The Small Picture
/
Which genius gets drunk faster?
Read MoreThe Fate of the Furious (2017)
/
If you go all the way on everything, why not embrace the silliness on every level and call it F8 of the Furious?
Read MoreComics Are for Everyone - Less Escapism, More Veganism
/
Killer Shark likes kale shakes for his Rumi. Obviously.
Read MoreBehind These Castle Walls, Part IV: Dumbo (1941)
/
We're still in the 40s with our Disney movies and now we get to the famous elephant who is known for the slur everyone else uses for him. That is a good indication for the weirdness of this movie. It is a movie I had seen before. For its short runtime, it is not very entertaining and feels stretched anyway. It also does not have the same artistic skills the previous movies have shown.
Read MoreTrailing Tropes: When Angela Bassett Cries
/
I’ve been wanting to write about trailers a while now, but when I was sitting in the cinema recently, it again occurred to me how strongly trailers rely on certain tropes. It doesn’t mean that the movies they are advertising do things wrong because a trailer is never really as representative as we are supposed to believe. But what fascinates me is how trailers use certain images to promote their movies, how the reduction to a couple of images leads to images that have clear connotations audiences should respond to. I don’t know if this will become a recurring feature, but for now, let’s take a look at some trailers and the tropes they market besides their actual product.
Read MoreBehind These Castle Walls, Part III: Fantasia (1940)
/
It’s been clearly too long since the last installment and I blame today’s movie for it. Fantasia is a difficult movie to approach because it has no larger story and is also not as well known today as all the other movies. Yet again, it is clearly a technological achievement with astonishing visuals and an unusual concept for its time, mixing animation, classical music and live action footage for what must have been really confusing to audiences in 1940. I had never seen it before but only the Fantasia 2000 sequel. I thought about talking about the original version that includes the racist scenes that have been removed since 1960 and while this is interesting, I decided not to because a) this problem is obvious and has been dealt with by Disney (with only a 20 year-delay) and b) I’m doing this to discuss the effects these movies still have today, so I might as well go with the current version. There are still enough issues to look at in this one and I can’t wait to move on to get to the next ones (of which there are still officially 53 left).
Read More
Poster of a Girl: The Joy of Jen
/
Wow, I haven’t taken a current look at movie posters since March (outside of theme weeks that is). Considering that this is one of the simplest articles to write for me, this is kind of surprising. Anyway, here we go again.
Read More3 Months of Movies (VI)
/
It’s that time of the year again, the time for reflecting upon the movies I’ve watched in the last three months. It was a weird time because it also covers the summer holidays during which I watched a crazy amount of movies at home and at the cinema, but since the holidays are over and school has started I barely watched anything. I’m not sure how this will pan out in the statistics but I remember that I was thinking during summer that I might break a record for watching the most movies in that timespan and now I know this will definitely not be the case. But who cares about records anyway? I only care about statistics.
Read MoreBehind These Castle Walls, Part II: Pinocchio (1940)
/
For the second movie in my Disney series we get to the second animated full-length feature which is Pinocchio, released in 1940. I’d say as a movie it’s not as well known as some of the other Disney movies, while still pretty popular. Just as Snow White it is a well-made movie with great animation and interesting, creative set pieces. The story, based on a novel, was changed significantly and is at least as problematic as Snow White’s, in my opinion. While many themes are similar, some new ones are also introduced. But let’s get to the analytical details of this one, it won't be short.
Read MoreDie bleierne Zeit on Golden Pond: The Movies of 1981, Part 2 [1981 Week]
/![Die bleierne Zeit on Golden Pond: The Movies of 1981, Part 2 [1981 Week]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54206d12e4b0e2c159748fd6/1442737599184-9UR0ZA1IKLHVP3U7PEZ9/image-asset.jpeg)
There is more to all the movies I watched for this week, so let's get to part 2!
Read MoreDid I Like This? (Niggaz4Life)
/
Because N.W.A. is as popular again as ever before thanks to Straight Outta Compton, I thought it’s a good time to go back to my own feelings about their music. I was somewhat surprised to see I had written about their first album already (which I had forgotten, which happens after 250+ posts), so today I look at the far more problematic 2nd (or 3rd, depending on what you consider 100 Miles and Runnin’ to be) album Niggaz4Life (or technically Efil4zaggin), released in 1991. It is also their last album and, as more or less shown in the movie, was not as much of a team effort as their debut.
Read MoreInventing the Child - Fishtails, Supermen and Pilates
/
It’s finally time for another look at children’s books. I thought I had too many examples to use but because of having so many library books going through our home, I missed some opportunities of capturing some of the more interesting pages. But I still got enough as it is, so here we go.
Read MoreNorthwest Passage (1940) [1940 Week]
/![Northwest Passage (1940) [1940 Week]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54206d12e4b0e2c159748fd6/1426276460981-PGP2WCLF4Y068XERHRFT/image-asset.jpeg)
Northwest Passage is a better film than North West Mounted Police, but that doesn’t really mean that much. What makes it better is that it is filmed better, there are some spectacular scenes, the acting is better and the colors don’t blind you. When it comes to the depiction of Native Americans this might be even worse. At least it shows the extinction of Native Americans as detailed and gruesome as possible, while not taking any moral stance against it and actually justifying it most of the time. This is essentially a war movie, but instead of soldiers killing other soldiers in WWI or WWII, we have rangers taking out Native Americans. While they walk through swamps and forests, there is almost an impossible Vietnam vibe to all of it. It sort of works as a war movie adventure, in depicting the struggles the soldiers have to get through (the action scene in the river is kind of cool), the way they plan their mission and the difficulty of getting back home. In that sense it is almost enjoyable, if you ignore any ethical alarms setting of at watching the glorification of war and genocide.
Read MoreNorth West Mounted Police (1940) [1940 Week]
/![North West Mounted Police (1940) [1940 Week]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54206d12e4b0e2c159748fd6/1426275458518-7Q0RY8OT3IQBO2XEW3BE/image-asset.jpeg)
North West Mounted Police is a bad movie in many ways. It is a Cecil B. DeMille spectacle, which is what he was determined to do, but in this case the very concept of a spectacle for this story seems misguided. Using a rebellion of a minority group against the American government as a background is not a good idea, especially if it turns the rebels into caricatures and uses it to paint the North West Mounted Police, a group of horse-riding Canadian policemen, as heroes. Add in some intercultural romance, betrayal, honor and many stereotypes about natives and women and you get an overlong piece of pseudo-propaganda with overly bright colors and strange acting. It is a movie that has very problematic ethical standards and is not well-made. This is not a movie that needs to be remembered.
Read MoreComics Are for Everyone: 1940 Edition - Spanking During War Times [1940 Week]
/![Comics Are for Everyone: 1940 Edition - Spanking During War Times [1940 Week]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54206d12e4b0e2c159748fd6/1426273710324-6PFI7RL5MCUQTOH0TWA3/image-asset.jpeg)
(Coincidentally, this is the 200th post on this blog! Yes, go and count, it's true. Hooray!)
Comics in 1940 were very different than they are now. If you know anything about comics history you know that publishers back then didn’t really care about artists or writers, let alone royalties. Stories were cobbled together with no time and not much care. That the mess of the origin of many famous characters is the basis for what we still read and watch today is somewhat amazing. If you actually look at those comics, you see no great art in most cases and certainly no stories that are well-written. I decided to take a look at some #1s that came out during that year and focus on the most interesting, funny, weird or problematic panels.
Read MorePoster of a Girl - 1940 Edition: You May Kiss the Doll Now [1940 Week]
/![Poster of a Girl - 1940 Edition: You May Kiss the Doll Now [1940 Week]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54206d12e4b0e2c159748fd6/1426058902384-7JTYE8ZAGATT1K99B2AZ/image-asset.jpeg)
There’s no theme week without posters. Luckily, there aren’t so many posters to find from 1940 (at least not as easy as with more recent years), so the list is much shorter this time. Interestingly, the designs are much more sparse and simple than in later years. So, there is not quite as much to analyze as usual, but still enough, so here we go.
Read More
Poster of a Girl - Posters Can Be Champions Too
/
Time for posters again! I have an overload of movies to write about right now and an empty head when it comes to non-movie topics, so I’ll take the easy road again. I’m still always thankful for suggestions for topics, be it here in the comments or on Twitter or even Facebook. Anyway, let’s take a look at a selection of current posters taken from the IMP homepage.
Read MoreThe Land Before Time (1988) [1988 Week]
/![The Land Before Time (1988) [1988 Week]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/54206d12e4b0e2c159748fd6/1417898326581-0G8C88KAJ0JYNV3M35G5/image-asset.jpeg)
(spoilers ahead, which is only really relevant if you’re under 6, the movie is not that unpredictable)
The Land Before Time is a rather typical animated movie for its time, I’d say. I probably saw it as a kid but rewatched it now because I’m intrigued by children’s movies and the messages they’re sending. This movie is okay, I guess, but so clearly aimed at children, meaning it tries to be cute and soft all the time, with a fair amount of scares to balance it out. There isn’t much for adults here, which in turn means I think it’s not great for kids either. It doesn’t hurt them (depending on how harmful you view its messages), but it also doesn’t challenge them, except for emotional manipulation. It’s not a movie I necessarily would show to my kids.
Read MoreThis 40s Movie: Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942)
/
Yankee Doodle Dandy is from 1942. When I was watching it for The Incomparables podcast, I wasn’t sure what to expect. I know some 30s and 40s movies (and I’m anxiously waiting for my randomizer to assign a theme week from that period to me), but I’ve never analyzed them the way I do here. The oldest movie yet was Lawrence of Arabia from 1962 and twenty years is a lot. Anyway, the movie is a biopic about George M. Cohan, who I only realized after the movie, was a real person. It’s somewhat entertaining, without the songs, if you can enjoy the old-fashioned humor and acting. I found it more watchable than 1776, for example, the other movie discussed in that podcast, that I wasn’t able to even finish. It’s enjoyable enough to keep you interested, despite all the things you can expect from a 40s movie. There is not much authenticity to anything as everyone is a “character” and talks as if they’re in the musical of a movie (or the other way around). Some of the direction is noticeable, but nothing jumps at you and the filmmaking is mostly ordinary.
Read More