Movies in April

Very busy, lots of writing getting done around these parts. Got a little sidetracked from the WIP by a flash fiction competition at SFFEditors, but I got a pretty cool little story out of it (and got to read some even cooler ones). I'm still on track to wrap this thing up by the end of June, provided I work very, very hard.

At any rate, I'm a bit late recapping the movies from April, but there weren't too many. In the Charlie Chaplin category, A King in New York was perhaps too didactic. Being written after he had left the US, it is a bit too much about how one can read and think about communist theories without being a communist, and reading and thinking about lots of things is good. There is a funny bit when the title character goes out to the movies and then to a dinner club. A Woman in Paris is another late Chaplin, one he wrote and directed but didn't appear in. It has a very Russian literary sort of feel. So, yeah, a bit of a downer. Limelight was wonderful. I do believe this is the last film he made before leaving the US; it's a story of a young panic-prone dancer and an old alcoholic comic. It also features a cameo by Buster Keaton. If only they'd done a whole film together, a buddy film. That would have been something to see. We also watched three shorts: The Good for Nothing, Charlie's Recreation and Work. Very much minor works, and one of them had been given a descriptive narration that just pissed me off. I can see what's happening here and can tell the characters apart all on my own, thank you very much. Not sure who's idea that was.

One more Hitchcock: Notorious. A film which up until now I only knew as the source for one of the scenes in Dead Men Don't Wear Plaid. (Also, I think the little girl in The Lake House is watching it in her hospital room). You can't go wrong with Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant. We actually watched this twice; the first time through none of us spotted Hitchcock's cameo. So of course we had to watch it again to find him.

This is It, the Michael Jackson documentary of the tour that never was. It was like the special features for a really awesome concert DVD that never was. I felt bad for those young dancers, who came so close to sharing a stage with their idol and then had it snatched away.

Red Cliff is a Chinese film by John Woo, or rather two films that tell one story. And what a story it is, an epic battle in the three kingdoms period with gorgeous sets and costumes and one slow reveal of an enormous armada of ships that felt like John Woo one-upping Troy. More like ten-upping; it's an awesome shot. I also loved the fight scenes that just flirted with the beginnings of wu xia moves. No one did anything too unbelievable, but you could see where the soldiers watching the heroes fight would imbelish their feats in the telling. This is long but so worth seeing.

The Men Who Stare at Goats was delightful but strange. At the end of it I wasn't sure exactly what I had just seen, but I liked it. It has a Coen Brothers vibe but a lot more unanswered questions than the Coen Brothers usually leave.

Just one Hindi film, Pyaasa, from Guru Dutt, the director of Sahib, Bibi aur Ghulam. This shares that films gorgeous melancholy. It's like Southern gothic, only Indian, if that makes sense. Guru Dutt was the Orson Welles of India, writing, directing and starring in his films. It's a shame he died so young, he told some achingly lovely stories.

OK, wrapping up this month with a number from Swades, a movie I saw back in February, but this number has hung with me. Here's Shah Rukh Khan, teaching a village about astronomy and breaking down the segregation that divides them, all in one song and dance to an AR Rahman song: