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La Reine Margot * Patrice Chéreau * 1994

Too long ago I saw this film and wanted to get it on video or dvd. For some reason it took very long before it was available and then it was very expensive. Now the film was on the Belgian public television, so I suppose an affordable dvd version will follow soon.

“La Reine Margot” is an historic film like “Elizabeth” and also the stories of these two films are a bit akin. There is a struggle between the Catholic and Protestant Christian camps and this struggle is bloody. The film plays in France and the young Catholic beauty Margot is forced to marry a Protestant king to bring peace in France. On the day of the marriage the Catholics kill almost every protestant present in Paris in a violent massacre and after this the lives of all the main characters comes under threat. Conspiries of Catholics, Protestants, but even within the camps and families themselves make life a living hell for everyone.

All this results in am impressive and rather grim film which is not only great to watch, but also a descent history lesson.

Red Dragon * Brett Ratner * 2002

“Manhunter” (1986) has been one of my favourite films since long before “Silence Of The Lambs” struck the worldwide audience with it’s geniocity. I haven’t seen “Hannibal” but I was too curious about “Red Dragon” to let it go unseen. As you probably know “Red Dragon” is a new filming of the first book of Thomas Harris about our lovely Hannibal and friends. Also you can say that it is a remake of “Manhunter” which was probably regarded not good enough or didn’t have the best actors in it or something, I don’t know. “Red Dragon” has a whole line of big actors, of course including Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal. “Red Dragon” is quite like “Manhunter” but put more in a popular horror and especially “Silence Of The Lambs”-manner. Far too much! There are a few differences between the two films. The killer wears his ‘head-cloth’ at home in “Red Dragon” and when he kidnaps Freddy Lounds in “Manhunter”. The killer is better-looking and a body-builder in “Red Dragon”. There is much much more stress on the painter/poet William Blake in “Red Dragon”. The killer is even a Blake-expert in the new version. Worst of all, in “Red Dragon” the killer has a gigantic Blake-tattoo on his back and he is controlled by his red dragon, while this is not the case in “Manhunter”. A smaller detail, the scene in which Will Graham’s wife and child are picked up is a lot better in “Manhunter”.

In general, “Manhunter” is a lot better than this popular new version. The atmosphere is better, the music more original (Iron Butterfly instead of classical music), the actors are a lot better (I can’t help finding the FBI agent played by Edward Norton to be quite wimpy, the killer and the blind woman in “Manhunter” are much more convincing, etc., etc.). And what is really the shittiest thing about “Red Dragon” is that the end is the beginning of “Silence Of The Lambs”.

I suggest: watch the original!.

Ravenous * Antonia Bird * 1999

I have seen this film on cheap DVD several times and didn’t know whether or not to buy it. Now the doubting is over, since the BBC showed it last weekend. However my tv-guide says the film is good, I find it rather boring myself. Still, there are some nice sides to “Ravenous”.

The story plays in the 17th century and a group of men is sent out to the snowy Callifornia where they find a half-frozen man in front of their door. He tells a story of cannibalism and a few man go out to find a possible surviving woman. The film begins as an adventure/drama and goes via thriller to a more horror-like film. The story is unconvincing and the film is not very scary. Funny is the happy music when there should actually be scary music. The strange choices for music is actually the best part of the film.

Raising Arizona * Joel + Ethan Coen * 1987

Apparently there are still Coen-films that I haven’t seen. “Raising Arizona” was on tv a while ago. A real Coen film; nostalgic way of filming, weird sense of humour, John Goodman and Nicholas Cage as actors and overall the better kind of comedy.

Cage and his barren wife decide to steal a baby from a rich man who just got a quins (that is five) who “have more than they can handle”. Cage has a history of crime and met his wife (who used to be police-officer) in jail. Two old cell-mates of Cage escape and visit the bourgeois-couple and Cage is lured back to his old habbits. In the meantime a bountyhunter from hell is looking for the baby. Overall enough elements for an unusual story and with the brothers Coen’s unusual kind of humour you get a very amusing film.

Rabbit-Proof Fence * Phillip Noyce * 2002

I remember when this film played in the local filmhouse, but… Good that good films turn up on tv in the end too! The film is about how in Australia the colonisators try to whipe out the Aboriginal lifestyle and peoples. They found out that when you mix a native with a caucasian person and again, the third generation shows almost no signs of the Aboriginal physical. So, Aboriginal women get pregnant from white males. The special government department puts the halfbloods in a special camp where the children are trained to be good white people (read: servants) and the girls can give birth to more ‘pure’ children.
Three of these children put in a camp get out and walk for 1500 miles to get back to their mothers. Their travel takes them through the varried Australian landscape, from forests to prairies, deserts and even a salt-deserts. They are being traced by the native ‘tracker’ of the camp and the Australian police. Her mother has trained the oldest girl well and she manages to stay out of reach for her purcuers.
A nice film about yet another cruel part in the history of colonisation.

Quills * Philip Kaufman * 2000

I saw this movie in the cinema and now is has just been released on video and DVD in the Netherlands. A very nice movie about the Marquis de Sade (Jeffrey Rush) in prison writing his pornographic literature. Laundry-maid Kate Winslet smuggles the papers to the outside world to have them published. They become so popular that they catch the attention of the church who send a doctor to ‘cure’ the Marquis with medieval methods.
A nice one if you enjoy medieval movies.

Quo Vadis? * Franco Rossi * 1985

For some reason the series “Rome” got a major budget and also seems to be very popular. Since when are people interested in historical drama series? Since “Gladiator”? I haven’t really followed “Rome”, maybe I will watch it when it is available on DVD for a reasonable price. But to all those who do follow and enjoy “Rome”, I can advice you to buy these old series for a very reasonable price on DVD (I paid E 10,50 for these and the series “Merlin” together). Six episodes, six hours (well, alright, about 300 minutes) with a very nice series about a very interesting part of history. “Quo Vadis?” (meaning “where are you going?” btw) is based on the 1895 book with the same title by the Pole Henryk Sienkiewicz (1846-1916). It deals with the time that Nero ruled over Rome and the apostle Peter goes around spreading the message of Jesus Christ (i.e. around 30 CE). More and more people are converted to Christianity, which religion is regarded as a plague by the authorities, so they invent an accusation which allows them to take out the hazardous sect by root. The acting is alright, the stages and costumes are marvelous and the story interesting and -like I said-, the price of the double-DVD wonderfull. A must-buy for anyone who likes the series “Rome” and for people who like historical dramas. If you look for them, there are more cheap series on DVD about Rome, such as “I Claudius” and a series totally about Julius Ceasar. I don’t know if I want to see all of them, but I certainly enjoyed “Quo Vadis?”

Punch-Drunk Love * Paul Thomas Anderson * 2002

Well, what should I say about this film? It is hard to say anything about it, but maybe it helps when you know that the director also made “Magnolia” and “Boogie Nights”.
Barry Egan (Adam Sandler) is a weird character with seven terrible sisters. However he tries to live in peace, his life is made hard by his own actions, but also by his sisters who keep confronting him with things from the past. Barry has his own business and runs into a woman. Everything becomes confusing and chaotic, making this an entertaining comedy/drama which appears to be much older than I thought. “Magnolia” but less dramatic. Nice film.

Prospero’s Books * Peter Greenaway * 1991

For a long time I thought that my all-time favorite film was not available on DVD, while all other Greenaway films are being released on DVD. While discussing something completely different, I noticed that the local library has “Kalverliefde” DVD sets which have winners of the Filmfestival Rotterdam since the beginning. One box contains short films, another five long films on three DVDs with… the 1991 winner “Propero’s Books”!! For those of you who don’t know the film, it is an impressive load of images, music, speech, symbolism and information. The film is based on “The Tempest” by Shakespeare, but only the text of the wizard Prospero seems to be from this play. For the rest this is Greenaway’s most bombastic film with long shots, picture in picture, elements going right through eachother, naked ballet-dancers, odd characters, weird colours and strange stages. Overwhelming, strange and hard to follow, but I totally adore this magnificent ‘art film’ which is unlike anything you ever saw. The “Kalverliefde” boxes are expensive, but I hope a DVD with only this film will be released some time too. For the time being, I am happy with the library copy.

The Prisoner (series) * George Markstein & Patrick McGoohan

‘Where am I?’ – ‘In the village.’
‘What do you want?’ – ‘We want information.’
‘Whose side are you on?’ – ‘That would be telling.’
‘We want information. Information, information’
‘You won’t get it!’
‘By hook or by crook, we will’
‘Who are you?’ – ‘I’m the new Number Two.’
‘Who is Number One?’ – ‘You are Number Six’
‘I am not a number. I am a free man!’
(manic laughter)

The Prisoner TV series are so old that you have to look for people to remember them. The series was first broadcasted in 1967 en 1968. In came in a flood of secret agent series such as The Saint or The Avengers and after Danger Man in which Patrick McGoohan also played a very special secret agent. Apparently McGoohan wanted something more, since he is not only one of the inventors, but also a director for the series (the last episode, the strangest of them all). I never really knew about the series even though it was smacked around my ears constantly. The “The Girl Who Was… Death” cd of Devil Doll is one big The Prisoner ode and this was even mentioned to me once. Colleagues mentioned it and eventually Collin Cleary wrote a lengthy review of the series in Tyr journal volume one of 2002 that I only got this year. That was the limit, I started to look around and bought myself the series. You can get a pretty expensive American box, an also pretty expensive UK box and the also pretty expensive separate five DVDs. The first four DVDs (I got the separate ones) contain four episodes each, the last DVD the last episode, an alternative version of another episode, a documentary and some other things. The other DVDs have some extras as well.
To the series then. Patrick McGoohan is a nameless secret agent who resigns. This is shown at the beginning of every episode. Because of his resignation, McGoohan is kidnapped and brought to “The Village”, a community seemly with the only purpose to get information from people (mostly secret agents who resigned). In The Village people have no names, but numbers. Number 2 is the outwardly leader of The Village and a new number 2 appears in (almost) every episode. The Prisoner is number 6. In every episode the leader of The Village comes up with a new way of trying to get “the priceless information” from number 6’s head. This mostly involves psychological experiments involving futuristic machines, drugs, hypnosis, etc. This results in marvelously weird situations in which number six always comes out as ‘the winner’. Therefor in the end, he is granted “the gift of individuality”.
In the series you can clearly see some critical views on modern society, democracy and science. Cleary has written magnificently about various elements in The Prisoner. There are -by the way- many strange elements to the series, such as a big white ball that comes out of the sea to punish people, the fact that you never get to know “who are the prisoners and who are the warders”, the strange machine in the control room, the eye-like cameras, weird characters, etc., etc. I think for these things the series have been seen as The X-Files and Twin Peaks of earlier decades. I don’t really agree with this, because The Prisoner is quite different from either series. The strange elements and sometimes the atmosphere (and characters) may remind especially of David Lynch’s masterpiece, but The Prisoner looks much more like James Bond to me than like Twin Peaks.
In any case. Even though the series are considerably older than myself, they are in colour and look “fresh as ever”. They are wonderfully shot, didn’t get oldfashioned and still highly enjoyable today. It is a series that make you think, “what do they mean”, “who is number 1”, “why doesn’t he just…”. They got a great sense of humour, recognisable situations, but also completely over-the-top scenes, philosophy and action. You can lend it to you parents who may watch it as James Bond, you can discuss it with your friends or on the many internet sites dedicated to The Prisoner. It seems that after the DVD release the popularity is raising a little and not without reason. The Prisoner is a magnificent, 17 times 50 minutes of TV. In my opinion maybe not as good as Twin Peaks, but probably a very agreeable second personal place in TV history. Buy and enjoy!