Wars, Knives Out) and had a whopping budget of 450k (I have also heard 800k). This film was basically a Chandler story... in high school and Levitt was Marlowe. If you think that sounds weird. Well it is kind of but Johnson and Levitt made it work. Getting traditionally noir shots is hard and audiences and fans know their stuff. What I loved about this gem is that Johnson adds to the vocabulary of noir or neo-noir. How? New ways to get high contrast, deep shadow and the incongruent lines of German Expressionism. Johnson did his absolute best to get those lovely noir shots and he did quite often and with a budget of 450k. That's really hard. Johnson is one of my favorite directors. He just keeps surprising me. Like many low budget films this was all about natural light and locations. worth a watch. Rentable on most streaming.
Read more