Thurday, July 24, 2008
Okay, I've seen this one before, but not in a few years, so I'm counting it for my K2K. It brings me back to a point I made before... this movie is not a comedy, per se, yet the humor in it amuses me way more than many actual comedies of the era. Was Hitchcock ahead of his time? His style and humor didn't seem to change too drastically over his career, the humor in his later pictures isn't much different, and it tends to hold up. What was it about his movies that tickles my funny bone more than actual comedies of the time?
Showing posts with label Alfred Hitchcock. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alfred Hitchcock. Show all posts
Friday, July 25, 2008
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
Rebecca
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Yesterday I did a massive overhaul of my Netflix queue. I threw out a lot of the old, stagnant ones that had been sitting on my queue for fucking ever, their chances of of being bumped to the top ever-diminishing and basically just taking up space. I did add some newer releases (Untraceable looks awful, but I can't help myself), and a few random things (horror movies) that looked cool. But mostly what I did was browse the internet scour lists of great movies and (especially) directors and load up my queue with some of the most interesting suggestions. Maybe this will kick my K2K up another notch. I mean, I'm sure I'll fall into the same traps of fixating on a particular director or actor or genre instead of trying to be more broad (hell, I plan on watching Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress tonight), but I still think this is a step forward.
I have also made a change in my Netflix strategy. Whereas I once kept a (sorta kinda somewhat relatively) smaller queue, I am now overloading that bitch until it bursts. Before, my thought was that I didn't want to overload it because I would never get to all the movies and maybe it would start to feel like a burden. But you know what? I plan on having Netflix for a long time, and any way who cares if I don't see them all? What used to happen is that I would look around my queue and not be in the mood for anything on it, so I'd just end up finding something to add. Now, with my supersized queue, I should always be able to find something I'm in the mood for.
So what I'm saying is that I'm ushering in a new era of my K2K. Okay, well, actually I've done alright so far and this probably won't effect my viewing habits much, but it's at least the dawn of a new K2K day. And how did I celebrate this momentous occasion? By continuing that Alfred Hitchcock catch-up I kinda half-assed last month, and probably won't follow up on right away. Sure, not a good sign of reinvigoration, but this bastard had been on my Tivo for fucking ever and needed to get watched.
This is a good one, not a favorite, but definitely upper-shelf Hitchcock. It's more subdued than many of his other films, a psychological thriller to a dgree, but more of a drama with a lot of tension boiling under the surface. Maybe one of his best shot, at least from a "pretty pictures" perspective.
It seems to be well regarded, yet conversely not as famous or as often mentioned as many other Hitchcock classics. This had struck me as kinda weird, as it stars Laurence Olivier, is Hitchcock's first Hollywood film, and is I believe the only one of his movies to win Best Picture. Now that I've seen it, though, I have an idea why. There aren't any classic Hitchcock set-pieces/sequences. Nothing like the Psycho shower scene, or the Mount Rushmore sequence in North By Northwest, or running up the stairs in Vertigo, or anything like that. Rebecca is an excellent movie, but there's nothing iconic about any of it. And when you're the director of some of the most iconic scenes in film history, I can see why this one wouldn't end up in the collective conscience so much.
I'm glad I finally got around to watching it. I liked the story and the acting, but mostly I responded to the look of the film, how Hitchcock films the eerie old castle that most of the story takes place in, and the way that an ineffable tension keeps building under the surface of day-to-day life.
Yesterday I did a massive overhaul of my Netflix queue. I threw out a lot of the old, stagnant ones that had been sitting on my queue for fucking ever, their chances of of being bumped to the top ever-diminishing and basically just taking up space. I did add some newer releases (Untraceable looks awful, but I can't help myself), and a few random things (horror movies) that looked cool. But mostly what I did was browse the internet scour lists of great movies and (especially) directors and load up my queue with some of the most interesting suggestions. Maybe this will kick my K2K up another notch. I mean, I'm sure I'll fall into the same traps of fixating on a particular director or actor or genre instead of trying to be more broad (hell, I plan on watching Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress tonight), but I still think this is a step forward.
I have also made a change in my Netflix strategy. Whereas I once kept a (sorta kinda somewhat relatively) smaller queue, I am now overloading that bitch until it bursts. Before, my thought was that I didn't want to overload it because I would never get to all the movies and maybe it would start to feel like a burden. But you know what? I plan on having Netflix for a long time, and any way who cares if I don't see them all? What used to happen is that I would look around my queue and not be in the mood for anything on it, so I'd just end up finding something to add. Now, with my supersized queue, I should always be able to find something I'm in the mood for.
So what I'm saying is that I'm ushering in a new era of my K2K. Okay, well, actually I've done alright so far and this probably won't effect my viewing habits much, but it's at least the dawn of a new K2K day. And how did I celebrate this momentous occasion? By continuing that Alfred Hitchcock catch-up I kinda half-assed last month, and probably won't follow up on right away. Sure, not a good sign of reinvigoration, but this bastard had been on my Tivo for fucking ever and needed to get watched.
This is a good one, not a favorite, but definitely upper-shelf Hitchcock. It's more subdued than many of his other films, a psychological thriller to a dgree, but more of a drama with a lot of tension boiling under the surface. Maybe one of his best shot, at least from a "pretty pictures" perspective.
It seems to be well regarded, yet conversely not as famous or as often mentioned as many other Hitchcock classics. This had struck me as kinda weird, as it stars Laurence Olivier, is Hitchcock's first Hollywood film, and is I believe the only one of his movies to win Best Picture. Now that I've seen it, though, I have an idea why. There aren't any classic Hitchcock set-pieces/sequences. Nothing like the Psycho shower scene, or the Mount Rushmore sequence in North By Northwest, or running up the stairs in Vertigo, or anything like that. Rebecca is an excellent movie, but there's nothing iconic about any of it. And when you're the director of some of the most iconic scenes in film history, I can see why this one wouldn't end up in the collective conscience so much.
I'm glad I finally got around to watching it. I liked the story and the acting, but mostly I responded to the look of the film, how Hitchcock films the eerie old castle that most of the story takes place in, and the way that an ineffable tension keeps building under the surface of day-to-day life.
Thursday, April 17, 2008
The Birds
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
This is a little embarassing to admit, but I had never seen all of Alfred Hitchock's The Birds until last night. I know, right? WTF? It's been on my secret list-of-shame for many years now, right up there with It's a Wonderful Life. I try to change the subject when people bring these movies up. In fact, forget I said anything. Post over.
Just kidding. Actually, having now finally seen The Birds, I no longer feel embarassed about not having seen it sooner. Why? Because it turns out it's one of the very few Hitchcock movies that I didn't like.
That's right.
I cannot for the life of me understand why this is one his his best known films. The first half of the movie has to be the most boring thing Hitchcock ever put to film. It's a series of conversations between boring, unlikable, unfunny characters, stirring up some very mild drama that doesn't even really pay off later in the film. I mean, great characters aren't a must for a good thriller/horror movie, but Hitchcock almost always made them at least a little interesting.
Then, once the birds finally start attacking, I guess the movie gets more interesting, but I just found it ineffective and maybe a little silly. Birds aren't scary. And let me just get this out of the way... animals-gone-crazy movies are almost never actually scary. For one to be enjoyable, it usually has to be some violent, silly horror movie that's more fun than anything else. It should be like Slugs. It's a terrible, unscary movie, but there's a part where a naked teenage couple falls into a pile of slugs and are eaten alive. Then later, some guy accidentally eats a slug, and little tiny slugs grow in his body until eventually his face explodes and tiny slugs shoot out while he's in the middle of eating at a restaurant. That's what I go to the movies to see.
The Birds takes a frankly unscary premise and treats it as dark and serious as possible. Hitchcock movies aren't really ever realistic or anything, but man does he try to make a stupid idea seem terrifying. It even has a dark, unsettling, ambiguous ending. In a movie about stupid seagulls getting mad and pecking everybody. It doesn't help that some (a lot) of the special effects don't hold up today, and a lot of it looks corny.
There are probably isolated moments and shots that I admired, but when this movie wasn't boring me silly, it was making my eyes sore from how often I was rolling them. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood, I dunno. It's better than Tree Dogs.
This is a little embarassing to admit, but I had never seen all of Alfred Hitchock's The Birds until last night. I know, right? WTF? It's been on my secret list-of-shame for many years now, right up there with It's a Wonderful Life. I try to change the subject when people bring these movies up. In fact, forget I said anything. Post over.
Just kidding. Actually, having now finally seen The Birds, I no longer feel embarassed about not having seen it sooner. Why? Because it turns out it's one of the very few Hitchcock movies that I didn't like.
That's right.
I cannot for the life of me understand why this is one his his best known films. The first half of the movie has to be the most boring thing Hitchcock ever put to film. It's a series of conversations between boring, unlikable, unfunny characters, stirring up some very mild drama that doesn't even really pay off later in the film. I mean, great characters aren't a must for a good thriller/horror movie, but Hitchcock almost always made them at least a little interesting.
Then, once the birds finally start attacking, I guess the movie gets more interesting, but I just found it ineffective and maybe a little silly. Birds aren't scary. And let me just get this out of the way... animals-gone-crazy movies are almost never actually scary. For one to be enjoyable, it usually has to be some violent, silly horror movie that's more fun than anything else. It should be like Slugs. It's a terrible, unscary movie, but there's a part where a naked teenage couple falls into a pile of slugs and are eaten alive. Then later, some guy accidentally eats a slug, and little tiny slugs grow in his body until eventually his face explodes and tiny slugs shoot out while he's in the middle of eating at a restaurant. That's what I go to the movies to see.
The Birds takes a frankly unscary premise and treats it as dark and serious as possible. Hitchcock movies aren't really ever realistic or anything, but man does he try to make a stupid idea seem terrifying. It even has a dark, unsettling, ambiguous ending. In a movie about stupid seagulls getting mad and pecking everybody. It doesn't help that some (a lot) of the special effects don't hold up today, and a lot of it looks corny.
There are probably isolated moments and shots that I admired, but when this movie wasn't boring me silly, it was making my eyes sore from how often I was rolling them. Maybe I was just in the wrong mood, I dunno. It's better than Tree Dogs.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Marnie
Tuesday, April 16, 2008
We have about a bajillion Hitchcock movies laying around my house, so I'm surprised it's taken me this long to realize that my K2K is a great excuse to catch up with the ones I haven't seen. Although frankly, it's a little shocking that I hadn't seen Marnie. It's a Hitchcock movie starring Sean Connery. For me, that's like the promise of receiving a blow job while eating mint chocolate chip ice cream. Each is great on its own, so why pass up the opportunity to do both at once? Yet, we've had this movie for years and I'd never gotten around to watching the whole thing.
This is not a typical Hitchcock film. There are his usual elements of thriller and mystery, but they take a back seat to a character piece/psychological drama with a strong Freudian bent and a little dark humor thrown in. It's not one of his classics I don't think, but it was still pretty good and in a lot of ways unique for him. There are numerous Hitchcockian elements, especially in the visual style, but the tone of the film feels different from anything else of his I've seen.
I think what I like most about Marnie is the audacity of it's bizarre plot. Tippi Hedren is Marnie, a con-woman/thief with several fake identities who is, for unknown reasons, deeply terrified of thunderstorms and of the color red. How she managed to function in society with a debilitating fear of red, I do not understand. She is caught by Sean Connery's character, and instead of turning her into the police, he tells her he loves her, blackmails Marnie into marrying him and sets about trying to cure her of her phobias and her propensity for crime.
Go back and read that again, because while the movie plays it all with a straight face, that is one fucking ludicrous plot, with a lot of weird dark undercurrents... not least of all the rape subtext. And it's no accident; Marnie is afraid of physical intimacy, and Hitchcock several times equates Connery's actions with rape. And it's also pointed out that although Connery's feelings for her are genuine, he also is something of an entomologist and may be studying her like an animal. There's a tension between his good looks, charm and desire to do right, and his darker, perhaps subconscious motivations that I think isn't uncommon to Hitchcock films. 20 years earlier, and this role would have gone to Cary Grant.
There's a lot of strange scenes and subplots as well. I think my favorite is when Marnie freaks out while horseback (one of the riders has a red jacket on) and she rides off and starts hopping fences, but one fence is too high and the horse crashes and breaks its legs. So Marnie forces her way into the house and demands a gun to shoot her horse. Man, this shit is intense.
So there's a lot of weird subtext to chew on, and two bizarre but fascinating leads. Hedren and Connery are both really quite good in this, although Hedren occasionally goes into over the top hysterics. Can't really blame her though, it's more the way the character is written.
Anyway, leave it to Hitchcock to take what could have been a low key romantic drama and turn it into some weird, intense psychological nightmare... but in a fun way! I couldn't watch this one all the time, but it's worth seeing.
We have about a bajillion Hitchcock movies laying around my house, so I'm surprised it's taken me this long to realize that my K2K is a great excuse to catch up with the ones I haven't seen. Although frankly, it's a little shocking that I hadn't seen Marnie. It's a Hitchcock movie starring Sean Connery. For me, that's like the promise of receiving a blow job while eating mint chocolate chip ice cream. Each is great on its own, so why pass up the opportunity to do both at once? Yet, we've had this movie for years and I'd never gotten around to watching the whole thing.
This is not a typical Hitchcock film. There are his usual elements of thriller and mystery, but they take a back seat to a character piece/psychological drama with a strong Freudian bent and a little dark humor thrown in. It's not one of his classics I don't think, but it was still pretty good and in a lot of ways unique for him. There are numerous Hitchcockian elements, especially in the visual style, but the tone of the film feels different from anything else of his I've seen.
I think what I like most about Marnie is the audacity of it's bizarre plot. Tippi Hedren is Marnie, a con-woman/thief with several fake identities who is, for unknown reasons, deeply terrified of thunderstorms and of the color red. How she managed to function in society with a debilitating fear of red, I do not understand. She is caught by Sean Connery's character, and instead of turning her into the police, he tells her he loves her, blackmails Marnie into marrying him and sets about trying to cure her of her phobias and her propensity for crime.
Go back and read that again, because while the movie plays it all with a straight face, that is one fucking ludicrous plot, with a lot of weird dark undercurrents... not least of all the rape subtext. And it's no accident; Marnie is afraid of physical intimacy, and Hitchcock several times equates Connery's actions with rape. And it's also pointed out that although Connery's feelings for her are genuine, he also is something of an entomologist and may be studying her like an animal. There's a tension between his good looks, charm and desire to do right, and his darker, perhaps subconscious motivations that I think isn't uncommon to Hitchcock films. 20 years earlier, and this role would have gone to Cary Grant.
There's a lot of strange scenes and subplots as well. I think my favorite is when Marnie freaks out while horseback (one of the riders has a red jacket on) and she rides off and starts hopping fences, but one fence is too high and the horse crashes and breaks its legs. So Marnie forces her way into the house and demands a gun to shoot her horse. Man, this shit is intense.
So there's a lot of weird subtext to chew on, and two bizarre but fascinating leads. Hedren and Connery are both really quite good in this, although Hedren occasionally goes into over the top hysterics. Can't really blame her though, it's more the way the character is written.
Anyway, leave it to Hitchcock to take what could have been a low key romantic drama and turn it into some weird, intense psychological nightmare... but in a fun way! I couldn't watch this one all the time, but it's worth seeing.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Suspicion
Saturday, March 29, 2008
Shenan and I have both been meaning to watch this one for a long time, as we both like Hitchcock and I hadn't seen it and it's her favorite of his. It turns out she was right, this is a pretty good one.
It pulls a neat trick that I like in horror/thriller movies, where for a while it's lighthearted and is actually a pretty good comedy before slowly morphing into a drama and then into a full-on suspense film. I dig the genre bait-and-switch, and I like to imagine from time to time somebody watches this movie, or Disturbia or From Dusk Til Dawn or Audition and doesn't have any idea where it's heading. Shit, I kind of wish I could watch one of these movies without knowing that there was a big genre shift in store.
We all know that Cary Grant is one of the most charming actors ever, but Hitchcock was great at using him to play characters whose natural charm masks something dark inside. Suspicion isn't a masterpiece like Notorious, but Grant is used to similar effect in both and damn if they aren't two of his best performances. I love a good Bringing Up Baby or My Favorite Wife where he's just really funny and charming, but his best roles are always when he's some kind of secret bastard.
Shenan and I have both been meaning to watch this one for a long time, as we both like Hitchcock and I hadn't seen it and it's her favorite of his. It turns out she was right, this is a pretty good one.
It pulls a neat trick that I like in horror/thriller movies, where for a while it's lighthearted and is actually a pretty good comedy before slowly morphing into a drama and then into a full-on suspense film. I dig the genre bait-and-switch, and I like to imagine from time to time somebody watches this movie, or Disturbia or From Dusk Til Dawn or Audition and doesn't have any idea where it's heading. Shit, I kind of wish I could watch one of these movies without knowing that there was a big genre shift in store.
We all know that Cary Grant is one of the most charming actors ever, but Hitchcock was great at using him to play characters whose natural charm masks something dark inside. Suspicion isn't a masterpiece like Notorious, but Grant is used to similar effect in both and damn if they aren't two of his best performances. I love a good Bringing Up Baby or My Favorite Wife where he's just really funny and charming, but his best roles are always when he's some kind of secret bastard.
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