October Movies
Nov. 4th, 2017 07:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerJulie owns a box set of classic Universal Monsters films, so we attempted to crammed as many of them into October as we could, although in the end we only managed two: the 1932 The Mummy and the 1931 Dracula, both of which feature women mind-controlled by the eponymous monstrous man into some sort of romantic relationship. I guess that’s just the most terrifying thing in the world in the 1930s? From the perspective of 2017 neither of these movies seemed particularly frightening (which is good, because I’m a total baby about horror movies).
I also saw a bunch of movies in theaters this month! Going to theaters by myself is my new favorite thing. Two of them I have already posted about, but I didn’t manage to get to Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, which is about the creator of Wonder Woman and the two women who were the loves of his life and also in love with each other (at least according to the movie; there’s apparently some debate about how they felt about each other IRL) and all lived together in a love triangle in suburbia after the whole thing got the Marstons fired, on account of how the young lady was one of their students when they were both psychology professors.
...Frankly this sounds super unethical but hey, they seem to have been happy together, so I guess that worked out in the end. The sex scenes were hot like burning (there is one scene where Elizabeth Marston is wrapping a rope around Olive - not even tying her up, just wrapping it around - and Olive makes this sound - ) and I thought it was just really well done, overall.
Also, my mother and I went to see Ponyo on the big screen at the ArtCraft. (She’s never seen a Studio Ghibli film before! I may be able to entice her into watching Arrietty with me: she read The Borrowers to me in my youth.) I do like it, but it’s never been my favorite Ghibli film: I just can’t get over the essential weirdness of the fact that the sea sorcerer and the sea goddess decide that it’s a good idea to let the fate of the earth hinge on the faithful trueness of Sosuke’s love for Ponyo. Sosuke’s great, but - he’s five! How many people are forever faithful and true to the person they loved when they were five? Is Ponyo going to turn back into a fish if Sosuke’s attentions wander?
Other movies I saw this month: Steel Magnolias! Which has been on my radar forever as one of the famous movies about female friendship - I’m always seeing it “Movies about Female Friendship” lists like the one where I found Ghost World - and, unlike Ghost World, the female friendships here are actually strong and positive and really the main point of the movie, so that has restored some of my trust in those lists.
Having said that, it’s not really my kind of movie - I think you could classify it as a weepy and that’s just not my thing - but nonetheless I’m glad I’ve seen it and finally have it off my Netflix queue.
Also How to Steal a Million, an Audrey Hepburn movie that I first saw in high school and adored, and watched again this month and… did not adore as much. Not that I disliked it, but it did not cause the same enormous upwelling of delight that I remembered and I am concerned that this means that my sense of joy has gone into a state of hopeless atrophy.
I also saw a bunch of movies in theaters this month! Going to theaters by myself is my new favorite thing. Two of them I have already posted about, but I didn’t manage to get to Professor Marston and the Wonder Women, which is about the creator of Wonder Woman and the two women who were the loves of his life and also in love with each other (at least according to the movie; there’s apparently some debate about how they felt about each other IRL) and all lived together in a love triangle in suburbia after the whole thing got the Marstons fired, on account of how the young lady was one of their students when they were both psychology professors.
...Frankly this sounds super unethical but hey, they seem to have been happy together, so I guess that worked out in the end. The sex scenes were hot like burning (there is one scene where Elizabeth Marston is wrapping a rope around Olive - not even tying her up, just wrapping it around - and Olive makes this sound - ) and I thought it was just really well done, overall.
Also, my mother and I went to see Ponyo on the big screen at the ArtCraft. (She’s never seen a Studio Ghibli film before! I may be able to entice her into watching Arrietty with me: she read The Borrowers to me in my youth.) I do like it, but it’s never been my favorite Ghibli film: I just can’t get over the essential weirdness of the fact that the sea sorcerer and the sea goddess decide that it’s a good idea to let the fate of the earth hinge on the faithful trueness of Sosuke’s love for Ponyo. Sosuke’s great, but - he’s five! How many people are forever faithful and true to the person they loved when they were five? Is Ponyo going to turn back into a fish if Sosuke’s attentions wander?
Other movies I saw this month: Steel Magnolias! Which has been on my radar forever as one of the famous movies about female friendship - I’m always seeing it “Movies about Female Friendship” lists like the one where I found Ghost World - and, unlike Ghost World, the female friendships here are actually strong and positive and really the main point of the movie, so that has restored some of my trust in those lists.
Having said that, it’s not really my kind of movie - I think you could classify it as a weepy and that’s just not my thing - but nonetheless I’m glad I’ve seen it and finally have it off my Netflix queue.
Also How to Steal a Million, an Audrey Hepburn movie that I first saw in high school and adored, and watched again this month and… did not adore as much. Not that I disliked it, but it did not cause the same enormous upwelling of delight that I remembered and I am concerned that this means that my sense of joy has gone into a state of hopeless atrophy.
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Date: 2017-11-05 07:51 pm (UTC)The same thing happened to queer representation, which is part of the reason Richard Barrios wrote Screened Out: Playing Gay in Hollywood from Edison to Stonewall (2003), which I am enjoying very much. It affects post-Code movies, too: I was surprised the first time I saw a woman with an "atypical" role in film noir. The more noir I've watched, the more I've realized that the spectrum of female representation and agency is actually much wider than the narrow band of femme fatale/good girl which has been handed down through popular reception and neo-noir. Kirk Drift strikes again.
Are there any good books about the transition to the Code and how it changed movies?
Mick LaSalle's Complicated Women: Sex and Power in Pre-Code Hollywood (2000) and Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man (2002) are two of the best books I have found about pre-Code movies, the actors and actresses who flourished in them, and the changes that were wrought on the representation of sexuality and gender by the enforcement of the Production Code. Thomas Doherty's Pre-Code Hollywood: Sex, Immorality, and Insurrection in American Cinema, 1930–1934 (1999) is supposed to be seminal, but LaSalle writes so much better about movies and actors that I'd start with him.
no subject
Date: 2017-11-05 09:48 pm (UTC)