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Underground > Film, TV & Theatre >

Frida

21:15 / 23.12.02

Can it be?

No threads for this, which I am looking very much forward to see in 2 days time.

Wondering if it's a visual feast -- the Premiere criticism made it sound very good.

The Return Of Rothkoid

22:20 / 23.12.02

I saw a short of it the other week, when I went to see Adaptation and it did look pretty good. Although whoever's handling it doesn't know any marketing other than the "hey! This is kinda like Evita, right? It's about love and stuff? Let's do that!" whereas I think it's a bit deeper than that. I'll be interested to see how Julie Taymor turns the story out - it'll be straighter than Titus, no doubt, but the sumptuous visuals that she's famed for seems to have seeped in here in a big way, also.

And yeah; y'know, labour of love kind of film - what's not to like?

It opens Boxing Day here and I'll probably get along to check it out. My interest has been piqued, certainly. I've heard that Alfred Molina is superb in it.

23:15 / 23.12.02

I've seen it already, a few weeks ago, in Minneapolis.

It's good in a few ways, disappointing in others. I don't want to give away too much, though.

Definitely worth checking out, though. If only for the fact that Salma Hayek is a stone fox.

::a::

22:54 / 27.12.02

I seem to have been desensetized about movies in general, the last handful of movies I have bothered to check out have left me estranged. Perhaps the reason could be that I am no longer frequenting movies in the same manner as previously -- the selection here in the cinema is too poor, I watch as little TV as I can, and we have no DVD/Video player.

Which is unfair for Frida. I wanted to like it very much but I felt not much for it. My brother thought it would have been better, had it been kept in Spanish, keeping the melodrama phonetically, whereas English has faults. My mother loved it. But she is not reliable, too often has she lied just to please us in our delusions. The accident was great, although horrible for her, but the depiction was magic. For the rest, it felt too sporadic.

Molina is great, I love his sitcom, what I have seen of it -- usually provide me with a detail to giggle maniacally for the next hour or so -- and Hayek did fine work.

It's strange to not be passionate about a very passionate woman.

at the scarwash

07:36 / 28.12.02

i felt that Taymor lost interest half-way through the film. The first half, i guess up until new york city was very visually interesting, but the last half relied simply upon bringing to life Frida's canvases. Also, I felt that the film ended up being just another love story about a passionate, willful female artist. It might as well have been fiction. There was nothing about the narrative that made it specifically about Kahlo. Wheter this is Taymor's fault, or the fault of the screenwriter, I don't know

07:40 / 28.12.02

I heard from my stepsister that it is a well-executed sketch of the relationship between Rivera and Kahlo, true to the character of both figures, although a stickler about Kahlo's personal history will note some elements glossed over.

The Return Of Rothkoid

02:14 / 30.12.02

Hm. Saw it yesterday, and thought parts of it very beautiful. The score (by Taymor's husband, Eliot Goldenthal) was one of the better he's done, and the mix of straight score and actual Mexican song was great. Some of it was a little ... cheesy? ... but mostly, the story was pretty affecting, if it did drift towards portraiture of Diego a bit much at times.

Geoffrey Rush's Russian accent is fucking woeful, however. I can do a better one.

Molina was great, I thought. Beefy, quick-tempered and ultimately hopeless - a compelling portrait, if it's true-to-life. Then again, I may be projecting.

I don't think Taymor lost interest halfway through, but she stopped - for the most part, the end notwithstanding - using her theatre-style tricks. Testpattern, your comments about how it could've been any wilful woman rather than specifically Kahlo are pretty accurate, too - there was a sense of grand passion, though not enough individual detail. I mean, it was Kahlo in a grand sense, but not at a personal level, y'know?

And now hear this: Hayek, even with monobrow, is stunning. I just never noticed before. What planet have I been on?

17:14 / 30.12.02

You should see "And the Cradle Will Rock" after this - it has the bit with Rockefeller and the Rivera mural retold through different eyes.

I found some of the scenes (writing? directing? acting? hard to tell) groansome - the "I *can* walk! I CAN!!" scene and the "Your paintings, they are really good! No, they are really good!" lines, they bugged me. Look, ma! DRAMA!!!!

Visuals were fun, though.

The Josephine Baker thing... I don't want to admit how much that lit my fire. Wooooo.

But the best scene is right near the front, with a bunch of Quay Brothers animation in the middle of it. Gold dust and impaling.

The Return Of Rothkoid

21:00 / 30.12.02

Grant: you're so right about the crash scene. So much better than the anims in the "Diego does America" bit, I thought.

Perhaps Taymor's theatrical history is coming through in the weaker scenes you suggest? The "look! Walking!" bit seemed to me to be very much a theatre-based thing; it didn't feel like anything filmic at all. (FWIW, I thought that the end of Shadow Of The Vampire did this too; like they'd workshopped it in a specific space a little too much.) Titus suffered from this on occasion, too; but I guess that was her bringing her stage production to the screen, so it's probably a little more excusable.

[rot] So now, what about a Mendes-directed film of his revival of Cabaret - with more Alan Cummings action? I'd be up for that, baybee. [/rot]

07:18 / 31.12.02

From Dusk 'Til Dawn has great Salma Hayek action in it.