Les Miserables (2012)

Last weekend I watched the blue rays of Les Miserables (2012) and The Great Gatsby (2013).  This was the first time I had seen either film.

Although I panned Baz Luhrmann's Gatsby, I can't find enough good things to say about Tom Hoopers Les Mis.

The cast is stellar.  Everyone can sing as well as act.  (Russell Crowe can sing!  Who knew?).  A large group of singers who had been in the stage version in London's West End were brought in to fill minor roles in the film.  Even though it's an opera, everyone is believable in his or her role.

I criticized Gatsby a lot for its over the top CGI that made the movie look like a cartoon.  Les Mis has a lot of CGI shots which look like CGI shots but it doesn't detract from the film's realistic impact. There is such emotion which comes through the actors' performances and the music that the staging becomes secondary.  They probably could have performed this in costume on a blank stage and it still would have been good.

Definitely FIVE OUT OF FIVE.

The Great Gatsby (2013)

This should have been a great movie.  It's got a lot of very good actors, it's mostly faithful to the novel it's based on, and it's visually stunning.  But it's not a good movie.  It's just an OK movie.

First thing is the music.  No matter how much you want to attract young audiences, hip-hop has no place in a movie about the 1920s.  Some authentic jazz age sounds would have probably made this movie hop.

The eye-popping CGI (this thing was released in 3-D; a movie based on a literary classsic in 3-D?) makes The Great Gatsby look like Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

I also found the acting to be a bit flat.  Lionardo DiCaprio is trying, but his fake blue blood accent with "Old Sport" every other word makes Gatsby comical rather than the mysterious tragic figure presented in Fitzgerald's novel.

The Bad Catholic gives it 2 out of 5.

WAGNER (1983)

Watching all 7 hours and 46 minutes of Richard Burton's magnificent portrayal of the composer Richard Wagner is about like watching a Wagner opera itself.  It's very good, but it's also exhausting.

This was Richard Burton's last role.  Although the veteran actor was only in his mid fifties, most likely because of his hard drinking, he looks much older.  This creates the only problem I have with this film.  The movie opens with Wagner as Kappelmeister in Dresden when Wagner was about age 34.  Playing the 34 year old Wagner, the 55 year old Burton looks like he's about 70.  

The real Cosima and Richard Wagner with son Siegfried

Burton's portrayal of the older Wagner, however, is truly magnificent.  There are great performances here.  This is the only film in which Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, and Sir Ralph Richardson appear in a scene together.

Vanessa Redgrave as Cosima Wagner

The movie is true to Wagner's life, worts and all.  All the eccentricities, anti-semitism, and genius are on full display.  Vanessa Redgrave is also very good as Wagner's mistress and then second wife, Cosima.  As a matter of fact, Redgrave and Burton are probably a lot better looking in the roles than the real people.

Richardson, Olivier and Gielgud

The perfomances of Laszlo Galffi as King Ludwig of Bavaria with Olivier, Gielgud and Richardson as his ministers is great.  The score of Wagner's "greatest hits" was conducted by the renowned Wagner conducter Sir Georg Solti and was specially recorded for the film.

This movie is a must for all "Wagnerites" and opera fans.  The Bad Catholic gives it five out of five violins.

Nazisploitation: The Nazi Image In Low-Brow Cinema And Culture

In the introduction to the book Nazisploitation: The Nazi Image in Low-Brow Cinema and Culture (Continuum Books, 2012),  University of Tennessee Professor Daniel H. Magilow quotes New York Times movie reviewer Vincent Canby as writing in 1974 "If it's possible to reconstruct the interests, attitudes and values of a lost society from its garbage, then perhaps we should take a closer look at some of the junk that's passing through our movie theaters these days.  Would you want a future historian speculating about your life on the basis of a mossy old print of Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS?"

Well, that's exactly what this book of scholarly essays seeks to do: examine what the genre of "Nazisploitation" movies says about society.   They run the gamut from pure exploitation movies like Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS and Eurotrash like Last Orgy of the SS to so called "art films" like The Night Porter, The Damned and Salon Kitty.

Although some of the essays were merely pretentious academic posturing, the majority of the book was fascinating.  Why do we find Nazis sexy?  What is the attraction people have to watching kinky BDSM set in a concentration camp?

The book is really interesting when it examines whether "art house" films like The Night Porter are art or merely jumped up exploitation movies.  Why is that picture of Charlotte Rampling topless wearing a Nazi uniform hat and pants seemingly everywhere in popular culture? Is Tarantino's Inglorious Basterds  a Nazisploitation film? The essay on Nazi Zombies is also very enlightening.

I don't want to know what it says about me that I'm interested in this subject.  However,  I would recommend this book highly to anyone with more than a passing interest in this sick subject.