Many critics will no doubt rip apart Robert Pattinson’s performance as Salvador Dali in Little Ashes this weekend, but the truth is that it’s a surprisingly good portrayal of the artist. That is to say that given our expectations, combined with Pattinson’s own celebrity, added to the fact that anyone would look ridiculous sporting Dali’s signature mustache (even Dali), the Twilight actor does as well in the role as is possible. Is the performance Oscar-worthy? Certainly not, but it is deserving of some level of praise.
Pattinson’s Dali follows a long tradition of surprisingly good portrayals of iconic figures. Movie stars are constantly cast as famous persons they barely resemble, and often it’s difficult to shake off our identification with the player in order to accept him/her as the depicted individual. Some of these performances are better than others, and most have been honored by the Academy, but each actor and actress listed below either initially seemed like a wrong choice for the respective part or he/she was at least understood to be taking on a difficult task in attempting to portray such a familiar personality. …Read more
Apparently someone at Twentieth Century Fox is reading SpoutBlog lists for inspiration: a month after we suggested a contemporarily set adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels starring Will Ferrell, the studio has announced a contemporarily set adaptation of Gulliver’s Travels starring Jack Black (really, though, the project has apparently been in the works for some time). Perhaps we’ll soon hear about a Candide movie at Paramount?
Sylvester Stallone is continuing his career as a full-fledged filmmaker by writing, directing and co-starring in The Expendables, in which he and Jason Statham and Jet Li will play mercenaries on a mission to kill a South American dictator.
Thanks to the Museum of Modern Art’s recent exhibit “Dali: Painting and Film” (through 9/15/08), which features over 130 of the artist’s paintings and drawings, scenes and films brilliantly juxtaposed side by side, I feel I now understand Salvador Dali for the very first time. Though erotic Freudian imagery, sexed up amoebas and disembodied cocks, may be what draws one into the Surrealist’s paintings, it’s his use of lighting and perspective that keeps you coming back for more. For Dali never was a painter at heart, but a man possessed by a cinematographer’s eye. Within the limits of the flattened canvas Dali’s mind was able to create – see into the future – that which modern day CGI allows for the screen. In fact, both showman and visionary, this master of the bizarre does not even make sense outside of filmmaking! A piece of the puzzle is missing when his paintings are seen alone and static, not in conversation with Bunuel or Hitchcock (or even Cocteau). Viewing Dali’s artwork without a cinematic context is like trying to talk about (his friend and sometime collaborator) Warhol without mentioning The Factory.
So with this in mind let’s revisit Dali and Bunuel’s classic study in sexual frustration, the erotically surreal L’Age d’Or (offered in its entirety at the end of this post). …Read more
Call me crazy (again), but I really like Tarsem’s debut feature, The Cell. If I had any complaints, though, it would be that there wasn’t enough visual stimuli. I’m sure others would have preferred a better story instead, but I have a greater appreciation for those films that are primarily meant to be looked at, and not as much followed. Favorites include Terry Giliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Julie Taymor’s Titus and Zhang Yimou’s Hero, though I could probably go on and on. It’s an interesting affection coming from me, a guy occasionally inclined to criticize Hollywood’s spectacle-over-substance model of blockbustering. But I can’t help falling for a combination of beautiful cinematography and art direction. I shouldn’t, but I’ll even admit to enjoying What Dreams May Come– with my eyes wide open and my ears plugged shut, of course.
The problem, though, with filmmakers like Tarsem and the rest is that eventually their painterly visions may dry up or become repetitive or obvious, or they’ll simply fail to reach enough of an audience that they cease to acquire enough funding to adequately present their style believably. I’ve already grown bored with Taymor and Zhang (Gilliam hopefully still has some surprises), and I’m thinking it won’t take long for me to tire of Tarsem, too. As gorgeous as his sophomore effort, The Fall, looks, it also seems a bit cheap, as if it had only the budget of one of his music videos (he directed R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” and Deep Forest’s “Lullaby”). Yet perhaps it only feels like that to me now because I’m viewing the film as a short montage of shots. I’m willing to give any of these visionary filmmakers a chance until they disappoint me enough that I scream (figuratively, through criticism, that is — see any of my mentions of Taymor’s Across the Universearound the web).
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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