Filmography
Aug. 9th, 2009 03:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_lady_lilyA Prarie Home Companion
This is a lovely, lovely piece of filmmaking, from Robert Altman of Gosford Park fame. The film charts the last night of a radio show called A Prarie Home Companion, hosted by Garrison Keillor - the real-life Keillor acted his own part, wrote the script, still hosts the show on public radio, and has recently joined the APA Capital Campaign's Honorary Advisory Committee. The general sense of the Companion is sort of a review show - jingles, songs, stories, jokes, adverts from local sponsors.
The story is framed by the narration of Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), a private eye type turned security gentleman for the show, who tries to convince the bigwig (Tommy Lee Jones) from the company that has just bought the theatre where the show is performed not to axe it, with no success. At the same time he is trying to keep an eye on a woman in a white trenchcoat (Virginia Madsen) who is wandering about the theatre causing not a small bit of trouble as she goes.
There are rivalries on stage as well - the famous singing Johnson sisters, Yolanda and Rhonda (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), along with Yolanda's stroppy teenage daughter (the excellently cast Lindsay Lohan) are not only rubbing up against each other the wrong way, but against Keillor at the same time - not to mention the cowboy duo Lefty and Dusty (John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson), who make crude jokes and hopeful sexual advances just out of force of habit as much as anything else.
The glory of this film is in its vignettes, its capturing of relationships between people, of the small, quiet moments as much as the big show-stopping parts. The minutiae of life, beautifully caught on film, the way that something else is always going on. Altman also captures the lyrical calm, the progression of the show despite everything else, beautifully. Five stars, quite happily.
As Time Goes By, series 1, 2 and 3
Discovering Waiting for God was not enough - I've unearthed all nine series of As Time Goes By as well. This is of joy, as it is the first time I ever saw Judi Dench (or indeed Geoffrey Palmer), and it is a delight to be able to watch the story from beginning to end. For those of you not familiar with the story, Jean and Lionel fell in love - but Lionel was posted to Korea. Lionel wrote, but his letter never arrived. They lost touch - and suddenly find each other again, thirty eight years later, and romance (as you might have guessed) blossoms. Lionel has been planting coffee in Kenya, but has given up on that to come back to England, leaving a divorced wife behind him. Jean married and had a daughter, but was widowed early on; she now runs a secretarial agency with said daughter, Judy, and her competent right hand woman, Sandy.
This feels a lot more substantial than Waiting for God, because while there are some jolly funny bits, there's also some real drama played out there. I am enjoying it a great deal, am halfway through series four, and no doubt will have done the lot by the end of the year. You can really see how the characters are fleshing out, and how the relationships between them are becoming more complex and interesting as the writers start settling in. Hurrah.
Doctor Who: The Aztecs
This shouldn't really be turning up here yet, but lo, here it is. G and I have decided to start from the beginning with the Who franchise, which means going all the way back to the first Doctor, the splendid William Hartnell, and his companions - his granddaughter, Susan, and the history teachers Ian and Barbara. In this sequence of episodes, they arrive in the Aztec period, Barbara is mistaken for a reincarnated thingie, the Tardis is locked in a tomb, and general chaos and trying to avert human sacrifice ensues.
The sense is generally that Barbara, who specialised in Aztecs, wants to stop them being barbaric and sacrificing people, and the Doctor won't allow it because you can't change history. There are some wonderful performances here, not least of all from bloodthirsty Tlotoxl, priest of sacrifice, who suspects Barbara is not in fact the high priestess Yetaxa returned after all, and wanders about looking suitable grand-vizier-ish. Plus William Hartell flirts with an elderly Aztec lady and accidentally gets engaged, which I thought was a wonderful bit of plottage handled very nicely. Oh, and there's an awful lot of homoerotic wrestling and not-very-well co-ordinated fight scenes. And the warrior's costume that's supposed to look like a condor looks more like a giant chicken.
Anyway. We enjoyed this very much - and are coming to the conclusion that William Hartnell probably could give David Tennant a run for his money as far as the ladies are concerned. Four stars.
This is a lovely, lovely piece of filmmaking, from Robert Altman of Gosford Park fame. The film charts the last night of a radio show called A Prarie Home Companion, hosted by Garrison Keillor - the real-life Keillor acted his own part, wrote the script, still hosts the show on public radio, and has recently joined the APA Capital Campaign's Honorary Advisory Committee. The general sense of the Companion is sort of a review show - jingles, songs, stories, jokes, adverts from local sponsors.
The story is framed by the narration of Guy Noir (Kevin Kline), a private eye type turned security gentleman for the show, who tries to convince the bigwig (Tommy Lee Jones) from the company that has just bought the theatre where the show is performed not to axe it, with no success. At the same time he is trying to keep an eye on a woman in a white trenchcoat (Virginia Madsen) who is wandering about the theatre causing not a small bit of trouble as she goes.
There are rivalries on stage as well - the famous singing Johnson sisters, Yolanda and Rhonda (Meryl Streep and Lily Tomlin), along with Yolanda's stroppy teenage daughter (the excellently cast Lindsay Lohan) are not only rubbing up against each other the wrong way, but against Keillor at the same time - not to mention the cowboy duo Lefty and Dusty (John C. Reilly and Woody Harrelson), who make crude jokes and hopeful sexual advances just out of force of habit as much as anything else.
The glory of this film is in its vignettes, its capturing of relationships between people, of the small, quiet moments as much as the big show-stopping parts. The minutiae of life, beautifully caught on film, the way that something else is always going on. Altman also captures the lyrical calm, the progression of the show despite everything else, beautifully. Five stars, quite happily.
As Time Goes By, series 1, 2 and 3
Discovering Waiting for God was not enough - I've unearthed all nine series of As Time Goes By as well. This is of joy, as it is the first time I ever saw Judi Dench (or indeed Geoffrey Palmer), and it is a delight to be able to watch the story from beginning to end. For those of you not familiar with the story, Jean and Lionel fell in love - but Lionel was posted to Korea. Lionel wrote, but his letter never arrived. They lost touch - and suddenly find each other again, thirty eight years later, and romance (as you might have guessed) blossoms. Lionel has been planting coffee in Kenya, but has given up on that to come back to England, leaving a divorced wife behind him. Jean married and had a daughter, but was widowed early on; she now runs a secretarial agency with said daughter, Judy, and her competent right hand woman, Sandy.
This feels a lot more substantial than Waiting for God, because while there are some jolly funny bits, there's also some real drama played out there. I am enjoying it a great deal, am halfway through series four, and no doubt will have done the lot by the end of the year. You can really see how the characters are fleshing out, and how the relationships between them are becoming more complex and interesting as the writers start settling in. Hurrah.
Doctor Who: The Aztecs
This shouldn't really be turning up here yet, but lo, here it is. G and I have decided to start from the beginning with the Who franchise, which means going all the way back to the first Doctor, the splendid William Hartnell, and his companions - his granddaughter, Susan, and the history teachers Ian and Barbara. In this sequence of episodes, they arrive in the Aztec period, Barbara is mistaken for a reincarnated thingie, the Tardis is locked in a tomb, and general chaos and trying to avert human sacrifice ensues.
The sense is generally that Barbara, who specialised in Aztecs, wants to stop them being barbaric and sacrificing people, and the Doctor won't allow it because you can't change history. There are some wonderful performances here, not least of all from bloodthirsty Tlotoxl, priest of sacrifice, who suspects Barbara is not in fact the high priestess Yetaxa returned after all, and wanders about looking suitable grand-vizier-ish. Plus William Hartell flirts with an elderly Aztec lady and accidentally gets engaged, which I thought was a wonderful bit of plottage handled very nicely. Oh, and there's an awful lot of homoerotic wrestling and not-very-well co-ordinated fight scenes. And the warrior's costume that's supposed to look like a condor looks more like a giant chicken.
Anyway. We enjoyed this very much - and are coming to the conclusion that William Hartnell probably could give David Tennant a run for his money as far as the ladies are concerned. Four stars.
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no subject
Date: 2009-08-09 08:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-09 08:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-09 09:22 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-09 09:34 pm (UTC)Ooh, good decision! I look forward to hearing your thoughts on more from this era.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-09 09:35 pm (UTC)We are enjoying it a great deal so far - I'm not engaging with it as intellectually as you have been, because it is Silly Television, but it's all good stuff.
no subject
Date: 2009-08-27 11:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-08-28 11:15 am (UTC)