WHile i do intend to do more movie reviews (a nod to docr’s habit of doing so, i intend them to be a bit more thematicaly interesting. Just as a tarot card isnt that interesting by itself but takes on more interest by what it appeaars, I like double features, or triple features, or thesmes of movies. Some recent themes I’ve watched, but not commented indetail upon: * the cannibal thing (currently this includes Eating Raoul, A Boy and His Dog, THe Cook the Thief His Wife and Her Lover, Fried Green Tomatoes.. * end of the world, one man left ( have mentioned this one before, this will be used soonish as soon as I see “I am legend”. others include The Last Man on Earth, The Quiet Earth, Omega Man. * parodies with their source (Fail Safe with Doctor Strangelove, Excalibur with Monty Python and the Holy Grail) * movies with a common actor (Omega Man, Soylent Green, planet of the Apes, and just to make it interesting, maybe Ben Hur; Fail Safe and Hopscotch, both featuring Walter Matthau) * watching a series of movies in quick succession (the “Back to the future Trilogy” back to back, the matrix trilogy [not that sastisfying] * a common theme like “what you think is reality is not real” (Dark City, The Matrix, Thirteenth Floor) * dystopian futures (the mad max series, waterworld, cherry 2000, there are lots and lots in this rather broad genre) * common directors (Deliverance, Zardoz, Excalibur is one that comes to mind) * dystopian futures of a city (Detroit can claim THe Crow, Robocop, i’m sure there are others for detroit. New york is a favorite, although they often put the stature of liberty in odd places because the only way it’s on the way to NYC is if you started in the middle of the ocean)
You get the idea.. Well today i have two movies that really dont have anything to do with each other: Stardust and “The Golden Compass” Stardust (2007, Michelle pfeiffer, Robert Deniro, among others) I heard of this from friends seeing, but the reminder that stuck was me reading a list of most popular movie downloads for the year. I hadn’t downloaded any of them but had recently heard of this. I enjoy Neil Gaiman books, their cosmologies occasionally match my own: American Gods is an example. I’ve enjoyed his excursions into cinema like MirrorMask and Neverwhere (the tv show actually predated the movie, but I read the book first). My take on this movie can be summed up in a cliche: “Every man and every woman is a Star”. My favorite part of this was Robert DeNiro as an obbviously gay pirate captain. The Golden Compass: This seems to be a new cause celebre’ amongst pagand, magickians and other weird folks I know. We folllow the adventures of an “orphan” who has some special gifts and a predicted destiny (that would be a good theme: movies about “chosen ones”, which is a subset of a much larger genre called “heroes’ journeys”. Joseph Campbell is the expert on this genre, having summed it up in a survey of myths from around the world called “The Hero With a Thousand Faces”). Of couree, there is the hero going off on tangents in which crucial elements such as skills or the odd trinket are acquired. This is the first movie of a trilogy, and it seems to be somewhat in doubt whether the other two movies will be produced. I can understand this, having read the “Perelandra” trilogy by CS Lewis, which was a veiled (not very well by the third book) presentation of Christianity. I’m not sure what POV is being presented here, some seem to think it is ultimately an atheistic worldview because the author is an avowed atheist and the “anti-god” themes haven’t yet been presented. We are warned, in this movie, that the ultimate conflict we’ll be handling will be “free will”, whatever that is. In the movie, there’s an Establishment called “the Mysterium” which seems to share some habits with The Church. My personal experience with a “the Church” is the Roman Catholic Church. The Mysterium is presented as a group of people who are engaged in telling people what to do, “not as a vindictive thing”, but more “for their own good”. Uncomfortable subjects are discouraged because they may point out the arbitrariness of the rules and those who would promote them. This will be interesting to watch as it plays out…