Black + White Friday: The Wizard of Oz

I'm still buzzing from seeing Wicked last weekend. I know the opening passage of the 1939 classic, The Wizard of Oz, is in black and white, but I wondered if the film would be half as magical if the entire film were filmed in the colour palate. Consider it a mad experiment by the Wizard, of sorts.


It's in the second half of the eighteenth minute that the transition to colour finally occurs (I coulda swore it wasn't that long!) and, as you can surely imagine, it doesn't quite have the same impact in black and white.


Munchkinland just doesn't look as fun, does it? Technicolor, bless!


Watching this scene reminds me of that old black and white filmmaking technique where the costumes would be in crazy colours that merely worked well in black and white, which is why "colorization" is so bizarre. If black and white movies were changed to colour they'd be horrific and crazy-coloured. Case in point - the Wicked Witch of the West. She's a bright green, yet you wouldn't know it by looking at this black and white version. She just looks like she has a strong tan.


David Lynch. He loves The Wizard of Oz. Just watch Wild at Heart for proof (witches! face makeup! bubbles! etc!) However, one thing I only just thought about was how similar the Scarecrow in Oz looks like that undescribable horrible clown-face being from INLAND EMPIRE. The Scarecrow's face is scary if you think about it. He has a bag for a head, yet he has facial muscles, lips and eyes that move. Imagine if the baghead character from The Strangers suddenly started talking!


Without all those crazy technicolours, it all looks a bit like camouflage.


On one hand, I wish the lion didn't look so silly with his obvious costume-wearing, but then I also think that's part of the charm. It is almost like watching an incredibly high budget school production, at times.


This is one moment that still looks gorgeous compared to the original.


It just struck me now, but I think Santa Claus Conquers the Martians look a bit of influence from this movie.


This looks like something out of an underground fringe performance art show involving dungeons, kimonos and S&M, which is a frightening prospect, I think we can all agree. Perhaps the cast can smoke the Wicked Witch's ashes as opposed to Kurt Cobain's.


I feel like she should be about to go into the dance routine from The Red Shoes! Wouldn't that be surreal?!

Black + White Friday: Open Range

The reason behind the decision to choose Kevin Costner's great western (one of the few I actually really like) for this series was because, as will become blatantly obvious, this movie is goooorgeous! It's as simple as that, really.


I've never particularly been a big Robert Duvall fan, but I am a big fan of his performance in this movie. He really has that ol' timer American thing down pat doesn't he? Costner sure did know how to open this movie, huh?


One of the things I noticed about these early cattle driving scenes is how similar the scenes from Brokeback Mountain are. Like, incredibly so. Of course, I guess it can't be helped when they share the same region and the same setup of men directing animals across it.


Doesn't this look like a shot taken directly out of a western from the 1950s? These initial town scenes are so good at setting up the shootout sequence at the end. Showing all the buildings and the doors and the little side alleys. Costner really did a great job here, it's such a shame he and the movie go largely unheralded.


Again, it's almost as if it's a 1950s film. You could be forgiven for thinking this was A Boy and His Best Friend or something equally saccharine and kiddy-friendly.


Annette Bening is not this film's greatest asset, although she's quite good, but it's nice to see her in a smaller quieter role than we've seen her do this decade. I chose this screenshot because I thought it was funny. She's not trying to make a face, she's just speaking that way.


I like how the rain drops sort of look like film scratches such as the two over Derek Jeter's face and the one just above Costner's (on the right) shoulder.


Yet more examples of the film's backgrounds appearing to be both real and matte at the same time. This is the moment where Costner says the best line in the film - "Men are gonna get killed here today, Sue. And I'm gonna kill 'em." Kinda gives me shivers.


Oh yes, Costner may be striving for classic, but that doesn't mean he can't give in to artsy look-at-me shots. I imagine an M Night Shyamalan western would be full of crazy camera angles so let's hope that never happens.


No reason, I just really like this shot.


I've said it before and I'll say it again, Costner's shootout in Open Range is perhaps the best ever. Yes, ever. It's amazing. Truly astounding. And watching this really makes the shortcomings of the recent 3:10 to Yuma standout. I don't remember a single action sequence from that film, when they should scream out to be remembered.

Black + White Friday: Birth

Apologies for not being around last week to do this feature, but by the time I got home at 11.45pm (and having left the house at 6am, too!) I had been having a bad day and didn't feel like screencapping if you know what I mean!


My affections for Jonathan Glazer's elegiacal 2004 film Birth are quite well documented. Best film of 2004! Best performance by Nicole Kidman! Best score in modern cinema! etc! Well, I found it odd that I have never even considered using the film for "Black+White Friday", especially since the film is beautiful and I think Harris Savides' dreamy cinematography will prove equally as intoxicating in black and white as it does in those near-sepia candlelight hues that it is bathed it to perfection.


I think it's quite obvious to everyone and sundry that Jonathan Glazer was fixated by Nicole Kidman while making this movie (understandable, really). And she looks stunning here. If she were around during the early days of cinema she would have been worshiped with the greats.


We're all aware how gorgeous Nicole looks bathed in candlelight, right? RIGHT?!


Aah, like the family dramas of yore.


Because she's just so gosh darn beautiful, don't you think? I know a lot of people don't like her anymore because they're "distracted" by whatever surgery she has had done, but I say her acting is just as captivating as anything else about her.


Following on from the above point, any actor who can keep an audience's attention during a silent three-minute sequence with nothing more but a closeup of their face is clearly doing something right. I highly doubt Phillip Seymour Hoffman could do that.


I may not care for Cameron Bright in anything I've seen him in - he's the weakest part of Birth for what it's worth - but, damn, was that not perfect casting? Talk about creepy! If I was to believe anybody was a reincarnation of somebody else I guess I'd believe him.


Doesn't this shot feel like it should be taken right out of Rosemary's Baby? With scary Danny Huston and Lauren Bacall in the backgrounds with their black eyes and the scary Ruth Gordon-esque Zoe Caldwell in the front. Or a zombie movie.



This shot here feels like it's from some 1950s French movie, no?


Fact, Anne Heche looks scarier in black and white. Fact, Anne Heche is amazing. Shame that her career is, basically, over. She is so good in this movie too! Also, doesn't she remind you of Sissy Spacek a little bit here, with that straight hair and plain face?


What have I said before about not letting Nicole near water! It's a recipe for disaster.

Such an amazing, beautiful, powerful movie. I light up a little bit whenever somebody says something kind about it because, for a while there, I felt I was entirely alone.

Beyond the Cult

Beyond Our Ken is a fascinating and, at times, horrifying documentary about the makings and the processes of a cult and the forces behind them. Directors Luke Walker and Melissa MacLean have expertly crafted a film of immense power and sadness as they peek inside the workings of the Kenja Communication cult, a cult that like so many others deals in false smiles and life affirmations. That they were allowed unprecedented access to the group - they don't like being called a cult, naturally - and the group's leader Ken Dyers gives it a quality that is reminiscent of Amy Berg's heartbreaking 2006 doco Deliver Us from Evil.

Interviewing past - and in one case, a current - members of the group, Beyond Our Ken thoroughly details the shocking actions of the cult and its leader, a man so delusional that he and his associates equates himself to the most powerful man on Earth. Much like Berg's film about clergy abuse, Walker and MacLean's film gleans a lot of its strength of the tales of horror that emerge from behind the ever-smiling energetic faces of the cult's members. A mother reading her son's suicide letter that was written just months after being disowned by Kenja. Another mother's tortured story of her son, NIDA graduate Richard Leape, as she tells of how her son, after being unceremoniously kicked out of the sect, descended into homelessness and has been on the Missing Persons List for the past 16 years.


The film's biggest strength - if you can call it that - however, is that of Ken Dyers himself, and his co-founder Jan Hamilton. The two quickly show themselves to be, for lack of a better term, deranged crazies. With their talk of energy conversions and attached spirits, it soon becomes obvious that while the film was perhaps originally attempting to be even-handed and fair, it's hard to do so when the subjects are making it so darn hard on themselves. Several moments through the film in which Dyers discusses the transference of sexual energy always followed by his creepy laugh are down right irksome to watch and whenever he and Hamilton share the screen he shows his egotistical side and clearly doesn't want her to steal his spotlight, routinely interrupting her and not letting her finish any of her sentences. It all culminates in a shocking final sequence in which Dyers, who has since committed suicide in the face of yet another abuse scandal, goes into an angry rage that would earn him an Oscar if it weren't for the fact that it is all real.

Beyond Our Ken is an illuminating documentary and acts as the purest form of the genre. It's hard not to be disgusted by the words being put forth by these people, and it's scary to think that there are people walking around out there who are under the spell of this cult - there really is no other word for it, despite what Dyers says. The film's tagline is "You Wouldn't Know a Cult If You Joined One" and, sadly, that is very much the case with this institution. One can only hope that enough people see this wonderful film to help prevent the further loss of rationale and seemingly intelligent people to it's evil clutches. B+

Beyond Our Ken is out now on DVD and has a limited engagement at CinemaNova in Carlton, Melbourne so do check it out. It has also been nominated for the Best Documentary prize at the upcoming AFI Awards. If you wish to hear more about it click here for a Q&A audio file that was recorded after the film's screening at the Toronto International Film Festival. Even more fascinating stuff!

Black + White Friday: The Net

I can't remember who it was (Ebert?), but I read a review of The Net once that pondered what the great Alfred Hitchcock would have made of the Internet. I'm sure he would have done something far more amazing with it than Irwin Winkler did in the early days of the product (is it a product as such?) that we now take for granted.

Having said that (oh you knew this was coming), I freakin' love The Net. Sure, it's not a great movie by a long shot, but I think it's a hoot and a half. I first saw it on good ol' VHS in my initial love affair with Sandra Bullock (right after Speed, natch) and for some odd reason I kept imagining myself in her shoes as a computer geek who takes her laptop to the beach. For whatever reason, I always suspected I'd be a hardcore computer geek. Thankfully it didn't turn out that way, although these days it feels like I'm on here enough to officially call myself one.

Nevertheless, I thought we'd take a look to see if The Net were filmed in black and white. Is it anything like Hitchcock?


In Hitchcock she'd be blonde. And perhaps would have an identical twin/evil deceased mother spirit/murderous husband. Sandra has none of those. Poor gal. :(


Remember when Jeremy Northam was actually sorta hot. Remember in old movies when they could occasionally allow their lead actor to take their shirt off and, unlike today, they didn't all have rippling muscles and manicured chests. Bless.


This actually looks like it's from an old movie. Except Sandy's hair is too messy. Not even socially inept geeks had messy hair in classic movies (unless you're Bette Davis in Now Voyager if I remember correctly).


Even in times of panic - such as when your identity has been stolen while on vacation in Mexico - a Hitchcock leading lady would never wear this. She'd still be dressed up in a nice hoop skirt frock or, if it was his later period, a tweed skirt suit number with a cute-slash-stern-school-teacher up 'do. Never a loose-fitting shirt and a miniskirt.


I just took this shot because it's hilarious! This was only 13 years ago, folks!


Hitchcock loved a good carnival fair, did he not?


I don't have anything to add about this shot, I just like it.


The Net's most outlandishly preposterous moment - and in a movie full of them, that's quite an achievement really - is when Bullock's character becomes a fugitive in a high speed chase on the freeway, which then leads into a foot chase across a rocky, muddy riverbed! Oh man, I couldn't make this shit up, I swear! This movie has everything, I tell ya! EVERYTHING! It really would be a fantastic "Cinema of the Absurd" entry, would it not?


Yay! My favourite scene in the movie. If this were Hitchcock then all those women would be paper-pushing secretaries who wouldn't know technology if it spoke to them on a daily basis while serving muffins. And the whole movie would be about shorthand.


High-waisted pants... really?!?

And thus it goes. I'm sure Hitchcock would be rolling in the isles!

Black + White Friday: Femme Fatale

Inspired by My New Plaid Pants' tribute to Brian De Palma, I thought I'd take a look at one of my absolute favourite De Palma flicks, the much-maligned Femme Fatale. What with it's bountiful hidden clues and amazing setpieces. So, basically like a lot of De Palma's critically lambasted flicks then. Femme Fatale is just pure crazy though. It has two title cards (one for a completely different movie) and it has so many "# Years Later" subtitles that you just have to laugh at the absurdity of it all.

In the title card up the top, it is only the opening credit sequence and Brian De Palma is already laying it on thick. Images upon images, layers upon layers, Romijn-Stamon upon Double Indemnity. While De Palma surely was having delusions of grandeur if he thought Femme Fatale was to be compared to that film noir classic, he gets props for being crazy and ballsy to not only allude to Double Indemnity, but to feature the film's ending in the opening sequence of his movie.


Somebody is always watching and taking photographs. Just one of the many aspects of the movie is that of privacy and how we don't have any left, but also how this very fact can be manipulated and turned to our advantage.


De Palma always does good opening scenes (even dud movies like Snake Eyes have thrilling opening passages) and I love how this heist sequence at the Cannes Film Festival (set to the music of "Bolero") even has this brief echo to Carrie with it's female hands seemingly lost in the steam (of course, it's just a frosted glass window and the girl is in the throes of a lesbian make-out session, so...)


I just really liked this shot.


For such a high profile director, Brian De Palma sure does wear his inspirations proudly. Not one to shy away from not only referencing, but outright stealing from the likes of Hitchcock. Nevertheless, it always feels fresh coming from De Palma yet if it were almost any other director it would come across as silly and unoriginal. Funny that.


Having watching this movie several times, it still tickles me pink to see De Palma being so obvious with his clues. Deja vu, indeed. Having said that, Antonio Bandares is definitely the weakest part of the film.


Camera lights always provide interesting images in this series due to the high contrast, but this one is especially interesting in that the two people that the light is reflecting off seem like otherworldly ghost figures jumping out the viewers. In fact, they remind me of these two characters from another noir-inspired flick.


Feels like a classically framed image, no?


Man, is there anything quite as beautiful as Paris in black and white? Absolutely gorgeous.


Well done to me on getting a screengrab from this sequence that doesn't show any of Romijn's naughty bits (and they are on full display). I almost expect her character to swim to the top of the water and start doing some Busby Berkeley choreographed dance/swim routine featuring a plethora of other swim dancers all wearing completely impractical outfits.


I reckon this moment looks like she's sitting peacefully in the middle of space and all these beautiful stars are raining down on her - didn't that happen in The Fountain at some stage, too?

Absolutely gorgeous.