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Entries in Buster Keaton (7)

Thursday
Oct202011

Distant Relatives: The General and How to Train Your Dragon

Robert here with my series Distant Relatives, which explores the connections between one classic and one contemporary film. This week we continue the admittedly pointless but always fun Keaton vs. Chaplin debate and contrast it with the Dreamworks vs Pixar animation debate. The important thing is to remember that you can love all of these films and it's not a competition.

Last week I started off with Modern Times representing the Chaplin collection and WALLE as the Pixar film and declared them the "frontrunners" in our non-competition based on the fact that more people could identify Chaplin's Tramp and WALL•E than could Keaton or Dragon's protagonist Hiccup, which seems like a fair assessment. But that's about as far as I and many others are willing to go. Quality is a different question. Indeed the days of Chaplin towering over Keaton as a matter of fact are long gone, and probably were never really that significant to begin with (indeed Keaton was awarded a lifetime achievement Oscar before Chaplin). And let's not forget that the first Best Animated Feature Oscar wasn't awared to the Pixar powerhouse, but a Dreamworks film. If Chaplin and Pixar represent old-fashioned, sentimental storytelling, then Keaton with his stone-faced subtlety and Dreamworks with it's clever revisionism (think twisted fairy tales in Shrek or villian protagonist in Despicable Me) are, and have frequently been declared the more "modern" sides to this debate.

Men with Certain Talents

One immediate difference that viewers of The General and How to Train Your Dragon will notice from their Chaplin/Pixar counterparts is that these films' heroes, Hiccup and Johnny Gray have serious talents. They're not just characters of coincidence. Nor do they have only their determination to guide them. Oh, they have determination but their possession of a singular specific talent that elevate them above others in their world is a characteristic simply not found in last week's films. These abilities are thus: Keaton's Johnny Gray is a train engineer, and clearly an industrius one at that. Hiccup is something of a Dragon engineer, possessing the ability to train and ride the creatures that his people are at war with. 

In fact, both films are set during a time of war, In Dragon it's a war between those mythical monsters and Hiccup's people, the vikings. In The General, it's the American Civil War.

Unconventional war heroes and r-e-s-p-e-c-t after the jump.

Click to read more ...

Tuesday
Jun142011

l i n k 

Another day, another several celebrities with new ad campaigns.  Here's Angelina Jolie for Louis Vitton (reportedly she's not wearing any makeup here and wearing her own clothes) and Tobey Maguire for Prada.

How many of them do you think make more money posing for ads than actually acting? Even the ones who command huge actorly paychecks.

oh yes... a few links

Self Styled Siren a fun post on romantic choices, "sleeve tuggers" and The Phantom of the Opera (1943)
Alt Screen celebrates Buster Keaton in College.
Men's Journal spends manly time with Kyle Chandler.
Cinema Blend a retro poster for Captain America: The First Avenger
Super Mercado a fan poster for "The Case" that movie within the movie Super 8

Off Cinema
The Daily Beast thorough critical rundown of new TV season. Pan Am with Christina Ricci sounds great and they say it's sexy, too.
Basket of Kisses roots for Mad Men hard at the inaugural "Critics Choice" for television.
Londonist
8th Annual Naked Bike Ride. This looks like it would hurt. They do some naked bike riding in that Flemish movie The Misfortunates. Have any of you seen that? It's surprisingly affecting, despite being relentlessly sozzled and depressed.

Tony Aftermath
The ratings were up 10%. Yay!
BlogStage has video highlights of the Tonys. I added a couple of these to my live blog in case you're just joining us and want to catch up.
La Daily Musto takes off the blindfold on those Tony related "blind items"... this link is for theater obsessives only, though.
Sarah's Tumblr
thought the Tonys were fine but this shirtless photo of Gene Kelly made her night.
Movie|Line thinks the Oscars should take after the Tony Awards. But some of this oft-heard advice is impossible: You can't get rid of the precursors. Oscar has no say in those. They'd have to collapse on their own. Plus, the technicals should not be cut (though maybe the "short film categories" could go without spoiling that it's a night about cinema. Still I like my Oscars long. But they do need to have more spirited presentation. HIRE NEIL PATRICK HARRIS & HUGH JACKMAN AS A DUO. (see also TFE's live blog for their wonder-twin-powered duet)

 

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