eclectic collection

This one's got some mood whiplash! Ava Gardner is excruciatingly beautiful! She's all alone and sad! She's got a little homoerotic tension going on with Kathryn! The film makes a brief gesture at the existence of racism, but is generally handicapped by being from 1951. Howard Keel slimes his way into a happy ending (fuck that character!), the orchestra popped off, and William Warfield steals the show in the one (1) song they let him do (not counting the reprise of the same song). Ava Gardner is excruciatingly beautiful! Did I mention that Ava Gardner is literally the most beautiful woman I've ever seen? Seriously, she slinks around in those glorious Technicolor costumes like a...slinky thing...

8/10. Magnolia should've kicked Gaylord's ass to the curb.

A pretty fun romp! Definitely a turn-your-brain off college musical, but each number has a lot of charm and every time I see June Allyson I sigh a little...and they put her beside some shmuck! Ugh! I'd treat her right...

8/10. Suitable popcorn fare, apart from one little eye twitching old Hollywood racist number....but other than that.

watched this out of the corner of my eye while making bobbin lace, which was perhaps not the best way to experience a movie but i wanted to get this one out of the way and off my list. unfortunately, I was rather bored. June Allyson lacks depth, the costumes are just sort of old timey without being very interesting (mostly), and what is with the professor's horrible sort of Spanish accent??

3/10. maybe someone else would enjoy it more. I have honestly never been that wild about any version of Little Women.

belated thoughts on "Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World": uh. pretty good.

I have a half-feverish memory of watching this movie at some point in elementary school because my parents are fans of the novel series, so watching it now was an exercise in putting various snippets and quotes into context. It's a well constructed movie, but I suspect its writers subscribe too heavily to the 'great man' theory of history.

9/10. a delightful romp. just let the sailing jargon wash over you.

yes they really did make it that color for a significant portion of the movie.

RIGHT. the overture began, i thought ahhh, i love those schmaltzy vintage strings...and then the movie began and not ten seconds later i thought oh boy. this is going to be one of those racist racist old movies. it's a very conventional musical, hamstrung by its inability to go more than two minutes without either objectifying asian people, polynesian people, somehow they sneak in some racism against black people too...the male lead, french guy, is not that interesting and tbh i don't know why the female lead, the nurse, is into him, and i kept getting blindsided by the fact that i actually knew some of the songs.

to wit, my father has been delightedly singing 'SALMON-CHANTED EVENING' whenever salmon (the fish) is mentioned for my entire life. i discovered that the lyrics were, in fact, 'some enchanted evening.' the more you know!

liat, the side character's love interest, says like two words in the entire movie and the rest of her screen time is 75% trying to be sexy while looking like she's about to cry and the rest is running around flailing. they did not resolve her story like at all. then there's her man, lieutenant cable, who sings a song about how racism is bad (??), and the message of the song is like. fine i guess. but the language is hm. outdated.

now let's address the color grading. oh my god the yellow is like the midst of an apocalyptic wildfire and the blue is like. i don't know. mostly bad. theres one shot where it's more purple that actually works. and the rest of the movie it doesn't. also the vignette effect is incredibly heavy for way too much of it.

overall. im not a fan. 3/10, for the only good 3 minutes of the movie (the overture).

I'm not sure "Moulin Rouge" is actually about anything except frilly costumes and actors trying to sing and sometimes getting close to singing.

Okay, maybe that's harsh. There's dancing, too. And the sets are fun. And the rapid-fire cuts certainly make for a Style. I found some scenes to be a blast, especially the Can Can where the bohemian crew attempts to improvise a play for the Duke. The opening scene, with the conductor directs the orchestra a la Bugs Bunny, was amusing.

I borrowed the movie from the library partly because my YouTube algorithm recommended "El Tango de Roxanne" to me, and I wanted to know the context. Also 'cause Ewan McGregor was hot.

SPEAKING OF WHICH, I have to talk about his accent in this?? Sometimes it's sort of British. Sometimes the Scottish is suspiciously blatant. And when he sings, as is common, the accent disappears and it's like generic American vowels. Did they just not really care? Everything in this movie is cranked up to 11 for a reason, but I'm not sure what purpose this trans-Hadrian accent is serving.

As mentioned, the singing can be...rough. I'm not an expert on the history of audio production, so forgive any error, but I get a vibe that our leads have been pitch corrected. This stands in contrast to our secondary characters, who often opt for a "gargling gravel" vocal technique.

OKAY OKAY That's harsh. I think this movie is suffering from a "Seinfeld is Unfunny" effect, wherein it's the subject of so much imitation that the original creativity seems lackluster. I don't think I have the right context to appreciate it, although no matter the context I doubt I would appreciate that Satine has to die.

I'm going to go with a 7/10, but reluctantly. I think they should remake it with lesbians.