We’re so amazed by the stellar reviews of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (if not for Manohla Dargis, Rex Reed and Wesley Morris the top critic score on Rotten Tomatoes would be 100%), that we wondered if it’s the best-received sixth installment of a series ever. And from what we can tell, until some late-come party crashers show up to ruin things, it appears to be nearly true.
Of course, it’s not like there was much competition from past franchises. By the sixth movie most film series are cheap, tired and nearly void of remaining followers. However, there have been a few worthwhile Part 6s, enough to show us that it’s sometimes acceptable for Hollywood to keep going with a film property (even without the excuse and benefit of a popular long-running book series). …Read more
Ever since the great humanistic film critic Manny Farber died last week at the ripe old age of 91, writer/director (and former film critic and Kael acolyte) Paul Schrader, who so eloquently has been making the tribute rounds to Farber, has been on my mind. I’ve always been a fan of Schrader’s writing – as much for his fearless risk taking as for his Travis Bickle triumphs. American Gigolo, his very-1980 follow-up to Scorsese’s Taxi Driver, in which Richard Gere’s rent boy to rich older women Julian Kaye falls for Lauren Hutton’s senator’s wife Michelle Stratton while simultaneously finding himself a suspect in the murder of a “rough trick,” is typical Schrader, forever probing overlapping lurid worlds with the attention of an obsessive pathologist. Even with mediocre acting, earnest dialogue sometimes bordering on the heavy-handed, and predictable hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold asides, American Gigolo is still a fine slice of celluloid cheese, containing camerawork both sleek and fluid and that sexy sing-along anthem (“Call Me”!) complete with Debbie Harry’s French coos. Incidentally, I’ve always been a fan of male prostitutes as well. So why is it that I’ve never been a fan of this flick?
I Watch Stuff offers a roll of the eyes towards the above Gucci advert directed by David Lynch: “This minute of models doing what must be the waifish equivalent of dancing (swaying gently with passing breezes) to the tune of ‘Heart of Glass,’ all I could think was, ‘Oh god, was there a time when David Lynch would dance to Blondie?’” But it’s not surprise to see Lynch indulging in pop music–he stole that shtick from Kenneth Anger twenty years ago, and has often wavered on the ironic/sincere line with it.
To me, the ad falls in with the recent trend of corporations paying brand-name directors to rehash chunks of their film work within the context of an advertisement. The Gucci ad plays like the last scene of Inland Empire, stripped of the feeling of catharsis provided by that film’s previous two hours and forty minutes, with Nina Simone swapped out for Blondie and with a lot more money to play with. In some ways, this feels like what Lynch has been working towards for years: it’s a chance for him to experiment with mood and visual atmosphere without having to worry about assigning meaning to anything.
Is Desperately Seeking Susan a great movie? No, not by any means. But: Madonna’s video for Into the Groove (from the Susan soundtrack and composed primarily of footage from the film) is probably the greatest made-for-MTV movie commercial of all time.
In condensing the film’s disparate pleasures into a loop of shots, which are then used as padding for new footage of Madonna writhing around in a white teddy, the advertisement contains everything good about the film, but with healthy extra helpings of celebrity and sex. It is, in fact, too good–the video makes the film itself entirely superfluous. Madonna’s star power was supposed to help sell Susan Seidelman’s movie; instead, Madonna used the raw materials of the film to reify her own star image, which she then sold back to the record-buying public.
I bring this up because a deal has been struck to adapt Susan as a stage musical. Seidelman doesn’t appear to be involved, but, as if someone is trying to rescue the source material from having been irretrievably re-contextualized by its second-billed star, all traces of Madonna’s stamp on Susan have been removed. The Desperately Seeking Susan brand is basically being salvaged as a vehicle for a jukebox musical featuring the songs of Blondie. Debbie Harry, who is writing one new song for the show, says this:
It’s a live show so it is going to be different to the film, probably more light-hearted. It’s such a thrill to be part of it. It’s about people making discoveries about themselves.
If Blondie want to be Abba, that’s fine. But why would Harry–who has always struck me as one of the few individualists in the pantheon of 80s celebrities–be so eager to repurpose another iconic blondie’s sloppy seconds?
We’ve had a bit of trouble getting this episode to go through the iTunes feed, so we hope this re-post will fix the problem. The original post, with episode description and embedded player, is here.
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