So it's a hamster! Craven, are you playing a little joke?
Mary, incidentally is costumed in the latest Chanel cowl.
Well, I've seen The Film. All in all, it was pretty much what I expected, though the quality of the photography was at times absolutely stunning. I thought the performances, on the whole, were superb. I found the direction to be if anythging somewhere between ham-handed and gratuitiously in-your-face. I do think a number of scenes, violent and otherwise, were stretched for all that could be squeezed from an audience, and then some. I saw noothing anti-semitic about it at all, though though some concern for Romans might be justified. Obvoiously an amalgam of Gospel vignettes, it portrayed the key theme well, if a bit on the over-done side. In short, it was an extremely well crafted and well executed movie, but fell far short of true art, nor do I feel it really desrves the "Classic" status alreadty conferred upon it. I believe my chief suspicion has been confirmed; that being that most of the buzz surrounding the film comes from folks who've not seen the film, many of whom don't even know the story. That such might be so, I find totally unsurprising. I'd give it 3½ out of 4 stars. I'll prolly buy the DVD ... I class it more of a keeper than a renter.
That's a left-handed compliment of a review if I'ved ever read one. If I used that criteria for adding a film to my DVD collection it would not make it. It's likely to be shown on cable for free for years as a furthering of the commercial success. Eventually one may become desensitized to Gibson's taking movie gore and violence to it's ulltimate excess.
In an NPR interview today, a scholar of ancient and biblical texts described it as "sadism, eventually crossing the line into religious pornography" . . .
I laughed aloud . . .
The negative response by critics and the majority of the A2Kers reviewing the movie has seen the movie. It seems like biases can run both ways -- those who are devout believers are going to say the film is a classic work of art even if they haven't seen it. It might be an imitation of a classic work of art but it's really just a overwrought expression of Catholic angst.
Sam Peckinpah would have been envious.
Yes, it makes Pekinpah look like bedtime stories -- if he had gone that far in his era it would never have made it to the screen. Let's say more contemporaneous, Quinton Tarentino. The scene of Travolta accidentally blowing off the head of the guy in the back seat in "Pulp Fiction" would be shown as as close-up of the bullet entered the skull and the pieces would be flying through the air at the lense. I think Gibson missed making it in 3D.
Al Franken just told a story of meeting Mel Gibson at an Oscar party. Al didn't know Mel, and didn't really know what to say, so as an initial ice-breaker he began, "You know Mel, I don't think your father would have liked my father."
