Beautiful Things

I love a juicy bit of celebrity nostalgia. I love an interesting "behind the scenes" look. I love a great poster. I love Madonna. Add all these together and you can just guess how much I loved reading this article at My Life as a Blog (link via The Film Experience) about the making of the poster for Desperately Seeking Susan in the the mid-80s.

It's written by a man who worked on PR for the somewhat iconic 1985 film and the creation of the actually very iconic poster. It's an ode to the world of celebrity in the 1980s (Madonna catching taxis!) as well as the lost art of poster design that Susan a perfect example of. You know, when actors had to be in the same room rather than Photoshopped from opposite sides of the globe. The piece explains the story behind costume designer Santo Loquasto's duel jackets of the film, has multiple amazing Madonna quotes (even if, naturally, she comes of as a bit of a bitch) and features a cameo by Andre Leon Talley so delicious that I'm positively salivating.

At one point, Ritts was shooting some sultry glamour shots of Rosanna posing against a cloth backdrop, when Madonna came over. After gaping at Rosanna for a minute she said, “You look so good I’d like to fuck you myself.” It was funny, but you could almost hear the air—sssssss!—slipping out of Rosanna’s confidence, as her moment was stolen, and it became all about Madonna. And come on! This was Rosanna Arquette, after all—a true fantasy figure for a good portion of the men in America! Moments later, Madonna grabbed the backdrop, commandeered the same pose… and Herb shot an image that became a famous poster.

I suggest y'all check the piece out, it's fascinating from so many different points of view.

Want more beautiful things?

How about this list of the 50 best title sequences from IFC Film. It's an exhausting list - get prepared to lose at least an hour of your day with it - that includes video of all the films with some great discussion going on, too. I think this moment from the article's introduction is quite truthful, although even serious films seem to have jettisoned the art of opening title sequences, haven't they?

Of course, the current fashion in big blockbusters is to skip the opening credits entirely: a studio name, the film's title, and that's it. That decision says a lot about these big blockbusters' priorities: screw mood and tone! Who cares about characters and themes? Let's get to the action!

I've included some of my favourites below.


The Naked Gun | Do the Right Thing


Charade | Taxi Driver


Seconds | Goldfinger


Warriors | Vertigo
If you asked me to pick a favourite, I would have to go with Taxi Driver, and it's a shame they didn't include any David Lynch intro's since his are always so good with their creation of mood through imagery and music. I actually think Gasper Noe's Enter the Void managed to trump every single one on the list - although I may be jumping the gun - just this past year. I didn't care for the movie, but those opening (and closing, which feature at the beginning?) is a "tour de force"



If, for a moment there, this entry was becoming a piece of "the lost art of something-something" then let me change that by noting that giant floating heads are still alive and thriving. The Book of Siberia has assembled a whole bunch of them together and, I'm sad to say, there are quite a few Australian films featured. I don't think any of these posters are anything, although I'd say my favourite was Breaking the Waves, since the way the images are illustrated has some lovely texture to it. Make sure to click on over for the entire compilation of giant floating heads!


The music branch at the Academy lost any chance they may have mad to make audiences care about the musical numbers when they failed to nominated the Diane Warren penned, Cher performed, "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" for Best Original Song. The music branch hasn't had "taste" in a very long time, so why choose now to get some. I say that, of course, even though I think the film and the song are both legitimately very excellent, but even I can't deny that the general aura around the film is "omgsocamp!itmustbebad!!", which is a shame. Still, the film was one of only a few to actually insert its original songs into the film in the form of musical numbers and they still don't nominate it? And for "If I Rise"? A song that is, I think quite literally, air. There is nothing there to even be considered a song, right?

Oh well, how's this for... well, whatever it is? James Franco rehearsing a "You Haven't Seen the Last of Me" number for the Academy Awards that will, unfortunately, never see the light of day. Yet another reason to think the Academy's music branch deserves a punch in the face for their incompetence.


It's still better than either of the four songs actually nominated thought (give or take "Coming Home" from Country Strong).

Let's end this with some more "beautiful things" that this entry originally started out as. I went to see "Hairspray" last night at the Princess Theatre. I had originally decided not to see it because, well, the movie is so good that I didn't feel like spending over $100 on seeing it performed on stage, and especially since I'd heard the production used LED screen sets rather than actually, ya know, sets. However, I purchased a couple of tickets at OnyaAid and, ya know, it was for charity!

I really liked it, of course, as one does with "Hairspray". It's hard to dislike, truly. I was a bit disappointed we had the understudy for Seaweed since "Can We Talk" hitmaker Tevin Campbell would've been a trip to see! Remember "Can We Talk"?


Amazing.

Still, my favourite part of the show was getting to watch Jack Chambers on stage for a couple of hours. Is this guy not just one of the most adorkable guys you've ever laid eyes on? Okay, well, for me he is. He was most definitely my favourite from the one season of So You Think You Can Dance that I watched. Why doesn't he realise we're meant to be together? Gosh, how rude! Naturally, I took a few cute screencaps from an interview he did with Undercover. It's what I do.







Okay, so more than a few. We're made for each other, can't you tell?

Black & White Friday: Candyman

I had never seen Bernard Rose's film, an adaptation of Clive Barker's take but relocated to America, for reasons that I will mention after the first screencap below us. I had put the film on my Quickflix DVD queue when I went through a horror fixation whilst battling the flu and forgot all about it until, I suppose, it got high enough to be sent out to me. As I watched it I noticed some really well done compositions. Once the film the becomes a typically bloody gore fest in the final act it was less so, naturally.


I do remember bugging my brother enough to allow him to let me watch Candyman with him when I was a kid. Alas I probably ran out of the room screening at this shot that immediately follows the opening credits (credits that feature such comically over-the-top haunted house music by Philip Glass). I have a phobia of bees (I blame Michael Caine), and seeing a screen filled entirely by them would surely not have helped me at all.


The best scene in the film is this one where Virginia Madsen and Vanessa Williams (the first one, not the good one) visit a delapidated, ghettoised housing project in search of the of "Candyman" myth. Some really excellent use of light and shadow throughout it.


Definitely the most striking image from the entire film is this one as Madsen's "Helen Lyle" makes her way through the labyrinthine belly of the apartment complex and emerges out of a hole in a wall that, as the camera pans, turns out to be a massive graffiti image of the Candyman. She's being swallowed whole by the Candyman before she even realises a thing.


I actually think the way Rose, his cinematographer Anthony B Richmond (Legally Blonde, Ravenous) and his make-up artists (Michelle Bühler and Erma Kent) deliberately tried to make Madsen looks a bit like one of Hitchcock's women. Especially in one or two shots to come. I particularly love her eyes in this shot, peering over her camera. In fact, if it weren't for the camera I'd believe this was taken from a film in the 1940s or '50s.


Basically anything with shadowplay is bound to be featured within these blog walls, and it was this moment that made me think Candyman would be a good candidate for this series. I think I was right.


This feels very classical and elegant. So, completely out of place for Candyman. I still think it's quite beautiful though.


Here is, I think, the really obvious Hitchcock illusion. You could easily mistake this shot for being that of a blonde-haired vixen who just pulled a fast one on her husband and is stealing his money while walking around in a delicious overcoat and big sunglasses. Of course, being Hitchcockian isn't the first thing on Candyman's mind and it's only a few shots here or there that gave me the impression (it was mostly Madsen's hair, actually).


Even more so than the graffiti shot from before, I think this was the favourite shot of the film. As Madsen looks through a collection of slides from a murder scene she stops on this one of herself taking a photo of a grubby mirror. The way the light bounces around off of it in between all the smudges and the grime and the way Madsen herself looks like a classic movie heroine. Of course, this is the film's biggest fright (if not the biggest jump, that's saved for the doctor's office, yes?) with its subtle scares something the last 30 minutes or so of Candyman wouldn't know anything about.


Now you can't say this doesn't scream old fashioned thriller to you, can you?


I saved the last shot for a moment to focus on what I think is the film's best quality. Candyman has such a powerful sense of place. All the urban decay and modern emptiness. There are several scenes such as those inside the housing estate, the ambulance drive through the tunnel and these establishing shots that provide so much atmosphere. The sense of oppressive dread that builds up throughout them, feeling like all this stuff is happening on the ourskirts of town where nobody is paying any attention. It actually reminded me of Se7en in that way.

Black & White Friday: Body Double

Brian DePalma uses two "not everything is as it seems" devices within the opening minutes of this Body Double, including this one here right as the title is on screen. He's hardly the most subtle director out there. Softly softly, Mr DePalma. I recently just watched Body Double for the first time and I really didn't know much about it other than what I had, ahem, learnt about from Jason (<-Spoilers), but I kinda loved it. Totally conducive of me screaming "WHAT THE FUCK?!?" several times, but love it nonetheless.


I can't tell if the rear projection here is bad because it's bad or bad because its 1984 meant to look like 1954.



Blah blah Hitchcock blah blah modern day blah blah. I don't care if DePalma is ripping off Hitchcock, paying homage to him or simply being influenced by him, but I love his shots and the way even a blatant "duh! hitchcock!" moment such as this feels uniquely DePalma.


The Hitchcock project that Body Double reminds me of most is, actually, the resurrected Alfred Hitchcock Presents of the 1980s. That series was a modern day (for the time, 1985) update of the Alfred Hitchcock Presents series of the 1950s, and that's sorta what Body Double feels like. It's not quite authentic enough to actually pass as Hitchcock, but has all the elements you can see why its called "Hitchcockian". Having said that, I can only wonder what Hitchcock would have done with the 1980s with architecture like this!

Of course, the other thing that pops into my mind when I see this shot is Troy McClure!


The character of "Gloria Revelle", played by Deborah Shelton, is so '80s! She looks like she just walked off of the set of Dynasty via LA Law. It's kinda why I really enjoyed Body Double; in spite of all the "look at me! hitchcock!" stuff, the movie is still incredible of its time and the juxtaposition between the two elements are fascinating. Strange though to discover that Shelton's voice was dubbed!



These two shots actually reminds me of a moment I captured during Shutter Island with its multiple levels, playing with architecture, mind games and ideas of logic. Uh-huh. Of course, no amount of black and white can make anybody believe that first shot is anything other than Rodeo Drive in the 1980s.


Aah yes, a sudden onset of some debilitating phobia. It's hardly done with as much visual panache as Hitchcock did in Vertigo, but not many movies have the visual panache of Vertigo, do they?


This is all I am going to show of the infamous powerdrill sequence because you truly have to discover it for yourself to get the hilarious stupidity of it all (Shelton's "Gloria" is such a wet fish in this scene - damn woman, do SOMETHING!)


This is the first time we (technically) see Melanie Griffiths. It is over an hour into the film! Now that's my kinda Melanie Griffith movie! I'm not as repelled by her as some people, whose idea of a good Melanie Griffith movie is one in which she doesn't appear at all, but she's hardly the most exciting presence on screen, is she? She's not as bad here as she became in later movies - I think it was around the time of Pacific Heights? - but the less we see of her the better, I say!

From here on the film goes... well, you know where it goes if you're at all familiar with Brian DePalma's work. I must admit I was taken by surprise at how suddenly it detoured, but there you go. Of course, all of this was kinda pointless since the three key Hitchcock movies that DePalma was referencing/homaging/stealing from - Vertigo, Dial M for Murder and, most obviously, Rear Window - were all filmed in colour. Hell, Dial M for Murder was in 3D! I think 1984 just missed the mini 3D revival of the 1980s, actually. Melanie Griffith in 3D is something I can live without.

Black & White Friday: Psycho '98

I've gone mental, true, but ever since I started this series I have wanted to do the deed (so to speak) on Gus Van Sant's Psycho. From black and white to colour and back again. This'll be either an interesting experiment or a dismal failure (much like Van Sant's movie itself, actually). Bear in mind that I have not watched Hitchcock's Psycho in a year or so and I am deliberately not comparing the two here. I mean, I will compare, but not in a side by side sort of way. I am more intrigued in how this movie would have looked if Van Sant went and did his whole mad experiment in black and white like the original.



I was actually trying to get a shot of Viggo's glorious very un-1960 arse, but instead captured these two moments that I think are quite stunning compositions.


I find it interesting that this shot - and others that I have taken - still look so modern. This definitely doesn't look like a screengrab of Hitchcock's film. Perhaps it's the presence of such a recognisable face as Anne Heche, I'm not entirely sure. I do know this though, I could look at Anne Heche's face all day. As you can tell from this entry, I'm sure, since over half of the images are from the first half of the film.


This looks closer to the spirit of an old black and white horror movie with its Gothic imagery, although - yet again - something about the actors' face (this time Vince Vaughn) just comes across as very modern and I can't tell whether its because I'm just so used to seeing his face in the sort of movies he makes, Wedding Crashers and the like, that it's hard to separate it.


An obvious shot, but a good one. One that truly does recall Alfred Hitchcock's original. Would I instantly know it was the remake? I'm not so sure.


I seriously could have done a frame by frame look at this scene, but I think this six shot collage is enough. One of the things I think Gus Van Sant's remake does better than the original is - no, not the shower scene - something incredibly banal and ridiculous, and yet it still matters: The shower curtain. The diamond pattern helps play with distortion and perception, don't you think?

We can also see here why Hitchcock used chocolate sauce for blood because whatever it is Van Sant used sure does look weak.


This shot reminds me of Frankenstein.


One of things I can never quite figure out about Psycho '98 is why Lila becomes such a lesbian. It's quite strange, really. I do love it though. Charging through while listening to her rock music on her walkman. Right down to the way she acts almost disgusted at the thought of pretending to be in a relationship with Viggo Mortensen's Sam Loomis later on.


Love this shot in black and white. Shadows are like that.


Oh, Gus! You rascal, you!

Why I Adore... Gus Van Sant's Psycho

One of the best new blogs to show up lately has been Why I Adore, a new project from Mr Paul Anthony Nelson that aims to be a negativity free zone and to allow writers to express true feelings of adoration about movies, actors or anything related to film and TV that they love without threat or worry of Internet trolls whose sole mission it is to criticise people for their opinions.

This week, the sixth edition, was my turn and I decided to discuss my adoration for one of the most maligned films I could think of from the last 20 years, Gus Van Sant's shot-for-shot remake of Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. A movie so fascinating that I've watched it many times - not as many as the 1960 original, but it's probably closer than you think - and consider it a stroke of experimental brilliance.

A good 38 years had gone by between Hitchcock’s original and Van Sant’s take, and I think this remake acts as the most glowing and praiseworthy critical assessment of Hitchcock’s film that has, can and will ever be. People have spent decades studying this film and yet no piece of film criticism can come quite to the level of outright lust for Psycho that this remake presents. Gus Van Sant loves Psycho. There is a reason he remade it "shot for shot" and it’s because he thought it couldn’t be improved upon. Van Sant even set the movie in the modern times to prove how timeless Hitchcock’s Psycho is. ... The remake is love

I considered using one of Norman Bates' famous quotes, "We all go a little mad sometimes" to describe it, but then I realised that was being a self-loathing. I don't think there's anything mad at all about liking Psycho '98. And, hey, if it's good enough for Nick Davis then at least I know I am in good company.

You can read the entire thing by clicking over to Why I Adore and if you would like to leave a comment please do so, but know that all comments are moderated and anything negative gets promptly deleted. That blog is a negative free zone! What do you think though? Do you think I'm mad like Norman or rational like... umm... are there any rational characters in that movie? None of them seem to think clearly at all, do they? Hmmm.

Psychotic

I really wish I was able to attend the Melbourne International Film Festival's screening of Psycho with live orchestra score, but tickets are upwards of $79 and, sadly, for a movie that I can watch anytime I like - albeit, on DVD and not with a live orchestra - that fee is just too exorbitant for my bank account to justify. Perhaps I should get my violin-playing friend to come over and hit some notes while the volume's on mute?