Pajiba

This trailer is amazing. I almost bought a second movie ticket last week just so I could see it again...

I'm with you on the Leni Reifenstahl thing. Of course there were people who were scared shitless of the Nazis and did nothing and kept their heads down (hell, I've seen people turn in their fellow office workers for minor infractions just because they were scared of the senior management), but Ms. Riefenstahl went way beyond and even if she felt coerced in her dark little soul, couldn't she have been subversive enough to make bad films about the Reich instead of ground-breaking films that inspired the populace? She was a piece of shit and shouldn't even have had the obligatory picture included in the "those who died" section of the Oscars a few years ago. What shocked me most about that was that a lot of people clapped.

Dude, that Across the Universe trailer had me so excited. I loooooved Titus (though I think it was more of an acquired taste kind of thing), so I hope she gets to release the version she wants. :\

Did anyone else find that trailer to be vaguely reminiscent of Hair?

I also am an extreme Beatles fan, so I can never quite grasp how performing their songs worse than they ever did qualifies as a "tribute", or an "honor". But then, I guess we have Paul McCartney and Michael Jackson to thank for that.

But, as a neo-hippie artist enticed by the surreal and anything remotely reminiscent of Tim Burton/Terry Gilliam, I'll probably end up seeing this. Also, "Across the Universe" is my favorite Beatles song. Maybe they'll use Fiona Apple's version?

Riefenstahl fascinates me---as a filmmaker, and as a cultural/political figure. She is the embodiment of the contradictory/complex which people who know me know I eat up like good ripe olives. The Jodie Foster project doesn't interest me because--well, colour me biased but, as Dustin suggested, it's doubtful that crew can handle "complexity" honestly or deftly.

I think anyone interested in challenging themselves should watch "The Wonderful Horrible Life of LR" (1993) instead (and maybe "Downfall" while they're at it--the precedent's been set). tWHLoLR left me in a permanent state of indecisiveness when it comes to LR in the sense that I can't dismiss her work; her "The Blue Light" is no question an inspiration behind stuff like Guy Maddin's "Careful", stylistically, and apparently Riefenstahl innovated a couple of camera techniques we still use today.

It's about more than film, though. I say keep these figures in our larger cultural discourse--who was it who said that, if we keep painting these people as "inhuman monsters" and trying to delete the fact of them, we risk articially separating them out of our species; we risk deceiving ourselves and failing to recognize or learn or admit that humans aren't either/or--that we are walking talking typing shitting vessels of nuance, and that beauty and vileness can be folded up into one. She embodied the Janus-headed human race, and her films are so stunning I want to cry (all the more so because of what she was involved in).

I'm ambivalent about "Across the Universe" based on the trailer. It looks like parts of it could be really really good and parts of it could suck. It also looks like it could totally suck - or be totally good. I have to admit that I am familiar with neither "Hair" nor "Titus" so I can't make any sort of judgment about the movie based on the trailer or the director. Maybe I'll see it in the theater if I get around to it. If not, I'll rent it.

Man, at this point, comparing a movie to Gilliam or (especially) Burton ain't exactly going to sell me.

Also: Titus? Seriously, people here actually liked Titus? Am I missing something? Can somebody explain the appeal? I'm not being sarcastic, just genuinely wondering, 'cause I found it kind of a dull movie with a few pretty sets and costumes.

Seriously, people here actually liked Titus?

My husband and I were both English majors. When Titus became available on DVD, my husband had to have it right away, and paid an obscene amount of money for a copy.

It's like this: Husband says that whenever someone around him starts blathering on about what a genius-god Shakespeare was, he can point to Titus Andronicus to shut them up.

The play is an incoherent mess. Awful awful awful. And then there's the movie: more awfulness on top of all that Awful that was already there! Hopkins and Lange are having SO much fun. The whole thing is irresistible.

Titus Andronicus is kinda the Plan 9 From Outer Space of the Classics.

...Does that help?

Too true, Paddy. If you haven't seen it, and at the risk of repeating myself, I think the 1993 doc is the vehicle for you. It's been a while since I saw it but as a treatment, it left me with the impression she was no "retro-edited" angel--but no Hitler, either, which was refreshing. You could really see her personality flaws lit up like marquees. If it was a "love-letter" to LR, it was only to her vision as a cinematic technician.

I'm glad you raised the point about propaganda--no modern invention but certainly a 20C concept in the sense of our awareness of it. I think LR's films are, as you suggest, perfect didactic legacies of its danger, and part of the great mid-20C shift in how we viewed propaganda after the Soviet's, Maoist's and Third Reich's (no exhaustive list--US and British wartime posters aren't far behind) great harnessing of such in new, creative ways. They're really important teaching tools--that happen to be aesthetically glorious (a friend of mind collects 20C propaganda posters and they are stunning), so they come with their own built-in warning systems when looked at by most 21C eyes (at the risk of being extremely reductive!).

Yeah, it's true--keeping LR in the discourse is not a question of whether or not she "deserves" a legacy but of what the rest of us as human communities deserve; we need standing examples like LR who was, at worst, complicit in political savagery and, at best, willfully, dangerously self-deluded/naive.

Our historical record has been fucked up enough by well-intentioned censors, whose cuts were often based on voguish values (although God forbid disgust over genocidal regimes is 'voguish' on our parts); and I think ultimately for every Jodie Foster gloss-job (if in fact this is what it turns out to be), there'll be a good counter-balancing product or conversation. At any rate, let them present her "good side", as I'm sure there was. Knowledge is knowledge, and it piles up eventually. I don't see any value in obliterating either part of the equation. I'll just keep my praise, for what that's worth, for the investigations/presentations that (like Paddy says) try to hit the fullest possible note.

but I don't really care to see him playing a lively game of kick the decapitated head around the yard, either.

Now, the music for this scene would be:
a) Light piano music
b) That Green Day "Best Time of Your Life" song?

Thanks, Jerce, that does, indeed help. Looking at Titus as camp, I can see how it could be appealing, even if that ain't enough to make me sit through it again. BTW, I was an English major, too, and my prof insisted that Titus Andronicus was intended as a subversive comedy. Of course, he was also the prof that insisted Hamlet was gay.

...my prof insisted that Titus Andronicus was intended as a subversive comedy.

I have three theories of my own: 1) Willie the Shake was paid a buttload of money by some sick bastard who wanted to see a cannibalism scene on the stage. 2) He dashed the whole thing off during the most horrendous hangover of the Elizabethan Era. 3) He had recently taken a sharp blow to the temple.

Willie the Shake was paid a buttload of money by some sick bastard who wanted to see a cannibalism scene on the stage.

Not uncommon back in the day--see Elkannah Settle's "Cambyses" and Nathaniel Lee's "Lucius Junius Brutus" for cannibalism (especially LJB--o my!). These guys aren't exactly household names in 2007, but they packed those theatres back in the day and were very well-known. People wanted grotesque violence in Restoration England that made Titus (a century earlier) look completely tame by comparison. Elizabethan and Jacobean theatre was English Restoration theatre's inspiration (see Duchess of Malfi or Edward II for English Renaissance examples).

Let's just say, before there was Eli Roth, there was Nathaniel Lee. :)

The way Dustin feels about the upcoming Magneto movie is EXACTLY how I feel about "Ocean's 13." Exactly. I am glad he was able to put it in words for me.

Hey, Ranylt, right there with you on Polanski's Macbeth--what do you think of Kurosawa's Throne of Blood?

Damn. Now you've got me trying to think of other good film treatments of Shakespeare's plays...erm...

...Damn.

Leni Riefenstahl, may you burn in hell nazi whore. Those few instances where I've seen her speak she seems to be in deeeeeeep denial if not a straight out liar, like many germans btw. I just can't shake the feeling that these folks ain't sorry about what was done. They are just sorry they got caught.

Jerce: Throne of Blood was brilliant! I've always loved that movie...made me go back to reading Shakespeare actually.

I've incidentally had Sgt. Pepper playing on repeat the last two days for no other reason than I haven't listened to it in awhile. Does this mean I'm psychic?

Yes, yes I do believe it does.

Okay, a "Magneto" movie makes me want to gouge out my own eyes, but I gotta say it also surprises me. I'd have been willing to bet body organs that they spin off they'd have gone for would have been "Wolverine."

Of course, maybe they did. If Hugh Jackman's got any sense, he said, "no."

At least it doesn't appear to have any of the Bee Gees in it. I mean it can't be as bad as St. Pepper's, right?

Janis - I agree about Ran. You know, I used to adore the Zeffirelli, but I saw it again recently and I found it unexpectedly smelly. Not sure what happened there.