“You are a strange, sad little man. Farewell.”

There was a most interesting blog entry by Kyle Munkittrick on the Discovery Magazine site last month that I just caught. It deals with why Pixar Productions makes such fine movies. I’m not crazy about the soundtrack to the video below, but it is a lovely montage of film clips from Pixar:

Munkittrick’s point about the quality of Pixar material was

“The message hidden inside Pixar’s magnificent films is this: humanity does not have a monopoly on personhood. In whatever form non- or super-human intelligence takes, it will need brave souls on both sides to defend what is right. If we can live up to this burden, humanity and the world we live in will be better for it.“

True enough, but I think there’s a simpler way to put it:

Good movies are about good people.

Be they made of fins and scales (Nemo), rusting gears and power packs (WALL-E), or hideous hide (the Beast), good movies put humanity first, and leave the BIFF!POW!WHAP!EXPLOSIONS! to take care of themselves.

Published in: on 27 June 2011 at 11:26  Comments (1)  
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Pray they don’t make Matrix #4

Still the best fight scene in moviedom:

However, as Frank Herbert and George Lucas can testify, one can go to the well too often.

Let us hope Lana and Andy Wachowski  don’t.

Published in: on 30 January 2011 at 14:17  Comments (6)  
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Thank you, Mr. Tracy

This is one of my favorite movie scenes of all time, and it has so much relevance today. Substitute “orientation” for “pigmentation”, and you can see how anti-gay-marriage arguments look hopelessly flawed and hateful.

“I think now, no matter what kind of case some bastard could make against your getting married, there would be only one thing worse. And that would be if, knowing what you two are, and knowing what you two have, and knowing what you two feel, you didn’t get married.”

And for those who know film history, you realize that Katherine Hepburn’s tears are quite real. Tracy died 17 days after his scenes were filmed, and his mentioning how much his character Matt loved Hepburn’s Christina was a hard pull on the heartstrings for those who knew of their history.

The movie Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner will be on at 21:00 EST on 13 December on Turner Classic Movies. (I’m not a TCM employee–just a highly satisfied customer.) (Per the Spouse®, it’s also available in  streaming mode on Netflix, and no, no one here is a Netflix employee.) It’s a wonderful film–#99 on AFI’s top 100 of all time– and Tracy’s work in it is superb.

Published in: on 1 December 2010 at 11:04  Leave a Comment  
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One ring to rule them all

I took three of the Four Horsemen (my stepsons) to see movies yesterday.

All three of Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings movies. All in one day. Major butt numb-ery.

Like most children, I had heroes as I was growing up. Two of them were comic-book characters–Captain America (who always did the morally correct thing, even when it hurt) and the Batman (who essentially did the same thing).

The third was Professor J.R.R. Tolkien’s characters in LotR. I would visualize the scenes from the books every time I read them, which has been so often that I couldn’t possibly count them now. It made me sad to see that the Hobbit heroes weren’t recognized as such by their own people, especially Sam. (As Rick Emerson once remarked, “Samwise Gamgee never quite got the credit he deserved.”)

When the Jackson movies were announced, I so badly wanted them to be good, and faithful to the story, and not some badly-hacked Hollywood contrivance.

I was not disappointed.

Watching those movies again with me on Sunday, all of my children can now testify how I gasp in wonder at the Great Hall of Khazad-Dûm, celebrate just how well the Balrog 0f Moria was made, and shout in joy when Merry and Eowyn kill the Lord of the Nazgûl.

And I am always surprised by my tears as Frodo says goodbye to his friends and sails over the sea to Valinor and to rest.

Published in: on 21 December 2009 at 10:02  Comments (2)  
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