Merry Straussmas!

Everyone has a Christmas tradition. Even Jews and Atheists – I smell cheap Chinese food and a bad holiday horror movie! If you’re me you sit on the couch and watch Richard Strauss operas all day. This is a personal holiday tradition that goes back a long way, all the way to today, because that’s when I made it up. Anyways, to compensate for a total lack of posts in November (still recovering from the election, actually) let’s get a double dose of great music and warm and fuzzy feelings from the composer of Also Sprach Zarathustra. So sit back, get yourself a nice mug of hot chocolate and cookies and enjoy this Super Review of

-and-

Films, 1974 & 1981

Director: Götz Freidrich

You know, it’s too bad that more operas aren’t made into movies. Sure, there are plenty of tapings of live performances (and some damn good ones, I might add) but for me complete immersion in the drama only comes when I can’t see any curtains or orchestra or hear the really annoying COUGHING in the audience. These two films, both from German director Götz Freidrich are a revelation: both visually and dramatically engaging. The direction by Freidrich is very good – you feel like you are watching a film instead of just a performance. Sure, sometimes the dude rips from Sergio Leone and gives us some unnecessary extreme close-ups

Cue Ennio Morricone.

but most of the time it works and really sucks the audience into the drama, which is the whole point.

All of the parts in these two movies are acted by the people singing them (which is not always done with movies like these), and they do a really good job at both.  I especially want to give props to Leonie Rysanek in Elektra, who nails the title character and gives the most intense operatic performance that I have ever seen.

With special mention to Catarina Ligendza as Elektra's sister,
who really sells us on her gas pain.

And there are even good musical performances to boot! There is always a danger in any musical film that the director will be so caught up in how it looks that the music (you, know the important part) will suffer. Well, the music in these movies is superb which is a given considering that a) the orchestra for both is the Vienna Philharmonic and b) the conductor leading them in both is Karl Böhm, who was the student of the composer himself. All of the singers are first rate with not one dud in the casts.

Coming to CBS this fall: Hans Beirer and Astrid Varnay in
everyone's favorite new sitcom, Everybody Hates Herod!

I’m not going to go into the stories of these too much since they have been around for quite a long time (before being made into operas the stories of Salome and Elektra came from the Christian and Ancient Greek mythologies, respectively). Needless to say that if you want a story about a cute but disturbing spoiled teenage girl who decides that she’s not going to let anything get in her way of, like, totally making out with that *hot* wild religious guy and gets her way with bloody but like-the-dude-totally-had-it-coming-to-him results than Salome is the opera for you.

"*yawn* Being slutty and evil is such hard work."

But if you thought Salome was cute, wait ‘til you check out this little hottie

and her equally hot MILF of a mom

Who looks like something right out of Star Trek: The Next Generation.

who have a minor tiff because, well, Mom sort of murdered Dad a while ago and took a new lover to rule the kingdom and that makes her daughter *sad* and now she sort wants to, well you know, use her little brother to murder their mom in a plot that would make Freud deplete a box of Kleenex more rapidly than a kindergarten class in the middle of cold season. Did I mention that Elektra is a warm and fuzzy story? 

Whoa, whoa!  There was enough of that in the last opera, babe!

Watching these both back to back I have to say that Elektra is the better of the two, both musically and as a film – Salome actually almost seems like a warm-up. Everything in Elektra is expressionistic and done bigger and better. It has larger sets (it seems more spacious and real) that expand the drama, being less "stagy" than its predecessor.

Compare: above, Salome.  Below, Elektra.

It has better camera work and better dramatic unity.  That’s not to knock Salome; it is still one of the better opera films out there, it’s just it is merely very good whereas Elektra manages to impress me to the level where it has become for me not only a great opera film but a great film, period. Even if you don’t like opera (and why not? What’s wrong with hearing people sing their lines rather than speak them?) you should still see Elektra. Don’t be put off by people telling you that it’s some weird, dissonant opera. Yes, the music is revolutionary and does not really follow traditional operatic tonalities that much – this ain’t no Marriage of Figaro – but it is supremely dramatic and in some spots even beautiful.

Kinda like this blood orgy.

So take some time off this holiday season and do what I do to celebrate this joyous season: watch a demented princess strip for her perverted step-dad before making out with a severed head then watch a demented, vengeance driven princess obsess a little unhealthily about her dad for an hour or two. Come to think of it, both of these main characters are princesses… hey, why doesn’t Disney make some movies out of these two than add them to their Princess line of merchandise? Little girls would *so* love to have an Elektra doll, am I right?

Anyways, I leave you with the most Christmassy picture of all, and to all a good night.

Merry X-Mas!

The Great German Vampire Films Complete Review Project ––– Part Two of Two

Halloween's a' comin' up, and I'm celebrating the occasion by posting up a lazy photo review of the original silent Nosferatu.  Yep, I finally got around to seeing the F.W. Murnau classic... more than a year after reviewing the Werner Herzog remake.  Oh well, better late than never.  Can't dally long (more horror movies to watch) so sit back, relax and enjoy as I bring you

Huh.  This one starts out just like the Herzog remake - KITTY!

You will see this smile in your nightmares tonight...

and this creep is the hero.

"Is your wife a goer, know what I mean?"

"She sometimes goes, yes."

 Count Orlock: He lives in the night, feeds on the blood of the living... 

and is capable of splitting an arrow in twain with his own gray goose shaft.

Man, those schnitzengruben will wipe you out.

"Hello, this is your 6am Evil Undead Alarm Call!  Up and at 'em!"

Count Orlock: vampire, feudal lord, package deliveryman.

Oh, it's one of those marriages.

"Our minds are joining, Ellen... they are becoming one and the same...."

"What light through yonder window breaks?

It is the east, and... oh, shit."

Tomorrow: More Halloweeny Goodness.

Let's Get Patriotastic!

Today, to celebrate the United States and the anniversary of the independence of our great nation, I’m going to look at a movie celebrating the German people and one of Germany’s greatest mythological heroes. And I’m going to do it all through pictures, because I’m full of barbecue right now and feeling very lazy. So today you’re not going to get some long winded review from me or some over-the-top pseudo academic analysis – told you last time I’d do something different. Without further ado here’s Fritz Lang’s

 

We start out with a pretty rainbow.  Enjoy it; it gets more sordid from here.

Our "hero," Siegfried.

"Hey man, what's up-"

"-Ow! Oh my God! Why did you do that to me?!!"

"Little pigs, little pigs, let me come in...."

  

"So it's agreed:  the involuntary marriage of your sister in exchange for the 

sexual slavery of a woman I've never even met."  Our heroes, everybody!

Hagen: Clearly, not an evil character.

Nice house.

Haha, I love Brunhild's fashion sense.  Actually, I think she is kinda cute.

 "What did you say about my man?!" 

This is about 30 seconds away from devolving into a medieval episode of COPS.

 "Kriemhild, can I trust you to keep a secret?"

"No."

"Wow, I did not see that one coming."

Kriemhild: from vapid, air-headed bimbo to stone-cold, murdering bitch in two hours.

The Nibelung treasure is sleeping with the fishes.

Attila the Hun, ready for some... wheat harvesting?

"Now isn't this nice, Germans and Huns sitting around for a nice dinner together-"

FIGHT FIGHT KILL KILL DEATH DEATH

"Okay, if any of you sons-of-bitches asks for 'Freebird' one more time...."

"Wow, bitch is crazy."

 And everyone died a horrible death in a bloody rampage of misplaced pride and revenge, 

making everyone's life completely pointless and void.  

THE END.

…Wow, that was a “celebration” that was “dedicated” to the German People? With all of the indiscriminate violence and assholery by the murdering, rapist "hero" Siegfried and the cold-hearted murdering bitchery of the "heroine" Kriemhild – not to mention the pig-headed, “honor before reason” attitude of the Germans in general – you’d think that Lang was being sarcastic and basically tearing German society and tradition a new one… wait a minute….



Happy 235th Birthday, America!

The End Of The Line

Well, it finally had to happen.  After more than a month I have to part ways with Herrs Herzog and Kinski and return to a world of sanity.  This is the last movie, the last piece in the Kinski-Herzog Exhibition, the summation of all that has come before.  This is

My Best Fiend

Theatrical Film, 1999

Director: Werner “The Very Example of Sanity” Herzog

The Story

Werner Herzog reminisces about his old friend and sworn enemy, five-time collaborator Klaus Kinski.  Joining him in his trips down memory lane are former cast and crewmates, the current owners of the flat where both Herzog and Kinski used to live, and the Indian chiefs who once offered to kill Kinski for the director.  No, really.

The Review

It is fascinating sometimes to watch documentaries and see what they reveal about various subjects.  And what they *don’t* reveal about them.  And what they sometimes inadvertently reveal about them while loudly proclaiming something else.  I say this because Werner Herzog’s documentary/nostalgic ode My Best Fiend, while purporting to reveal the true nature and demented genius of Klaus Kinski also reveals the true nature and insane brilliance of Herzog himself, even though he loudly stresses the opposite.  It is also worth noting what you will not find in this film:  you will not get a detailed biography of Kinski or a straight chronological tale of his time working with Herzog.  What you get is basically a one hour and forty minute twisted love letter to the relationship between the two men.  And it is very, very twisted.  Watching this movie you will see the two fight and slander the other over and over again but you will also see them share tender interludes that seem more like the moments typically shared between lovers than between actors and directors.  In fact, I got the sense watching My Best Fiend that had Herzog and Kinski been of different sexes that they probably would have been bonking each other in addition to working and fighting together.

As I have said this doc attempts to reveal to the world the “true” nature of Klaus Kinski, and for the most part I think that it succeeds, although I don’t know if I trust Herzog’s memory that much.  Herzog portrays Kinski here as both a raving madman and a dedicated professional, idiotically cowardly and unexpectedly courageous, ruthlessly unfeeling and affectionately warm.  Wow, you mean people are multifaceted and the world isn’t black or white?  I never knew!  Anyways, for all the alternating tales of terror (one of the most amusing moments in the entire movie:  Kinski having a tantrum doing Fitzcarraldo and Herzog saying, “oh, that was one of his mild ones.”) and fuzziness (Eva Mattes seems to be especially fond of Klaus) that Herzog presents, the two defining and revealing moments for me are the very beginning and end of the movie itself.  The end has the iconic imagery of Kinski playing with a butterfly who is completely unafraid of him.  The other is the beginning where Kinski is doing one of his Jesus Monologues during the early seventies:  “I am not the Jesus of the official Church… who the police, bankers, judges, hangmen, officers, church bosses, politicians, and other powerful people tolerate.  I am not your Superstar!”  Here I think though that Kinski is not delivering a monologue as Jesus but is actually describing himself through the metaphor of Jesus.  True to Kinski’s statement I think that most people in power and even most Christians today would not appreciate Jesus if they truly got to know him.  Jesus was an iconoclast, a challenger of social norms and did not endear himself to the populace at the time in which he lived.  Similarly I think Kinski was making a statement about himself, that he would be the iconoclastic savior of the acting world, but that he would not bend over or play nice with those in power in the entertainment industry.  He wouldn’t be their moldable “superstar” and be one of those highly paid, pleasant little actors with little talent selling out their craft to the suits and shelling out crap.  In a way he’s very refreshing, I think.  Too many film actors throughout the history of the medium (and especially today) have been bland cookie-cutter copies who just slum it to get massive amounts of bucks.  Kinski with all of his tantrums and typhoon-level rages attempted to take filmmakers, kick them in the ass and challenge them to make good movies.  And if the filmmakers were worth a shit they did the same thing to Kinski to draw out his talent and challenge him to give his best performances.  Like Werner Herzog.

And the secret of Werner Herzog, boys and girls - one that I had suspected since watching Aguirre way back and was confirmed by watching this film – is this:  Werner Herzog is crazier than Klaus Kinski ever was.  He’s just a quieter kind of crazy.  Don’t believe me?  Watch his movies!  Only Herzog would take a group of actors down to the Amazon and film them on the river in simple rafts using only one camera.  Only Herzog would dump 50,000 rats on a Dutch town while filming there.  Only Herzog would allow all the animal tossing and abuse in all of his movies.  And only Herzog would take a boat and really drag it up a mountain.  Still don’t believe me?  Watch this movie.  It will hit you like a sack of bricks attached to a screaming nuclear rocket.  Herzog denies that he’s insane, insisting strenuously that he’s the very definition of sanity.  Then the next words out of his mouth are “Oh, yeah, and then there was that time I tried to firebomb Klaus’ house.”  I rolled on the floor laughing when he said that, then ran and hid under the bed for a couple of hours quaking.  Werner Herzog is the craziest, scariest, most awesome film director who ever lived.  There are directors that had more talent and made better movies, but Herzog eclipses them all with sheer badassery.  Want another example?  He was on an American news show once in LA when he was shot ON CAMERA.  He simply said, “Oh it is only a small bullet,” dug the projectile out of his body and continued like nothing ever happened.  The interviewer kept going on and on about how he had been shot and Herzog seemed to want to say “Yes, yes, you stupid little man, I have been shot, but it is not that big a deal, it is nothing to me, I AM WERNER HERZOG.”  If I ever get the chance to meet the man I don’t know whether I’d be honored or scared shitless.  Or start kowtowing before The Master.

Okay, I’ve been too long-winded.  In a nutshell:  if you have watched all of Herzog and Kinski’s works together then you should watch this film.  It gives insight into both men and why they are two of the greatest to ever practice their craft.

Screenshots

"I am not your Superstar!"

The very face of sanity.  In an insane asylum.

Kinski bandages a wounded crewmember's hand.  Aww.

 This is one of the few places where you'll see the footage of Jason Robards and ...Mick ...Jagger...  in the original version of Fitzcarraldo.  And, wow am I glad that it turned out differently.  Seriously, what is this shit?  These two aren't acting, they're goofing off in front of a camera.  It's hard to believe that Herzog was actually going to make this.

Ahh, that's better.

  I think these two pictures sum up the Herzog/Kinski relationship perfectly.

The DVD

Okay, I want to know who Anchor Bay gets to do their translating and subtitling, because they suck.  When I'm hearing "300 kilometers" in the German dialogue and am reading "300 miles" on the subtitle track it's time for someone to get fired.  If you can't even be bothered to convert metric to imperial measurements properly we have a problem.  In fact, why even bother converting?  This isn't 1965, I have learned metric in school, thank you.  Anyway, crappy subtitles aside this is a decent disc.  No commentary track from Herzog this time but that's because this whole movie is basically a commentary track.

Next Week:  I don't know.  Something in English I think, because I've been watching foreign stuff for so long now I'm starting to hear Japanese and German in my sleep.