1A4 Studio recently created a condensed animated version of The Big Lebowski (1998), boiled down to one minute. So, grab a White Russian and sit back and enjoy the next sixty seconds of your life.
1A4 Studio previously made similar short films condensing other movies like The Matrix (1999), Back to the Future (1985), and Star Wars (1977). Here is Blade Runner (1982) in 60 seconds.
What is your favorite second in the videos? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Movieclips put together a compilation of movie scenes tracing life from birth through death called “Birth to Death as told by Cinema – A Life in Film Mashup.” Some of the clips go by fast, but you will recognize many of them. And the effect of the way they are put together with narration from Orson Welle’s F for Fake (1973) is pretty cool. Check it out.
The Welles narration largely comes from Rudyard Kipling’s poem “The Conundrum of the Workshops.” As Slate notes, the scenes are heavily male-centered, which is true of the movies in general. Movieclips has responded that he was trying to make it somewhat autobiographical and tell a coherent story connected together for one similar person (but he is appreciative of the revelation and will be more aware of the issue in future videos).
What is your favorite part of “Birth to Death as told by Cinema”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
How you react to Margaret (2011) may depend on whether or not you enjoy imperfect movies that are challenging and ambitious. I spent much of the movie wondering where it was going to go as it continuously surprised me. While at times the movie made me uncomfortable with all of its flawed characters, I ultimately realized that I will be thinking about this one for a long time.
Margaret centers around Lisa Cohen, a teenager played by Anna Paquin, who witnesses and is indirectly partly responsible for a bus accident that kills a woman who dies in Lisa’s arms. Lisa is severely affected by the accident, beginning with her decision about whether or not she should tell the police that the bus driver was distracted and ran a red light. From there, the teen alternates between struggling with her decisions and acting out in various ways. Her parents are divorced, and her actress mother is distracted by a play and dating while her father is far away. Her teachers at school — including ones played by Matt Damon and Matthew Broderick — have their own flaws, as does everyone in the movie. Those flaws help make Margaret portray the messiness of real life.
Margaret has a number of stars in non-starring roles. In addition to Damon and Broderick, Jean Reno plays the love interest of Lisa’s mother and Mark Ruffalo plays the bus driver. J. Smith-Cameron plays Lisa’s mother.
The movie, directed by Ken Lonergan, was actually made in 2005 and scheduled for release in 2007 but it only finally made it to a limited number of theaters in 2011 and was released on DVD last year. A number of issues contributed to the long delay, including that Lonergan reportedly struggled with editing the movie as the studio wanted him to cut his nearly three-hour movie to under 150 minutes, leading to lawsuits. Martin Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker were called in to create an edit, and although Lonergan approved their edit, his longer version is available on the new Blu-ray/DVD release. I watched the edited version on HBO. This “short” 150-minute version had a number of long lingering shots that some may or may not like, but I am curious about the longer one. David Edelstein at NPR has written how he thought the short version was flawed but he loved the extended cut.
Others have noted that what makes the 2005 shooting interesting is that it places the making of the film and the film’s setting nearer to 9/11. Not only do Lisa and her classmates debate terrorism, the movie touches on post 9/11 themes like blame, guilt, and how one act can touch so many people. Paquin, who played a young girl in 2002’s 25th Hour (one of the best movies that featured 9/11’s effects) and is in True Blood, does an excellent job.
Paquin plays someone we completely empathize with at the beginning but who is an annoying teenager at times. But that is part of the point, as Lonergan captures how we feel things more passionately as teenagers before we become cynical adults. If you understand why someone acts the way they do, can you still empathize with them even when they are less than perfect? That is one of the questions of civilization, and Lonergan asks us to ask ourselves that question as he illustrates how humans fail to connect with each other.
Conclusion? Not everyone will like Margaret. But if you are in the mood for a challenging movie raising moral, ethical, and human issues, you might enjoy this one. Or at least you will be thinking about it for a long time and looking up Gerard Manley Hopkins’s poem “Spring and Fall,” about a young girl encountering death, to help you figure out why a movie named “Margaret” does not have anyone with that name.
Other Reviews Because Why Should You Trust Me?: The split between critics (71%) and audience members (49%) on Rotten Tomatoes shows how viewers may be divided between loving and hating Margaret. Peter Travers at Rolling Stone gives Margaret three and half out of four stars, acknowledging its flaws while concluding it is a “film of rare beauty and shocking gravity.” By contrast, Amy Curtis at We Got This Covered calls Margaret “pointless” and disorganized.
{Missed Movies is our continuing series on good films you might have missed because they did not receive the recognition they deserved when released.}
What did you think of Margaret? Leave your two cents in the comments.
A new video from NextMovie compiled all of the references to movies that occurred during the first five seasons of The Simpsons. Some are more obvious than others (like the Lawrence of Arabia one), but the video helps you out by telling you the movies. 2016 Update: Unfortunately, that video is no longer available, but below is a similar compilation of movie references from the first two seasons. This video was created by Quiritare Cinema.
How many do you recognize? Check it out.
What is your favorite Simpsons movie reference? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Many commentators have noticed the parallels between Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan and Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. Several parallels are intentional, but is one of the biggest similarities just a coincidence? Note that this post has spoilers for both Moby Dick and Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.
The Wrath of Khan (“TWOK“) mirrors the overrding theme of vengeance from Moby Dick. Just as Ahab is driven by his desire for vengeance against the white whale, TWOK focuses on Khan’s obsessive quest for vengeance against Captain Kirk (William Shatner). The movie writers’ intent is reinforced with Herman Melville’s book appearing in one scene and Khan quoting or paraphrasing from Moby Dickat points (“to the last I grapple with thee; from Hell’s heart I stab at thee; for hate’s sake, I spit my last breath at thee”). Finally, the ending of TWOK is almost identical to the ending of Moby Dick. But what is interesting is that, despite all of the intentional similarities, it appears that this major similarity about the two endings is entirely coincidental.
In the end of TWOK, after Spock dies, his body is sent off in a photon torpedo as his coffin. In one of the final scenes, we see that this “coffin” has landed on the planet where Genesis is bringing the planet back to life.
The test version of the film, though, omitted the final coffin-on-the-rejuvinating-planet scene. Various sources, including Wikipedia, explain that Leonard Nimoy had initially agreed to reprise his role as Mr. Spock in TWOK only because his character would finally be killed. But, as the filming was coming to a close, Nimoy had enjoyed the making of the movie so much, he wanted to allow for Spock’s return if they so chose. So, the scene of Spock mind melding with Dr. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) was added, but the initial cut of the movie still ended in a way that appeared to make Spock’s death final. Only after test audiences reacted poorly to seeing the icon’s death did producer Harve Bennett add the final scene showing Spock’s coffin on the rejuvenating planet with Nimoy’s voiceover of the traditional Star Trek series opening monologue.
The director, Nicholas Myer objected to the changes but allowed them. According to his director’s commentary on the video, he believed it was cheating to change the finality of the death scene (and having no interest in a resurrection story, he declined an offer to direct Star Trek III: The Search for Spock). In the commentary, he explains that as the movie was being finalized, producers realized that they might want to continue the series. And so the movie has the ending we all know:
Other sources confirm the story about the changes to the ending of TWOK. The book Star Trek and Sacred Ground, by Jennifer E. Porter and Darcee L. McLaren, reports that the first versions of the film did not include the scenes with Spock’s coffin landing on the Genesis planet. (p. 155.) A 2010 Los Angeles Times article noted Nimoy’s response to seeing the coffin scene: ”I was caught by surprise by the ending…. I was sitting there watching it and the camera goes across some foliage, some mist — a little magical kind of look — and guess what, there’s the black tube … whoa, I think I’m going to get a call from Paramount.”
So why is it interesting that the final scene was an afterthought and not planned from the start? Because so much of the rest of the movie echoes Moby Dick, and in the classic novel, a coffin plays an important role. Aboard the novel’s ship the Pequod, the character Queequeg at one point thought he was dying and had a coffin built for him. At the end of the novel, the obsessed Ahab is killed by his obsession just as the obsessed Khan is effectively killed by his obsession Kirk. Then, the book’s narrator Ishmael survives because after the Pequod is destroyed, he uses the coffin as a life buoy, just as Spock is left with a coffin after the Enterprise is almost destroyed. As Ishmael is adrift after the ship’s destruction, he describes his discovery of a “black bubble” in the ocean:
“[T]he black bubble upward burst; and now, liberated by reason of its cunning spring, and owing to its great buoyancy, rising with great force, the coffin like-buoy shot lengthwise from the sea, fell over, and floated by my side. Buoyed up by that coffin, for almost one whole day and night, I floated on a soft and dirge-like main. The unharming sharks, they glided by as if with padlocks on their mouths; the savage sea-hawks sailed with sheathed beaks. On the second day, a sail drew near, nearer, and picked me up at last.”
[Update February 2015: The final coffin scene from the Gregory Peck movie does not seem to be on YouTube any longer, but below is a trailer for the movie.]
When I first saw The Wrath of Khan in the movie theater, because of the Moby Dick references, I thought the director intended to invoke Moby Dick again at the end. Just as the classic novel ended with Ishmael surviving in a scene with a coffin, I thought the producers’ message with the final coffin scene was designed to evoke Ishmael’s survival, revealing that Spock would live again. While they did intend to imply Spock might live again, it seems it was a coincidence that the way they did it once again invoked Moby Dick.
Were the similar endings a coincidence? What do you think? Leave a comment.
Bonus Moby Dick References: There are a couple of other parallels between Moby Dick and Star Trek outside The Wrath of Khan. Captain Picard, i.e., Patrick Stewart, starred in a TV version of Moby Dick and like Khan he quoted the book in a Star Trek movie, Star Trek: First Contact (1996).
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, by Jennifer E. Porter and Darcee L. McLaren, reports that the first versions of the film did not include the scenes with Spock’s coffin landing on the Genesis planet. (p. 155.) A 2010