:: Saturday, May 04, 2002 ::

I've been putting a lot of thought into the "review" situation, and the more I think of it, the more I just don't seem to make time to write the reviews. The actual purpose of the blog is to (natch) take the place of the "diary" and I'll possibly remove the "Coming Attractions" and "Now In Theaters" pages, because charting films, which are released each week, is a daunting process. Inasmuch as the "current review" is still "A Beautiful Mind" and I haven't written anything in the diary, I truly believe this will be, as it always has been, a place where slowly but not timely, my favorite films will be at least listed, and possibly discussed.

The "film page", with updated musings and thoughts, could be in this blog format, but lately, I'm physically changing computers, and haven't mastered the art of blog writing. These things force you to write HTML, and to learn blogcode, which is HTML for blogging. (I do love that word.) Every time I seem to come onsite to write, I conveniently forget the films I want to talk about, and right now, there are roughly 40 or 50 I've at least seen since I started the diary. I haven't been to see many films at the theater this year. The last two or three were "Frailty" dir. Bill Pullman, 6 of 10 simply because of the subject matter. It's a good film, better than "In the Bedroom" and yet it is problematical like f'rinstance Boys Don't Cry. No matter how well made potboilers are when they attempt to be realistic rather than larger than life or melodramatic, the subject matter ultimately turns me off. Peter Bogdanovich's first film in about eight years, "The Cat's Meow", with Kirsten Dunst proving she's going to soon join the ranks of Robers, Kidman, and Bullock (and JLo perhaps, and maybe Ashley Judd) as one of our premier female stars. The film is about the scandalous Hollywood Babylon death/cover up of director William Ince, played by Cary Elwes, who was rumored to have been shot by Hearst who thought he was Charlie Chaplin, lately making moves on Hearst's mistress Marion Davies (Dunst) and the actual intended victim. Bogdanovich is a gifted genius, who might be compared to his idol Orson Welles (who related the tale to Peter as an unfilmed segment of Citizen Kane.) inasmuch as his "great film" "The Last Picture Show" was early in his career, and was never topped, like Welles' Kane.
The subject matter of "Cat's Meow" deals with death in Hollywood, a subject certainly close to Bogdanovich. Consider that his last film, the beautiful, musical, forgotten "That Thing Called Love" (1993) and the equally forgotten "They All Laughed" in 1980 starred soon to be deceased actors. Dorothy Stratten was murdered while Peter was cutting "Laughed" and River Phoenix died soon before the release of "Love". Peter does have his demons, is probably only the second man in tinseltown (the first being Scorsese) with a sense of movie history, and remains one of the great artists in the medium. He paints few canvases, however, and some have been very lackluster. But some are still masterful and enjoyable, and while I really don't think "Meow" will be a lasting work of art, it is a good film, and should be seen.
Speaking of Cats,


CATS AND DOGS:
2001 Recorded on Tivo
MIKOMETER: 8 of 10
This little gem passed completely under my radar. It is an hilarious comedy, styled and executed like a Chuck Jones Warner's cartoon, with a mix of live action, CGI, and puppet animals which are so seamlessly presented, I dare the audience to guess what kind of effect they are seeing.
But (and this is one element which makes it so good) I didn't care about the way it was presented, because the story is witty, wry, and funny. This was a kid's movie, was roundly panned as one of those movies which looks good but is empty of substance, and is rated "G" but in this case "G" stands for Great. The director I don't know: Lawrence Guterman. The human stars are Jeff Goldblum and Elizabeth Perkins. But the cats and dogs are the stars, and what this film reminded me of was a "live" "Lady and the Tramp". The "evil genius" cat out to take over the word is "Mr. Tinkles" who, with the help of thousands of mice, usually cat's enemy, will render mankind allergic to his "best friend" the Dog. Dogs and Man have been "best friends" ever since the Dog race overthrew the Cats from running the world in Ancient Egypt. Rent this or see it on cable or satellite. You will be "pleasantly surprised":

Well, that was a "mini review". The photos are so big because I used the Homestead Sitebuilder. Believe it or not, I can't find my image editing software CD, the wonderful Micrografx Picture Publisher, so looks like I will have to download it and the new Gif animator from Ulead from the web for the new computer.
That's quite enough for now. I know at least one person has looked at this webpage/blog. I think eventually all the start or main pages on AllThingsMike will be blogs on my server. The blog software takes the place of the "diary" sections which keep you the reader up to date. Blog editing allows a webmaster to include the "journal" element in a conventionsl HTML webpage. Soon my pages will look the same, but merely the diary element will be the Blog. I have to take the time to figue out how to accomplish this task, however, and it's taken three days to figure out how to do a file transfer on my new puter. The files still aren't on my new computer. So the fact that I can "text edit" and "img src" while writing makes this a "reel kewl" instantaneous tool.


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:: Michael Nyiri 6:48 PM Leave a Comment on this Post ::
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