| Gorillaz: We won't let 'Glee' cover our songs By MESFIN FEKADU 2010-10-12T11:23:40ZNEW YORK (AP) -- The virtual band Gorillaz isn't exactly going bananas over the television musical series "Glee."... hosted.ap.org |
Casablanca: No 2 Michael Curtiz, 1942The unspoken tremor in most wartime movie romances is that the picture needs to address the feelings of couples separated by war. It's not just whether they will both survive, but whether love and desire can overcome the temptations that come with separate lives. There's another element at work (vital to romance and the age of censorship in the movies) which is that desire may mean the most when it cannot be consummated: the wish for intimacy is so intense because the act is forbidden or impossible.In Casablanca, we assume that Rick (Humphrey Bogart) and Ilsa (Ingrid Bergman) had a good deal of sex in Paris, but in their awkward reunion in north Africa, sex is not renewed. Rather, the triangle of Rick-Ilsa-Victor (Paul Henreid) must contemplate the ultimate selection of just two of them to go forward. And we know now what Rick's decision is, even if in our enlightened time we may ask whether Ilsa shouldn't have been doing some of the deciding. But the romantic or erotic energy is sublimated in the most impeccable cause of all – the war effort. Rick forsakes Ilsa as part of his new commitment to the fight against fascism.Casablanca stands for movie romance in great part because it is hardly true to life. It won the best picture Oscar and seemed to be history coming to life – it opened just after the allies had occupied the real Casablanca. In fact, divorce and infidelity rates increased rapidly during the war. But Casablanca reassured us all; it promised that honour was intact.RomanceHumphrey BogartDavid Thomsonguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
L'Atalante: No 3 Jean Vigo, 1934At the age of 29, Jean Vigo died from rheumatic septicaemia, just a few days after the opening of his only feature film, L'Atalante. Those bare facts are a landmark not just in French cinema, but in the larger history of artistic film-making, and of the absolute commitment of film-makers. Moreover, the poetic lyricism of L'Atalante, far from dating, has been more appreciated over the years. L'Atalante is 75 years old, yet its beauty and its harshness are still hauntingly alive. Three men work a barge (it is named L'Atalante) on the waterways of northern France: Jean, the skipper is young and hopeful (Jean DastĂ©); le père Jules, a tattooed veteran of the world's oceans (Michel Simon) and a cabin boy. They stop at a small town. Jean meets a girl, Juliette (Dita Parlo), and they are married, while hardly knowing each other. So the barge moves on. It is not an easy transition for the married couple. In Paris they go ashore and the wife flirts with another man. There is a fight and she runs away, then the husband goes in search of her. Marriage is the film's subject and it is most moving in its cinematic grasp of a deeper bond than that permitted by the lovers' temporary misalliance.The simplicity of the story resembles silent cinema, but these people talk. The film is enhanced by one of the cinema's first great musical scores (by Maurice Jaubert), and Vigo's inspired compositions and images in which the spirit of romanticism seems threatened by the very light that reveals it. But it's Boris Kaufman's cinematography that is most impressive – it serves as an example of the way realism can be infected by the characteristics of poetry and dream. Not the least legacy left by Vigo – to Truffaut and Godard, for instance – was the essential artistic value of black-and-white photography and its curious but easily forgotten establishment of a new way of seeing. DramaWorld cinemaguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Academic: Jane Austen had helping hand from editor By JILL LAWLESS 2010-10-23T16:02:13ZLONDON (AP) -- She's renowned for her precise, exquisite prose, but new research shows Jane Austen was a poor speller and erratic grammarian who got a big helping hand from her editor.... hosted.ap.org |
Leslie Nielsen: a career in pictures The actor Leslie Nielsen, who split his career between po-faced leading men and deadpan slapstick stars, has died aged 84. We look back over his career in stills guardian.co.uk |