awalter1
Joined May 2001
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awalter1's rating
I'm guessing I saw this 1977 TV movie one time when it was first aired on CBS. Which puts me at age 6 or so. "Once Upon a Brothers Grimm" made a huge impression on me, though I didn't see it again for another 25 years. What stuck most in my memory was the very strong premise: the famous Grimm brothers are on a long journey when their carriage halts outside an enchanted wood, through which their driver refuses to travel at night. They carry on without the driver, become separated in the woods, and stumble through a number of famous fairy tales. (Remember that this came a full decade before Stephen Sondheim's "Into the Woods.") And the sequence that stayed most vivid in my memory over the years involved the 12 dancing princesses and the swan princes. It was certainly one of the sparks that gave me a lifelong interest in fairy tales.
Looking at it now, 30+ years since it was made, the film carries a lot of late 70's baggage. It has a number of those peculiar stars of the era recognizable--to kids who grew up then--by their appearances on the Muppet Show or their voice work in the Smurfs. And, yes, there's a faint haze of Hollywood Squares about the production. However, look past that, and there is something worth preserving. As the leads, Dean Jones and Paul Sand are a great duo. Jones, as always, sells his scenes 100 percent, and Sand matches that with true gusto. Probably the most noteworthy appearance of a supporting actor is that of Teri Garr, as a princess seeking a princely frog. To contemporary eyes, the film goes a bit off the rails a few times, but never more so than during Chita Rivera's surreal solo. But, in fact, most of the musical and dance numbers are surprisingly well conceived and executed. For kids 8 years old and under--assuming they haven't been ruined by the production standards of modern TV and film--this should remain a unique treat.
Looking at it now, 30+ years since it was made, the film carries a lot of late 70's baggage. It has a number of those peculiar stars of the era recognizable--to kids who grew up then--by their appearances on the Muppet Show or their voice work in the Smurfs. And, yes, there's a faint haze of Hollywood Squares about the production. However, look past that, and there is something worth preserving. As the leads, Dean Jones and Paul Sand are a great duo. Jones, as always, sells his scenes 100 percent, and Sand matches that with true gusto. Probably the most noteworthy appearance of a supporting actor is that of Teri Garr, as a princess seeking a princely frog. To contemporary eyes, the film goes a bit off the rails a few times, but never more so than during Chita Rivera's surreal solo. But, in fact, most of the musical and dance numbers are surprisingly well conceived and executed. For kids 8 years old and under--assuming they haven't been ruined by the production standards of modern TV and film--this should remain a unique treat.
"Cinema is the ultimate pervert art. It doesn't give you what you desire; it tells you how to desire."
So begins "The Pervert's Guide to Cinema," in which Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek applies his Freudian/Lacanian brain-scalpel to world cinema. This film in three parts is the second feature documentary directed by Sophie Fiennes (yes, sister of Ralph and Joseph), and it is a notable accomplishment, clocking in at 2 1/2 hours of talk from one man and yet remaining humorous and engaging throughout. In essence, it is an extended film lecture, and one of the best you may ever get. Over the course of the film, Zizek guides us through a catalog of obsession and desire in film history. He touches on more than 40 films and, in particular, spends a great deal of time with Hitchcock, Lynch, Chaplin, Tarkovsky, the Marx Brothers, and Eisenstein. But he also takes a close look at "Persona," "The Conversation," "Three Colors: Blue," "Dogville," "Fight Club," and "The Exorcist." Thematically, Zizek's inquiry into cinema ranges from thoughts on the death drive to the "coordinates of desire," and from Gnosticism to "partial objects."
"The Pervert's Guide" will be a slightly better experience if you've taken a few minutes to bone up on your basic Freudian terminology. However, even if you're not steeped in psychoanalytic theory, Zizek's dynamic and hilarious personality carries the film forward with such gusto that you aren't likely to balk at the specialized lingo. The film frequently cuts from movie clips to images of Zizek *inside* the movie he is talking about--that is, in the original locations and sets. The transitions in these sequences sustain such tension and humor that the trick never gets old. And Zizek himself is constantly making us laugh, either from bizarre little jokes or from his enthusiastic insistence on, for example, a bold Oedipal interpretation of "The Birds." And this go-ahead-and-laugh attitude, on the parts of both Fiennes and Zizek, is essential to the gonzo character of the film. It is the spoonful of sugar that helps us digest Zizek's weird medicine. After all, don't we all have a sense that, past a certain point, psychology theorists are just pulling our legs?
So begins "The Pervert's Guide to Cinema," in which Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek applies his Freudian/Lacanian brain-scalpel to world cinema. This film in three parts is the second feature documentary directed by Sophie Fiennes (yes, sister of Ralph and Joseph), and it is a notable accomplishment, clocking in at 2 1/2 hours of talk from one man and yet remaining humorous and engaging throughout. In essence, it is an extended film lecture, and one of the best you may ever get. Over the course of the film, Zizek guides us through a catalog of obsession and desire in film history. He touches on more than 40 films and, in particular, spends a great deal of time with Hitchcock, Lynch, Chaplin, Tarkovsky, the Marx Brothers, and Eisenstein. But he also takes a close look at "Persona," "The Conversation," "Three Colors: Blue," "Dogville," "Fight Club," and "The Exorcist." Thematically, Zizek's inquiry into cinema ranges from thoughts on the death drive to the "coordinates of desire," and from Gnosticism to "partial objects."
"The Pervert's Guide" will be a slightly better experience if you've taken a few minutes to bone up on your basic Freudian terminology. However, even if you're not steeped in psychoanalytic theory, Zizek's dynamic and hilarious personality carries the film forward with such gusto that you aren't likely to balk at the specialized lingo. The film frequently cuts from movie clips to images of Zizek *inside* the movie he is talking about--that is, in the original locations and sets. The transitions in these sequences sustain such tension and humor that the trick never gets old. And Zizek himself is constantly making us laugh, either from bizarre little jokes or from his enthusiastic insistence on, for example, a bold Oedipal interpretation of "The Birds." And this go-ahead-and-laugh attitude, on the parts of both Fiennes and Zizek, is essential to the gonzo character of the film. It is the spoonful of sugar that helps us digest Zizek's weird medicine. After all, don't we all have a sense that, past a certain point, psychology theorists are just pulling our legs?
Be prepared. In Tony Kaye's "Lake of Fire" you will see a portion of an abortion procedure. You will see the dead pieces of a being you cannot simply label "fetus" & thereby distance yourself comfortably from it. You will see crime scenes with the bodies of people executed by anti-abortion zealots. You will also see quite a number of Bible-slappin' loudmouths & pro-choice intellectuals.
Being a pro-life viewer, I must give Kaye credit for allowing 2 moments that are very strong for the pro-life camp. The first comes near the beginning of the film, in which we do actually see the dismembered pieces of that aborted baby. This is echoed later with shots of corpses stored in a clinic freezer. The second moment comes with the story of Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade. Kaye presents McCorvey's story of working in abortion clinics after her trial & later converting to Christianity & completely reversing her position toward abortion. McCorvey's conversion came about through the efforts of a man we see here, a man who, incidentally, is perhaps the single non-wacko pro-life leader that Kaye deigns to show: Operation Save America's Flip Benham.
Other than those two points, all the scoring goes to the pro-choice crowd. Kaye includes as many homophobic, gun-toting, anti-abortion loudmouths as he can find. And he can't hide his own prejudices when he zeroes in on the mouth of one particular windbag & lets it fill the screen while he rants--a technique, it should be noted, that is never applied when Alan Dershowitz is on screen. Here we have pro-lifers who do the cause no favors by opening their mouths, saying for instance that they think blasphemers should be executed, that they've seen Satan-worshiping abortionists barbecue babies right in front of them, etc. And this spectacle goes on & on, with only one answering clang on the Left. At one point we do see a single leftist dork: a woman singer who dances 95% nude during her performance, shoves a coat hanger in her crotch, & mimes giving herself an abortion & eating the baby. We also get to hear this "artist" speak in an interview, & she is stunningly clueless. But that's it for whack-jobs presented on the Left, & we're clearly meant to come away from the film with the sense that the majority of pro-lifers are sub-mental creeps while the majority of pro-choicers are enlightened, brainy people you'd trust to guide public policy.
Nearly all the people interviewed for this documentary use dishonest, loaded arguments: that is, "the Bible says so" (& if you don't believe the Bible, you don't count), or "it's a woman's right" (& obviously the fetus isn't a person, so it doesn't have any rights). The difference is that the people Kaye sought out are primarily intellectuals on one side, and on the other they are primarily uneducated and backwards. The film includes only a few brief seconds of articulate speech on the pro-life side, in contrast with the nonstop barrage of interviews with leftist celebrity intellectuals like Dershowitz, Noam Chomsky, and Peter Singer. Chomsky, who has several PhDs in HairSplitting, gets away here with everything from comparing the religious climate in the U.S. with that in Iran, to raising absurd, overly-clever counterarguments such as his statement that women "kill bacteria" every time they wash their hands (the implication being that killing bacteria is, on some gray scale, morally comparable to killing a fetus). Dershowitz pulls some similar garbage when he says that every time a man & woman refrain from having sex they are preventing a potential human being from being created, & therefore maybe we should have sex 24/7 if we're really going to make God happy. And Singer? Well, he defines murder in terms of "what makes it wrong." That is, murder is killing someone who has the mental capability to wish otherwise, & since a fetus doesn't have the cerebral development allowing him to know what he's missing out on--well, tough. One wonders what Singer might think of killing comatose persons or even victims who are merely sleeping.
Particularly disappointing--& revealing, in terms of the documentary's prejudices--is that almost no effort was made to bring in articulate intellectuals from the pro-life camp. You'll see no Peter Kreeft here, no Frederica Mathewes-Green. And while Kaye gives screen time to a conspiracy theory about "Christian Reconstructionism" & the Religious Right's supposed desire to retake the country & execute anyone who doesn't obey the ten commandments, no similar examinations are made of possible conspiracies on the Left. No mention is made, for example, of Planned Parenthood originating from a scandalous soup of eugenics, racism, & elitist, upper-class paranoia directed at the burgeoning lower classes.
This pro-choice prejudice is seen further in the film's recurring, sledgehammer theme: pro-life = anti-abortion terrorism. Kaye is little interested in portraying anything but the sensationalistic stereotypes of pro-life activists, & the final portion of the film stresses these stereotypes repeatedly. As the film winds down & we follow a woman into her clinic to see the "brave" choice she's going to make & see that she's an emotionally disturbed woman who really shouldn't raise a child, we get an answering bombardament from the Left. The intellectuals that Kaye brought out earlier now return, & we're given a dizzying number of alternative, gray-scale methods for thinking about abortion, methods for making a simple thing more "complex." For instance, Alan Dershowitz says that when it comes to abortion, "everyone is right." This is a pleasant, non-conclusive answer that will not lead to any hasty overturning of laws.
Finally, on a personal note, I was glad I saw this film but can't recommend it. After all, a documentary heavily skewed like this can't be admired for its intrinsic worth. Kaye merely shows us how a film may pay lip service to "fairness" while ending up with a propagandistic message.
Being a pro-life viewer, I must give Kaye credit for allowing 2 moments that are very strong for the pro-life camp. The first comes near the beginning of the film, in which we do actually see the dismembered pieces of that aborted baby. This is echoed later with shots of corpses stored in a clinic freezer. The second moment comes with the story of Norma McCorvey, the "Jane Roe" of Roe v. Wade. Kaye presents McCorvey's story of working in abortion clinics after her trial & later converting to Christianity & completely reversing her position toward abortion. McCorvey's conversion came about through the efforts of a man we see here, a man who, incidentally, is perhaps the single non-wacko pro-life leader that Kaye deigns to show: Operation Save America's Flip Benham.
Other than those two points, all the scoring goes to the pro-choice crowd. Kaye includes as many homophobic, gun-toting, anti-abortion loudmouths as he can find. And he can't hide his own prejudices when he zeroes in on the mouth of one particular windbag & lets it fill the screen while he rants--a technique, it should be noted, that is never applied when Alan Dershowitz is on screen. Here we have pro-lifers who do the cause no favors by opening their mouths, saying for instance that they think blasphemers should be executed, that they've seen Satan-worshiping abortionists barbecue babies right in front of them, etc. And this spectacle goes on & on, with only one answering clang on the Left. At one point we do see a single leftist dork: a woman singer who dances 95% nude during her performance, shoves a coat hanger in her crotch, & mimes giving herself an abortion & eating the baby. We also get to hear this "artist" speak in an interview, & she is stunningly clueless. But that's it for whack-jobs presented on the Left, & we're clearly meant to come away from the film with the sense that the majority of pro-lifers are sub-mental creeps while the majority of pro-choicers are enlightened, brainy people you'd trust to guide public policy.
Nearly all the people interviewed for this documentary use dishonest, loaded arguments: that is, "the Bible says so" (& if you don't believe the Bible, you don't count), or "it's a woman's right" (& obviously the fetus isn't a person, so it doesn't have any rights). The difference is that the people Kaye sought out are primarily intellectuals on one side, and on the other they are primarily uneducated and backwards. The film includes only a few brief seconds of articulate speech on the pro-life side, in contrast with the nonstop barrage of interviews with leftist celebrity intellectuals like Dershowitz, Noam Chomsky, and Peter Singer. Chomsky, who has several PhDs in HairSplitting, gets away here with everything from comparing the religious climate in the U.S. with that in Iran, to raising absurd, overly-clever counterarguments such as his statement that women "kill bacteria" every time they wash their hands (the implication being that killing bacteria is, on some gray scale, morally comparable to killing a fetus). Dershowitz pulls some similar garbage when he says that every time a man & woman refrain from having sex they are preventing a potential human being from being created, & therefore maybe we should have sex 24/7 if we're really going to make God happy. And Singer? Well, he defines murder in terms of "what makes it wrong." That is, murder is killing someone who has the mental capability to wish otherwise, & since a fetus doesn't have the cerebral development allowing him to know what he's missing out on--well, tough. One wonders what Singer might think of killing comatose persons or even victims who are merely sleeping.
Particularly disappointing--& revealing, in terms of the documentary's prejudices--is that almost no effort was made to bring in articulate intellectuals from the pro-life camp. You'll see no Peter Kreeft here, no Frederica Mathewes-Green. And while Kaye gives screen time to a conspiracy theory about "Christian Reconstructionism" & the Religious Right's supposed desire to retake the country & execute anyone who doesn't obey the ten commandments, no similar examinations are made of possible conspiracies on the Left. No mention is made, for example, of Planned Parenthood originating from a scandalous soup of eugenics, racism, & elitist, upper-class paranoia directed at the burgeoning lower classes.
This pro-choice prejudice is seen further in the film's recurring, sledgehammer theme: pro-life = anti-abortion terrorism. Kaye is little interested in portraying anything but the sensationalistic stereotypes of pro-life activists, & the final portion of the film stresses these stereotypes repeatedly. As the film winds down & we follow a woman into her clinic to see the "brave" choice she's going to make & see that she's an emotionally disturbed woman who really shouldn't raise a child, we get an answering bombardament from the Left. The intellectuals that Kaye brought out earlier now return, & we're given a dizzying number of alternative, gray-scale methods for thinking about abortion, methods for making a simple thing more "complex." For instance, Alan Dershowitz says that when it comes to abortion, "everyone is right." This is a pleasant, non-conclusive answer that will not lead to any hasty overturning of laws.
Finally, on a personal note, I was glad I saw this film but can't recommend it. After all, a documentary heavily skewed like this can't be admired for its intrinsic worth. Kaye merely shows us how a film may pay lip service to "fairness" while ending up with a propagandistic message.