The Oscar Project
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This week we are getting back to a bit more solid list of films to choose from in picking your film for the challenge. The category this week is a Best Cinematography Winner. In order to help you with your selection, Wikipedia has a list of all the Best Cinematography winners (and nominees).
I feel it’s important to talk a bit about what cinematography is here before going much further. Many folks often think that the director of the film is the one who makes most of the choices about what goes into a shot, but that actually falls to the cinematographer, usually called the Director of Photography (DP). This individual sets the general look and feel of each scene including lighting, shot composition, and any coloring. Their role is intricately aligned with the director and you often fine directors working with the same DP on multiple films. For more information on what a cinematographer does, check out the article “Film 101: What Is Cinematography and What Does a Cinematographer Do?” from MasterClass.com. My Selection-Rebecca
I’ve been taking progressive steps back in film history over the last month or so of movies, but this is my last older movie I’m watching for the challenge for a while. Every movie I have planned through the middle of July is from 1997 or later.
Rebecca is one that I’ve never seen from Hitchcock’s catalogue, even with taking an amazing Hitchcock Film class in college. I’m excited to see this one, especially since it is in the middle part of his career, before films like Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho, and The Birds.
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I find it a little hard to believe that I’m sitting writing my 20th post for this series already. (Technically it’s my 18th since I think I missed two back last month.) When I tried to do this challenge a few years ago, I flamed out after only two weeks, and now I’ve gone ten times that duration.
As I mentioned in my post the other day, the category for this week was A Film From Your Favorite Time Period. This could obviously be any period in history, and you could pick as broad or narrow a time period as you want. My pick was Ancient Egypt for a few reasons. I’ve always been obsessed with that period in history as far back as I can remember. I’m not sure if it’s simply based on the amazing architecture they developed in the pyramids and enormous temples, but I know that had a lot to do with it. I also really like the visual art they created, and the entire idea of hieroglyphics as a form of writing. I even went as far as to try and learn some basic hieroglyphic symbols at one point when reading through everything my local library had on Ancient Egypt. Now, there are plenty of movies I could have picked from. There are any number of adaptations of the story of Cleopatra, several versions of The Ten Commandments, The Prince of Egypt, and too many mummy related films to list. But I wanted to go in a direction I hadn’t explored before, and came across the 1954 CinemaScope epic The Egyptian. It looked interesting and I’d never really heard of it before, so I decided to give it a shot.
Sinuhe soon befriends a man named Horemheb (Victor Mature) and goes out lion hunting with him in the wilderness. While chasing a lion, they come across the newly crowned Pharaoh Akhnaton (Michael Wilding) and save him from being killed by a lion. As reward for this act, Sinuhe is made the court physician and Horemheb is given a post in the royal guard. Sinuhe enjoys the work in the court, but is pulled away from helping the poor, the real reason he became a physician. He also falls in love with a courtesan named Nefer (Bella Darvi) and squanders his family’s wealth on gifts for her. When he parents die, he is forced to bury them in unmarked graves, having sold off their tomb in the name of love.
At this time, Sinuhe also runs into a former love interest from the city named Merit (Jean Simmons) who warns him that Akhnaton has condemned him to death, blaming Sinuhe for the death of one of his daughters. Sinuhe is forced to flee with his servant Kaptah (Peter Ustinov). He spends years outside of Egypt before running into a group of Hittites that plan to attack Egypt using their superior iron weaponry. In exchange for treating one of their officers, he obtains an iron sword which he brings back to Egypt to show Horemheb, now captain of the royal guard.
Sinuhe also reunites with Merit and discovers that she has a son Thoth (Tommy Rettig). After treating the boy for some minor injuries, it is revealed that Sinuhe is the father and the boy dreams of one day becoming a physician as well.
It is soon revealed that Horemheb and several priests are attempting to remove Akhnaton from power and ask that Sinuhe “accidentally” kill the ruler while trying to treat him. Sinuhe initially refuses, but eventually acquiesces, agreeing to poison Akhnaton, but also planning to poison Horemheb and take his own place as pharaoh after finding out that he was secretly the son of the previous pharaoh. However, upon listening to Akhnaton speak as he dies, Sinuhe realizes that Horemheb should be the one to rule and reveals his plan before Horemheb can drink from the poisoned cup. Horemheb takes the throne and marries the princess. In the end, the story returns to where is started as Sinuhe finishes writing his story in exile on the shores of the Red Sea in hopes that Thoth or his descendants will someday find it.
At first glance, some of the pieces of this film might seem intriguing. We have stories of lion hunts, a war between the Hittites and Egyptians, and political intrigue. Unfortunately, most of the focus of the film seems to have been on crating lavish sets to fill with hundreds of extras, all decked out in what were thought to be period accurate costumes. That left little time or money for portraying the battles described in conversations or the ability to create any substantial action in the film. Maybe I’m just biased by how I would imagine a film like this would be made today, but there was so much more potential here than what was realized.
That said, the sets and costumes are by far the best part about this film. Being made in the 1950s, they obviously didn’t have the ability to shoot on location in Egypt, and many of the scenes depicting the Egyptian city, you can usually tell where the physical set ends and the painted backdrop begins. But that doesn’t take away from the sheer scale of what is being shown on the screen. Top that off with the exquisite costumes, especially for characters like the pharaoh and other royalty and the film is truly a visual spectacle.
But visual sizzle doesn’t make a film. Part of what similar films of the era so popular (The Ten Commandments, The Robe, Ben-Hur) was the story. Yes, there were visual spectacles as well, but there was more substance to the stories to support that. This is something that holds true as much today as it did 70 years ago, perhaps even more so today when there are so many more visual flashes that can be added to films, and done so more and more cheaply with every passing day. The biggest offense of this in The Egyptian comes during the lion hunt early in the film. Sinuhe and Horemheb are driving a chariot while chasing the lion and the film uses the classic rear projection technique to get the moving. It may have looked amazing at the time, but to today’s audiences, it looks corny and old. My other issue with this film’s story is that it was hard to follow. Part of that may be due to the missing audio on the version I watched. I wasn’t able to find a copy on physical media in any libraries near me, so I resorted to a YouTube copy. Unfortunately, this file was missing several minutes of audio in various places throughout the film, often in key moments of dialogue. This meant I had to go back and read plot summaries to fully understand what was going on in these moments. Even with that, there were elements of the plot that felt tacked on or unnecessary, almost like the filmmakers created the sets and costumes first, and then had to cobble together a story to fit all the impressive sets. In the end, The Egyptian is a forgettable 1950s film. There are better options made during this period, and better options set during a similar period. My favorite film set in Egypt still remains The Prince of Egypt and I might just have to go back and watch that again as a palette cleanser after this film. If you’re a die hard fan of Egyptian history and haven’t seen this film, you might want to carve out two hours for it, but otherwise I would recommend avoiding it.
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Happy Mother’s Day to everyone. To all the mothers out there, thank you for all that you do for your children. We might not always tell you, but we appreciate your love and support. If you’re not a mother yourself, reach out to your own mom or someone you know who is a mother and make their day a little brighter.
Now, on to our movie pick of the week. This week, we are looking at movies that are Set During Your Favorite Time Period. Now, this is obviously going to be different for everyone since each person will have a different time period they like. Fortunately, the world of the Internet, specifically Wikipedia has put together a list of films set during various periods of history. This “List of historical films set in Near Eastern and Western civilization” is broken down by age (Stone, Bronze, Iron) and then by centuries for more recent time periods so you can easily find something that suits your fancy. And if you don’t know what your favorite time period is yet, just look through the list and see what catches your eye. My Selection-The Egyptian
After spending some time in the distant future with Serenity a few weeks back, it’s time to jump way back to the time of Ancient Egypt. I have always been fascinated by Ancient Egypt, starting with my early obsession with the David Macaulay book Pyramid. I have spent many hours in the 932 section of the library and the fact that I know that number should tell you something of how much I love that period of history.
I’m also interested in going back to a period of movie history that had a much different kind of film. The trailer for this below promotes the fact that it is presented in Cinemascope, so watching it at home won’t have quite the effect, but the grandeur of the film will still be there.
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I mentioned in my four-month summary post <post link> the other day, that I had something in the works focused on the diversity of movies I have been watching this year, and today I want to share that with you.
Now, let me start off by telling you what this post ISN’T about. This is not a post that is intended to say that I’m better than you because I watch a different kind of movie. I’m not trying to make anyone feel “less than” because of what I’m going to cover. It should not be taken as a grand manifesto on the status of diversity in the film industry at any time past, present, or future. This post is mainly intended as a personal reflection on my own viewing habits and the new fertile ground I have unearthed through my movie viewing this year.
So where did this come from?
For a long time, I have considered myself a movie fan and if you look at the post history on this page, you can see I’ve been running this site for over five years. My original intent was to watch every Oscar nominee in history, and chronicle my journey along the way. Through the intervening years, I’ve gone on several tangents, from writing weekly “Nominee Watch” posts (which have morphed into the Weekly Previews of today), to starting a podcast, making YouTube videos, and most recently, taking on some great writers to help write reviews. Around the same time that I started this site, I joined two movie tracking websites to help me remember the movies I watch. The first was Trakt and there are a few things I like about this site. Not only does it allow me to track the movies I watch, but I can also log individual episodes of most TV shows as well. I can use that to see if I’m focusing more on movies or TV at any given time. Trakt also allows me to rate films on a 1-10 scale like I do for reviews on the site. The second site I joined in 2018 was Letterboxd. This site is much more focused on films (though it does include limited series) and allows more involved stats about my viewing. This is where the idea for this post came from. Looking back, I doubt that I’ve marked every film I’ve ever seen as watched on Letterboxd, but I’ve gone back and flagged as many as possible that I know I’ve watched. When I bumped up to a Pro membership on Letterboxd in 2021, I got access to some incredible stats about the movies I’ve watched and that’s what I want to share here. Fair warning, there will be quite a bit of numbers and some basic percentage math through the rest of the post. You’ve been warned. Letterboxd includes tons of statistics about the movies you’ve watched, and you can look at them for all time, or year by year. I’m going to focus in on two areas of the Letterboxd stats: Most Watched Directors and Most Watched Stars. Most Watched Directors
Let’s start with Most Watched Directors. There have been plenty of words written about the lack of female directors and non-white directors in the nominations for things like the Academy Awards in recent years, and it’s true. According to Wikipedia, 467 nominations have been handed out to 74 directors (or directing teams) for the Academy Award for Best Director. That means that in 95 years there have been:
I wish I could say I was much better than this in my own viewing habits, but according to my Letterboxd data, I’m even worse. The top 20 directors I’ve watched the most all fall into the white men category. In fact, the majority are American (65%) with the rest coming from the UK (25%), Canada (5%), and New Zealand (5%).
Now, I don’t have an exact comparison for this year because only one director appears on my most watched list, but my highest rated directors of the year tell a somewhat different story so far. While I’m not to the point I’d like to be, I do have three female directors in my top 20 highest rated, along with six directors of color. I also have a wider range of voices from around the world including Germany, South Korea, Taiwan, Canada, India, Italy, and Japan. Granted, Americans still make up the majority of the list, but the overall range this year is much wider than my overall history. Most Watched Stars
Moving on to the actors in movies, I decided to look at the top 20 most watched for my overall history and compare it to 2023. These aren’t prefect comparisons because there are 20 actors on my all-time list, and only 15 on my top most watched for this year so far, but the story is already telling.
Among my all-time most watched actors, the ones who appear at the top are there for a few reasons. Tom Hanks is at the top because, well, he’s Tom Hanks. I didn’t realize I’d watched so many of his films, but I guess I have. Names like Samuel L. Jackson, Scarlett Johansson, and Chris Evans land on the list because they’ve been in so many Marvel films. Similarly, Anthony Daniels, James Earl Jones, and Warwick Davis show up for their many Star Wars roles and Harrison Ford gets a bonus for being in Star Wars and Indiana Jones. Lastly, John Ratzenberger and Bonnie Hunt both land near the top of the list because they have cameos in so many Pixar movies. So given the fact that so many of these actors come from a few franchises, it’s actually interesting that 20% of the list is female and 25% actors of color. That said, it was still 80% American with the rest coming from Australia, Britain, and Nigeria (by way of Hugo Weaving who I found out was actually born in Nigeria, but to British parents).
Like the directors, my watching habits have gotten a bit more diverse in 2023, but not anywhere close to being an even spread. My female actors have increased to 33%, but that’s only one more (5) than overall (4). In terms of actors of color, the pendulum actually swung in favor of non-white actors. The fact that I struggled to categorize some of the actors this time around also speaks to the fact that it is more diverse. Finally, just like directors, the overall spread of nationalities has almost doubled to include India, Spain, Mexico, Canada, Japan, and Germany. However, just like with directors, American actors still hold the majority (53%).
What does all this mean?
I wrote at the end of my 4 month recap post that I’ve expanded my selection of films, not just because of the 52 week challenge I’m doing this year, but also because of two fantastic Discord groups I’m a part of. I actually credit those groups of the movie roulette challenges with most of the diversity in my viewing this year.
I know a lot of casual movie fans shy away from films from outside the US or UK, but there truly is an incredibly diverse world of cinema out there if you just give things a chance. My favorite movie of the year so far is Parasite, a foreign film which ended up winning Best Picture (among other awards) at the Oscars a few years ago. I’ve watched foreign films like 8 ½, and Nosferatu for my challenge, but from my roulette groups I’ve received recommendations for Harakiri from Japan, The Lunchbox and A Death in the Gunj from India, and Memoirs of a Sinner from Poland. However, one thing seems to never change. Despite the fact that Irrfan Khan is one of my two most watched actors in 2023 (with three films so far), my other top actor is Tom Hanks (also with three films). Apparently, I just REALLY like Tom Hanks films and can’t get enough of him, no matter what year it is.
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I’ve decided to do another two month recap of the year so far now that we’re about 1/3 of the way through the challenge. As a reminder, I have a full list of movies I plan on watching on Letterboxd. If you’re on Letterboxd, please give that list a like or comment to show your appreciation. If you’re not already on Letterboxd, what are you waiting for?
As I did with my two month post at the beginning of March, I’m going to review what I’ve thought of the movies I’ve watched so far this year. I already went into quite a bit of detail in the previous post for the first nine films, so my focus will be on the second batch of nine I’ve watched since then, but here is the full list so far:
My top film I’ve watched (Parasite) this year remains from my last post and I doubt very much it will be knocked off the top of the list this year. The next two films I watched after that in early March (Akeelah and the Bee and Network) were probably the closest I came to moving Parasite off the top of the list. They are great movies and while Network was appropriately lauded in its time, I feel like Akeelah and the Bee has been a bit overlooked and deserves a second shot at life. Keke Palmer’s role in that movie is near the top of the list of individual performances in the movies I’ve watched for the challenge.
On the other end of the spectrum were a few movies that I rated very poorly, for a variety of reasons. My post on The Birth of a Nation is probably the longest of the year so far, and rightly so because it’s the longest film and the one with the most baggage to discuss. I also gave poor ratings to the following week’s film The Avengers, and still want to go back and watch the television series. Unlike Firefly, The Avengers ran for several seasons, so I haven’t had time to check it out, but I continue to hear much better things about the show than the movie. The other flop on the list, and likely the lowest rated film of the year for me was Plan 9 From Outer Space. What can I say? I didn’t expect much from the movie once called “the worst movie ever made” and my expectations were correct.
One of the more recent films I watched was Nosferatu, from 1922, and despite its age, the film holds up over 100 years after its release. I was recently doing some cleanup of files on my computer and came across a list of Must See Movies that included both Nosferatu and The Birth of a Nation as must see films across the whole of film history. Ironically, the latest film on the list is Parasite, so I’ve got the bookends of that list done and would just need to fill in the rest in the middle. I am keeping this list handy as a potential option for a challenge to do next year. The full list goes well past a year so in order to get it into a year, I would have to do multiple movies a week, but we’ll see how that goes.
Continuing the generally high ratings I gave films in these two months, Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom came in strong as I expected. The performances in this film are absolutely incredible, and after watching it, I got angry all over again that Chadwick Boseman didn’t win the Oscar for his performance (this was the 2021 Oscars ceremony where they left Best Actor to last, expecting him to receive the award and it went to Anthony Hopkins who was asleep at home in Scotland). I understand it’s based on a play and may not be ideal for a screen version, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and would love to see a stage production as well.
In the last two weeks, I took in two science fiction films, one being a revisit of the animated surrealist fantasy by René Laloux called Fantastic Planet. I hadn’t fully appreciated the film when I first watched it earlier this year (check my post for the full explanation) but am starting to come around to the impact it had. Following that, I just watched Serenity this week after cramming the entire Firefly series over the last few weeks. I’m sure I would have enjoyed them more if I had seen them when they were originally released, but I enjoyed them even if I won’t be as fanatical about them as Sheldon Cooper was on The Big Bang Theory.
As I wrote two months ago, I continue to be happy with the choices I’ve made for my movies this year. I’ve seen a wide variety of films and when combined with the multiple movie roulette groups I’m participating in, I have seen more movies this year than ever before and from a much more diverse group of directors, actors, and other creators. I am currently working on a post separate from this challenge to discuss that exact idea, so look for that in the coming week.
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It’s already almost the middle of May and today I’m providing my thoughts on the film Trading Places to fulfill my pick for the Rich vs. Poor category. If you still need help picking a film for this week, please check out my post from earlier this week.
As I noted the other day, this is one of those films I’ve seen the back half of at least a dozen times on television. It’s the type that seems to be on TBS or TNT late at night every few months, obviously edited for TV given the amount of language and nudity in the film. That said, as many times as I’ve seen bits and pieces and as well as I know some of the famous scenes, I didn’t remember most of the first half of the film so I still consider it a new watch for me. If you don’t know the story, Trading Places focuses on the billionaire Duke brothers Mortimer (Don Ameche) and Randolph (Ralph Bellamy) as they conduct a social experiment at the expense of their business manager Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd) and local vagabond Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy). After an incident where Winthorpe accuses Valentine of trying to steal the company payroll, the Randolph Duke bets Mortimer that they can turn Valentine straight and turn Winthorpe into a criminal by swapping their positions in life.
Winthorpe’s descent on the other hand is not so smooth. He is falsely accused of theft at his upscale club, just as he falsely accused Valentine just days prior. As a result, he is kicked out of the club and sent to jail, only to have the police find drugs on his person leading to additional charges. As a result, his fiancé breaks up with him and he ends up meeting Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis), a kind-hearted prostitute getting out of jail at the same time as him. She takes pity on him and offers to let him stay at her apartment while he tries to get his life back on track.
The final act of the film kicks off when Valentine overhears the Dukes discussing their bet in the bathroom of the Christmas party. Mortimer pays of Randolph (with their standard bet of $1) and they discuss how to revert things back to their original state, with Winthorpe running the company and Valentine back in the ghetto. The pair agree they don’t want Winthorpe back because of just how far he has fallen, but also agree that they don’t want a black man like Valentine running their company. They show their racism here by using the n-word which comes as a bit of a shock to Valentine because of how jovial they had been with him throughout the rest of the film. Valentine then finds Winthorpe back at Opheila’s apartment and tells him about the Dukes’ bet. Together with Opheilia and Winthorpe/Valentine’s butler Coleman (Denholm Elliott), they hatch a plan to get back at the Duke brothers by feeding them fake information about the expectations for the commodities markets in the new year. They plan to let the Dukes drive up the price of frozen concentrated orange juice futures in early trading before jumping in themselves to drive the price back down through short sales, making a boat load of money for themselves, and leaving the Dukes in the lurch.
Now, about the film itself, I was a bit surprised how well it holds up for the most part. Are there some problems with it? Of course. But the whole conceit of the movie is to show what absolutely garbage the Duke brothers are. The opening of the film is a fantastic look at the varying levels of prosperity in the city of Philadelphia where the film takes place. We see working class folks from butchers and fish sellers prepping their wares for the day to professionals commuting on the freeways and subways to office buildings. This eventually leads to a sequence of Coleman prepping Winthorpe’s breakfast on a silver platter intercut with images of homeless people, hammering home the disparity between the wealthy and the poor.
However, we soon learn that there is an entirely different level of wealth, and that comes in the form of the Dukes who exit their lavish country mansion, complete with multiple maids and servants (compared with Winthorpe’s single butler). The Dukes don’t even acknowledge their staff, a direct comparison to Winthorpe in the previous scene, who accepts the attention of Coleman and others employed by the Duke company, but also greets everyone in the office lobby who says “good morning” to him. Even in these first scenes, the film is establishing that Winthorpe might be pretentious and have an overly large opinion of himself, but at his core, he’s still a good person. On the flip side, The Duke brothers are clearly portrayed as the worst side of wealth who can’t even spare a kind word to anyone they deem below their own lofty status (which is pretty much everyone).
I lay this out to point out that just when we think the Dukes can’t get any lower, we see an even darker side of them near the end of the film. But let’s back up a bit. First, we see them ignore their staff in the opening. Then, they make their bet, ruining the life of their best employee (and his fiancé) over a dollar wager, and raising Valentine to prosperity. In the process, Valentine makes them more money than they would have alone in the famous pork belly scene. But the kicker comes when Valentine learns of their bet at the Christmas party. Mortimer Duke pays off his brother and they discuss swapping Valentine and Winthorpe back to their original positions. However, Winthorpe is now damaged goods. He’s become a criminal and can no longer be seen as the head of their prestigious company. Valentine on the other hand is also unworthy to lead the company in their eyes for the sole reason that he is Black. They are prepared to toss aside both men and move on to someone else with no thought given to how the entire experience will affect them long term.
Of course, this being the movies, the good guys do win in the end and the wealthy villains get their comeuppance. I mentioned some problems with the film and most of it stems from the racism inherent in the images. In the opening montage I mentioned above, the majority of the people in the scenes of wealth are white while many of those in the scenes depicting poverty are Black. Unfortunately, this probably isn’t a surprise given the film was made in the early 1980s. If it was remade today, I doubt we would see the same racial divides in the background shots establishing the mise-en-scene, or even in the primary roles. In fact, I would be interested to see a re-make of this film with all the roles tossed in a blender and rearranged. It would be a curious exercise in how far we have come since the original 40 years ago, but also how far we still have to go.
The last thing I have to mention because it made me laugh out loud is the famous fourth wall break from Eddie Murphy. It comes in the scene where the Dukes are explaining what commodities are to Valentine and after Randolph explains that pork bellies are “used to make bacon, which you might find in a bacon and lettuce and tomato sandwich” Valentine looks directly at the camera with a look that can only say “can you believe these guys?” It so quick that you might miss it, but sums up what both Valentine and the audience are feeling about the Dukes at that moment. It’s also a genius way to fully get the audience on Valentine’s side for the rest of the movie and almost feels like it’s Murphy’s way of saying to a knowing audience, “can you believe I even have to be in this movie?” After watching this film from start to finish, I finally have a much better appreciation for it as a whole. The ability to understand the climactic scene with the help of the folks at NPR’s Planet Money makes the ending even more enjoyable. The film was perfectly cast from top to bottom and it feels a part of the city of Philadelphia in a similar way to Rocky several years before. (We even get an image of a Rocky statue in the opening montage) If you’ve never seen Trading Places, or if it’s been a while since you’ve seen the whole thing, I urge you to check it out and reconnect with this classic film.
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It’s that time again to pick your movie for the week and this week we are looking at films in the Rich vs. Poor genre. I originally anticipated this being a broader category to pick from, but as I looked at some lists, I saw the same movies coming up over and over, leading me to realize there are only a few general types to include. Pretty much all I’ve seen in this category are things that go completely over the top into the comedy realm, purposely shining an extremely bright light on the disparity between rich and poor, or dramas that take a more realistic/serious view of things. In the drama category, period dramas set in the 1700s and 1800s seem to dominate the picture.
As always, I found a list to help you pick something for this week and it comes from BestSimilar.com. If you need a hand picking a film, head over to that list and see what’s there that piques your interest. My Selection-Trading Places
This is one of those films I’ve seen bits and pieces of many times over the years but I don’t remember ever sitting down and watching it beginning to end. It’s also one I often stumble across on television which loses something in an edited for TV version of the film. I’m excited to check this one out for a full watch and I know in advance that it probably won’t hold up as something that would be made today.
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If there is one thing I love about movies, it’s that they can take us to any time period and anywhere in the world. They can transport us to ancient Egypt, drop us on the front lines of WWII, or look at current events all for just the price of a movie ticket (and perhaps a bucket of popcorn). And movies don’t have to rely on existing material, they can look into the future and imagine what things will be like tens, hundreds, or even thousands of years in the future.
That brings us to our category for this week, a movie Set in the Distant Future. As always, I have a link to guide you from ScreenRant, listing “10 Sci-Fi Movies Set In The Far, Far Distant Future.” There is a variety on this list, including a few movies from the 1960s, more recent flicks like Dune, and even the animated Titan A.E. I mentioned last week that I have been working on watching a certain show in preparation for this week’s movie and that show is the short-lived FOX series Firefly. My Selection-Serenity
Firefly was one show that I’ve always wanted to watch. It was never even on my radar when it first aired, but something that piqued my interest when I saw it on Netflix some years ago. It’s been referred to throughout a number of other series, most notably on The Big Bang Theory with Sheldon Cooper’s long running hatred of Fox owner Rupert Murdoch over the Firefly’s cancelation. So not only am I watching a movie for this week, but have been hard at work watching the total 11+ hour run time of the series (in the intended order, not the order it was originally aired).
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I can’t believe we are about 1/3 of the way through this challenge already. I don’t know about you, but I am so glad I have been given the push to watch some of the films on my list this year, especially the ones I’ve been putting off for a while.
This week we are watching an Animated Film and this was the first time in the challenge that I watched something I had already seen. Granted, I only watched this film for the first time back in January, but I had to watch it a second time in preparation for writing this post to refresh my memory on it. The film in question is the 1973 surrealist science fiction film, Fantastic Planet. The original French title is La planète sauvage which more accurately translates to The Wild Planet, which I actually prefer. I originally watched this on a recommendation from someone in a movie roulette group I’m in on Discord. Each week we get a category from the organizer along with a randomized member to give a recommendation to in that category. We then also recommend a movie to someone else, watch our recommended film, and provide a rating. The idea is to watch films you’ve never seen and expand your horizons in film watching. I’m in two of these groups and several of the films I’ve watched from these recommendations have been fantastic. Unfortunately, there are some duds as well, but that’s all part of the fun.
The other piece of bonus information I got in viewing the film on physical media was an insert in the package that had the text of an essay about the film written by Michael Brooke. The essay “Fantastic Planet: Gambous Amalga” provided additional insight into the creation of the film and is still available to read on the Criterion website. When I first watched the film, I wrote that the simple animation helped me focus on the story, but what I hadn’t realized at the time was the actual method of animation used. As Brooke notes in his essay:
“the film’s real strengths lie in Topor’s bizarre designs and the way that character designer Josef Kábrt, background designer Josef Váňa, and their animators brought them uncannily to life by the simple but very effective method of combining paper cutouts and in-camera dissolves, the better to preserve Topor’s characteristic crosshatched drawing style while keeping the budget as low as possible.”
Understanding that the images we see on the screen are actually little pieces of paper drawings that have been cut out and then manipulated to give the illusion of motion only increases my appreciation of the technical abilities put into the film. At the same time, it also frustrates me that much more that such a cool method of animation was used when the story could have been even stronger.
The last thing I have to mention might seem a little prudish, but it annoyed me even more in my second viewing than it did the first. Throughout the film, the characters, specifically the females, show more skin than we would ever seen in a traditional American animated film. The alien Draags wear outfits that seem like they intentionally highlight the breasts and nipples of the females, and the Om (human) females mostly wear loose garments that expose their breasts in many scenes. After watching the Laloux’s short films noted above, I can tell that this is not unique to Fantastic Planet, but something we see throughout his work.
Now, I don’t have a problem with seeing those things on screen, and there are plenty of films out there with female (and male) private parts on full view, but this film almost seemed to include them just for the shock value of including them. Brooke writes in the aforementioned essay that “film is perfectly suitable for children, who’ll most likely be equally unfazed by that and the Oms’ casual nudity: it’s parents who’ll be squirming uneasily in their seats,” but I would politely disagree. It’s actually not the Om nudity that gets me as that’s more natural. It’s the Draag nudity and the fact that we often get closeups of the young Draag Tiwa holding her Om Terr in her hand, with a very large and prominent nipple in the background. I don’t have a problem with it, but I also don’t think it is necessary and it certainly doesn’t do anything to advance the story. For me, especially watching the film a second time and knowing it was there, it was incredibly distracting.
In the end, I’m glad I rewatched this film and gave it another shot. I would increase my overall rating for the film from the 6 I gave it in January to a 7. After watching some of Laloux’s other work and reading a bit more about him and the film, I am interested to see some of his other work. If you’re looking for a surrealist escape from reality, especially one that might be enhanced by watching in a chemically altered state, this is one to consider.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links and we receive a commission if you visit a link and buy something on our recommendation. Purchasing via an affiliate link doesn’t cost you any extra and the opinions expressed in this post are the author's own. For more details see our disclosure policy and privacy policy. We’re coming to the end of April already and I’m planning out my next two-month review of the challenge so far this year. I will probably post that next week some time as I try to catch up on a certain TV series which will become clear next week. This week, we are looking at an Animated Film. These are so easy to find, and even more so with the advent of streaming services which tend to gobble these movies up like candy. Every time I look on Netflix, it seems like there is another new animated movie there with lots of bright colors, talking animals, and fantastic worlds. If you do need help finding an animated movie, look no further than Wikipedia’s list of Animated Feature Films. My Selection-Fantastic PlanetI’m cheating a bit on this one as I watched it earlier in the year. This was recommended to me by someone in a movie roulette on Discord and I wasn’t too terribly in love with it at first, but I’m actually going to re-watch it this week and give it another try. It’s a French animated film from the 1970s that I had never heard of until that recommendation, and definitely not your garden variety Disney, Illumination, or Dreamworks animated feature. |
AuthorI'm just a film buff who wants to watch great movies. Where else to find the best, than the list of those nominated by the Academy each year? Archives
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