FilmCouch #84: Primary, The Rape of Europa, Nastia Liukin (Flix99.com)
FilmCouch #84: Primary, The Rape of Europa, Nastia Liukin
The epic battle between McCain and Obama will shape America’s future. To prepare, we look at an eerily similar battle from America’s past, the 1960 primaries between JFK and Hubert Humphry, as portrayed in Robert Drew’s verité classic, Primary. Karina stays in for the weekend watching back-to-back movie marathons to settle an age-old debate: Who’s better, […]
The epic battle between McCain and Obama will shape America’s future. To prepare, we look at an eerily similar battle from America’s past, the 1960 primaries between JFK and Hubert Humphry, as portrayed in Robert Drew’s verité classic, Primary.
Karina stays in for the weekend watching back-to-back movie marathons to settle an age-old debate: Who’s better, Gene Kelly or Fred Astaire? Also, she shares her fantasy of seeing Olympic gymnastic ass-kicker Nastia Liukin star in a prison-break exploitation flick. It never hurts to dream…
On a more serious note, we talk to director Richard Berge about his documentary The Rape of Europa. The film recounts the heroism of WWII monument men, soldiers tasked with protecting the most priceless artifacts of Western Civilization. Berge tells the story of two veteran monument men debating the film’s central question: can a work of art be more valuable than a human life?
(Subscribe to FilmCouch–Spout’s weekly movie podcast–in the iTunes store or to our RSS feed and an episode will download each Friday)
0:00 - Intro, send us your Olympian movie pitch
3:55 - Primary
12:33 - Karina on Gene Kelly vs. Fred Astaire, and Nastia Liukin’s future in Hollywood
24:16 - The Rape of Europa
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Michel Gondry, Comic Book Misogynist?
It’s super-old news that Michel Gondry has published a comic book called We Lost the War But Not the Battle. In fact, Vulture published frames from the book almost a month ago –– which, ironically, we missed while we were at Comic-Con. But due to a confluence of forces through which you probably don’t hare […]
It’s super-old news that Michel Gondry has published a comic book called We Lost the War But Not the Battle. In fact, Vulture published frames from the book almost a month ago –– which, ironically, we missed while we were at Comic-Con. But due to a confluence of forces through which you probably don’t hare to hear about, today I stumbled on Jog The Blog’s review of the book, which very much piqued my interest. An excerpt:
There’s certainly a winsome appeal to Gondry’s curly graphics, and anyone who draws their own back-of-issue merchandise ad gets a smile from me. The story, however, is also about what I’ve come to expect from the solo Gondry (more solo than usual, this being a comic), chock-full of knotty thematic threads and some determined immaturity, this time with an added splash of over-the-top misogyny, underplayed narratively so as to become disquieting nonetheless.
A bit of a surprising “splash”, considering I’ve always found Gondry’s work to be rather worshipful of women, even if it’s always really about adolescent boys. The the rest of the post basically spoils the plot of the book, but it’s a great read. Suffice it to say, “blood is spilled, sexual organs are unveiled, and Mia Farrow appears to fuck the main character, which I think is funny?” if you’re still interested (or, more interested?) you could buy We Lost The War here for $5.99.
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Batman was Nixon? Clip of the Day
The international trailer for FROST/NIXON leaves us wondering which of this fall’s U.S. President movies would make the better double-feature with THE DARK KNIGHT.
It seems appropriate to follow yesterday’s footage of Oliver Stone’s W. with the international trailer for Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon. Both films are about leading candidates for worst U.S. President of all time (well, after we discount Harding, Buchanan, Jackson, Pierce and a number of others). And each has a subject that apparently inspired the year’s biggest blockbuster, The Dark Knight.
Weeks ago, in an opinion piece published in The Wall Street Journal, mystery author Andrew Klavan basically stated that Batman is George W. Bush in the comic book adaptation. Today, Gabe at Videogum jokingly wrote, “just from watching this trailer, I learned that Richard Nixon was the inspiration for Batman’s voice in the Dark Knight.” Now, the question is, will either of these comparisons help their respective films ride the success of TDK? Oh, and how does Entertainment Weekly’s caricature of McCain as Batman figure in?
Well, there isn’t much worry about a box office battle between Bush and Nixon. W. arrives in theaters two months before Frost/Nixon. And the latter will likely be the only of the two to receive Oscar recognition — Frank Langella may be getting tossed around on the internet today for not looking or sounding enough like Nixon, but he has already won a Tony for his portrayal and he could at least get a Academy Award nomination. At the very least, Peter Morgan will be nominated for his adaptation of his play. Meanwhile, Stone’s biopic will probably be ignored even more than his own quadruple-nominated movie about Nixon.
So, which one of the two presidential movies are you more looking forward to?
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