Movie Releases Past, Present and Future
A few items of interest:
– Just a few days ago, I saw Fritz Lang’s silent sci-fi masterpiece Metropolis for the first time. I say “saw” as though I watched the entire thing, though that’s not quite accurate. A full thirty minutes (or 1/5 of the total runtime) has been notoriously missing from the film since its original release in 1927. So it was with great surprise that I saw this story broke on the day after I watched the movie. It seems that, like many German things, an original print of Metropolis made its way to Argentina in the late ’20s, and has been there ever since, safely tucked away in a film museum. Of course, the film is not in the best condition, but it will be cleaned up and restored, and someday (hopefully soon) a complete print of this great movie will finally exist after 80 years. Talk about the Ultimate Director’s Cut.
–Looking Closer and FilmChat both have some cool WALL•E-related ponderings posted. It is, indeed, a message movie, but its not the sort of message that certain conservative nay-sayers have angrily claimed.
From Rod Dreher via Jeffrey Overstreet:
WALL•E says that humans have within themselves the freedom to rebel, to overthrow that which dominates and alienates us from our true selves, and our own nature. But you have to question the prime directive; that is, you have to become conscious of how the way you’re living is destroying your body and killing your soul, and choose to resist. WALL•E contends that real life is hard, real life is struggle, and that we live most meaningfully not by avoiding pain and struggle, but by engaging it creatively, and sharing that struggle in community.
From Peter Chattaway in response to a comment by WALL•E director Andrew Stanton:
So the film is saying that people are like robots that need to rise above their programming to be truly human — to experience love and the “I-Thou” of interpersonal relationships? And all the rampant “consumerism” depicted in the film is not there to make a political statement so much as it is to make an existential statement about our enslavement to our basic, mechanistic, animalistic impulses — our enslavement, in other words, to “the flesh”? (Or to our “passions”, as the Fathers might say?)
Yeah, I can dig that. I can totally dig that.
-In the up-and-coming department, there’s a trailer out for the remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still, which will star (among others) Keanu Reeves. I am extremely underwhelmed.
And, finally, here’s one of those early rave reviews for The Dark Knight you may have heard about. Sounds like it’s going to revolutionize everything we thought we knew about superhero cinema. Expectations . . . Rising . . . Must . . . Resist . . .
Moviegoings 