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Tom Ronca - 2004-05-09 13:06:47
Thank You!, Ms. Paula Carino of the Greater NY Metropolitan area -- It was my pleasure to foist my ferver for all things Maddin upon you. You can now safely put the pepper spray back into your purse. You (and all other interested parties) can go here for an unusually pereceptive review of "Saddest Music" by John Powers of the LA Weekly.
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Paula - 2004-05-09 13:21:51
This one?
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Tom Ronca - 2004-05-09 13:27:01
DUH! yes -- I forgot to paste it into my email as I sent it (I must have swooned as a result of my overwrought senses) -- it can also found here <> on the Weekly's native site
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Paula - 2004-05-09 15:56:53
I like what he says about the two brothers possibly standing in for the two sides of Canada's national ID.
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Tom Ronca - 2004-05-11 09:09:20
Yeah, I think that's true -- but they also stand-in for the two sides of Maddin's own personality (Fierce Canadian national/Cinephile of glitzy American movies). Also, the relevance of the whole contest to the current socio-political scene (America using its' own personal tragedy to extend its influence over other nations) is obviously very timely. That's basically what Kazuo Ishiguro (who wrote 'The Remains of the Day') contributed in his story idea. But Maddin took that germ and radically transmogrified it into a snapshot of his own frangible brain -- a process he's gone through for every one of his films, from the look of them. If you enjoyed 'Saddest Music' (and I gather you did), my personal favorite of his other features is 'Careful' -- I could watch the first five minutes of 'Careful' on a repeated loop for hours at a time! I think I will right now, in fact . . .
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Paula - 2004-05-11 09:18:18
Is Ishiguro's idea manifest somewhere else--a short story, a novel? Or did they just sit down together and say, "Let's write a film, there'll be a prosthetic leg workshop, Eskimo's, giant beer vats..."?
I've queued Dracula, Short #2 and Twilight of the Ice Nymphs on Netflix. Is Careful on the shorts reel?
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Tom Ronca - 2004-05-11 09:55:18
No, I think they ('they' being Maddin and his long-time collaborator, screenwriter George Toles) just took Ishiguro's existing screenplay, which was set in circa-1980's London, I believe, and transposed it to 1933 Winnipeg. The basic idea of a musical contest initiated by a beer baroness for her own financial gain is the same, but all the other elements -- the dysfunctional family melodrama, the amnesiac, the glass legs (although Maddin may have cribbed that from Matthew Barney) are all clearly Maddin and Toles. I guessed this at first from just reading a synopsis of the story, but a later interview with them (not sure which one), confirmed it. They're stuff isn't usually so, . . . ahh, political.
'Careful' is feature length, and not available through Netflix. It's put out by Kino, a small film and DVD distributer who primarily release silent films (they released the great Buster Keaton box set of a year or two ago, and many other silent classics -- 'The Last Laugh', special editions of 'Nosferatu' and 'The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari' and many, many others). Netflix doesn't seem to do much business with them -- If you had a VCR I could dub off a copy -- otherwise any better Video rental store should have a copy; as of this wriing all his features (save 'Saddest'), and a number of his shorts are available on DVD.
I should mention that 'Twilight of the Ice Nymphs' is something of a departure in form for Maddin, and he himself is not very pleased with it (although, speaking for myself, I like it just fine, its' flaws aside) but the two films bundled with it, 'Archangel' and "Heart of the World', are great. 'Dracula: Pages from a Virgin's Diary' is the only ballet you'll find in my DVD collection (come to think of it, NOT TRUE! I also have Powell & Pressburger's 'The Red Shoes' -- but because it's a Powell & Pressburger film), and probably one of the better cinematic adaptations of Stoker's too-often lensed tale. The short found on 'Short #2' is called 'The Eye Like a Strange Balloon' and seems to me a kind of dry-run for 'Heart of the World' -- which is maybe the best six minutes of cinema ever!
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