aviary assassination

[Alexandra]

Έχει κανένας ιδέα τι ακριβώς έγινε σ' αυτή την ταινία;

Matt Dillon, Jennifer Grey, Julie Hagerty, Rutger Hauer, Madonna, Esai Morales, Anita Morris and Randy Quaid make the 20's roar all over again in this sparkling romantic comedy, BLOODHOUNDS OF BROADWAY, based on four short stories by Damon Runyon.

It was New Year's Eve in New York City, 1928. The champagne was cold, the dolls were red-hot and everyone who was anyone was there. Shimmy on down to the speakeasy run by jazz-baby Miss Missou (Anita Morris), where earnest Lovey Lou (Jennifer Grey) and dishy Hortense Hathaway (Madonna) sing and dance on the hearts of two-timin' pony player Regret (Matt Dillon) and hapless Feet Samuels (Randy Quaid), a lumbering oaf with a heart-o'-gold who's sold it, along with the rest of his body, to a mad doctor determined to collect at midnight.
And make an appearance at the home of feather-headed socialite Ηarriet MacKyle (Julie Hagerty), whose glittering New Year's bash really takes flight with an untimely aviary assassination perpetrated by suave bootlegger Handsome Jack (Esai Morales). Add a handful of reluctant gangsters, an assortment of unflappable flappers and a philandering gambler known as "The Brain" (Rutger Hauer), and you've got a comic celebration of the infamous night when the underworld met the upper crust - and the laughs were strictly
on the house.​

http://earlydues.usanethosting.com/fisher/film/broadway.htm

 

[natandri]

Απ' όσα βλέπω εδώ
http://www.allrovi.com/movies/movie/v6176
καταλαβαίνω ότι πρόκειται για τον αθέλητο φόνο ενός παπαγάλου...

 

[Alexandra]

Μπράβο, ευχαριστώ! Δεν ξέρεις πόσες ιστοσελίδες άνοιξα ψάχνοντας την υπόθεση της ταινίας. :)

 

[natandri]

Πες μου μόνο αν αξίζει ως ταινία :)

 

[Alexandra]

Δεν έχω ιδέα, η δουλειά μου είναι μόνο να μεταφράσω αυτή την περίληψη που είδες. Σύμφωνα με το IMDb πάντως είναι μάπα, 5 στα 10 έχει πάρει, αν και έχει εξαιρετικά λίγες ψήφους.

 

[SBE]

Κλιπάκι με κριτική (το θάβει) και αποσπάσματα όπου διαπιστώνουμε πόσο χάλια παίζει η Μαντόνα και βλέπουμε και τη δολοφονία του παπαγάλου:

Ο συντάκτης μπέρδεψε το avian με το aviary, νόμισα αρχικά ότι η δολοφονία έγινε στο πτηνοτροφείο.

 

[nickel]

Χτες διάβαζα στην Books' Journal ένα δισέλιδο κείμενο του Άκη Καπράνου για τους δύο σινεκριτικούς που παρουσίαζαν το πρόγραμμα At the movies, τον Ίμπερτ και τον Σίσκελ. Ο Ίμπερτ μάς άφησε προ ημερών, ο Σίσκελ πέθανε από καρκίνο κι αυτός στα 53 του, το 1999.

Το πολύ ενδιαφέρον στο κομμάτι είναι η κριτική του Ίμπερτ για το Βλέμμα του Οδυσσέα του Θόδωρου Αγγελόπουλου, το οποίο ο Ίμπερτ έθαψε κανονικά. Ο Καπράνος έχει κάνει μια συνοπτική μετάφραση της κριτικής, που αντιγράφω εδώ στο σύνολό της από τις ιστοσελίδες της εφημερίδας (http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/ulysses-gaze-1997). Έτσι δεν θα μείνει το νήμα στη δολοφονία του παπαγάλου.

ULYSSES' GAZE
1/4

Because it is a noble epic set amid the ruins of the Russian empire and the genocide of what was Yugoslavia, there is a temptation to give "Ulysses' Gaze'' the benefit of the doubt: To praise it for its vision, its daring, its courage, its great length. But I would not be able to look you in the eye if you went to see it, because how could I deny that it is a numbing bore? A director must be very sure of his greatness to inflict an experience like this on the audience, and Theo Angelopoulos was so sure that when he only won the Special Jury Prize at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival, he made his displeasure obvious on the stage. He thought he should have won the Palme d'Or, which went instead to "Underground,'' by Emir Kusturica, which also was three hours long and also set in the wreckage of Yugoslavia, but had at least the virtue of not being almost unendurable.

"Ulysses' Gaze'' stars Harvey Keitel as a Greek movie director named "A,'' who returns to his roots 35 years after leaving for America. He seeks, he says, some rare old film footage: The first film ever shot in the Balkans. His odyssey (for so we must describe any journey in a movie with "Ulysses'' in the title) takes him by taxi from Greece to the Albanian border, and then by boat to the cities of Skopje to Bucharest to Sarajevo. ("Is this Sarajevo?'' he asks at one point. If you have to ask, you're in the wrong place.) Along the way there are flashbacks to 1945 and 1946, when as a friend in Belgrade tells him, "We fell asleep in one world and were rudely awakened in another.'' You might be tempted to wonder why old film footage would be so important to "A'' that he would risk his life traveling unprotected through a war zone to find it. Since Angelopoulos in fact directed this movie about such a man, and filmed it in the very same war zones, he would probably not be the man to ask.

The initial "A'' undoubtedly stands for Angelopoulos, but why he chose Harvey Keitel to portray him is a mystery. Keitel is a great spontaneous actor, able to think on his feet and move around quickly in dialect, and here he acts as if someone has injected him with crazy glue. He's slow, measured, portentous, tedious, and his dialogue sounds like readings from an editorial translated imperfectly through several languages.

There are several women in the movie (the credits call them "Ulysses' Wives''), and they find themselves powerfully attracted to "A,'' a mystery only partly explained by the fact that they are all played by the same actress, Maia Morgenstern. They see him, he sees them, and soon the two of them are looking greatly pained. I was reminded of Armando Bo's anguished 1960s Argentinian soft-core sex films, which starred his wife Isabel Sarli, whose agony was terrible to behold and could only be slaked in the arms of a man. "A'' and the women make love in this movie as if trying to apply unguent inside each other's clothes.

There are some remarkable images. They are spaced throughout the film at roughly 20 minute intervals. One shows a thin line of police separating demonstrators with torches, and other people with umbrellas. When the torch-bearers press forward, the umbrellas undulate backward, in a scene reminiscent of the umbrella scene in Hitchcock's "Foreign Correspondent.'' Similar crowds with umbrellas stand in squares, and in fields, and along the banks of rivers. One wonders if the umbrellas are important to the shots, or if the extras demanded them.

Another big image involves a huge statue of Lenin, which has been disassembled and placed aboard a barge. (For shipment. . . where? Where is there a demand for used Lenin statues these days?) The vast stone head looks forward, and Lenin's giant finger points the way, as "A'' travels on the same barge. The image is so powerful that even its banality cannot diminish it.

The closing passages of the film have an immediacy; they're set in the middle of a war zone, and characters important to "A'' are endangered. But one can easily think of much better films also shot under wartime conditions, particularly "Circle of Deceit,'' shot by Volker Schlondorff during the fighting in Beirut, or Milcho Manchevski's "Before the Rain,'' shot near the fighting in Yugoslavia.

What's left after "Ulysses' Gaze'' is the impression of a film made by a director so impressed with the gravity and importance of his theme that he wants to weed out any moviegoers seeking interest, grace, humor or involvement. One cannot easily imagine anyone else speaking up at a dinner table where he presides.

It is an old fact about the cinema--known perhaps even to those pioneers who made the ancient footage "A'' is seeking--that a film does not exist unless there is an audience between the projector and the screen. A director, having chosen to work in a mass medium, has a certain duty to that audience. I do not ask that he make it laugh or cry, or even that he entertain it, but he must at least not insult its good will by giving it so little to repay its patience. What arrogance and self-importance this film reveals.

 

[SBE]

Eξαιρετικά εύστοχη κριτική και με πήγε πίσω στην πρεμιέρα της ταινίας στο φεστιβάλ του Λονδίνου, που μετά είχε και συζήτηση με τον σκηνοθέτη και ήταν ακριβώς όπως τα λέει.

 

[Earion]

What's left after "Ulysses' Gaze'' is the impression of a film made by a director so impressed with the gravity and importance of his theme that he wants to weed out any moviegoers seeking interest, grace, humor or involvement. One cannot easily imagine anyone else speaking up at a dinner table where he presides. ... What arrogance and self-importance this film reveals.

Τα λέει όλα ο άνθρωπος. Στο Βλέμμα του Οδυσσέα ήταν που ορκίστηκα ότι δεν ξαναπατάω σε ταινία του Αγγελόπουλου.

Αφήνω που το κεντρικό εύρημα, το πλοίο που μεταφέρει το άγαλμα, είναι κατευθείαν επιρροή από το Σουίτ Μούβι του Μακαβέγεφ.

 

[nickel]

Καλημέρα. Όλη την κριτική τη λάτρεψα για το απόσπασμα που διάλεξες. Μπορεί να διαβαστεί άλλωστε πολύ ευρύτερα.

 

[sarant]

Πω πω, τον έσφαξε... (και δεν έχω δει και την ταινία...)

 

[SBE]

Τώρα ξέρεις να μην τη δείς.
Πάντως το μεγαλύτερο λάθος του Αγγελόπουλου στην ταινία αυτή ήταν ο Καϊτέλ, ο οποίος παίζει χάλια και είναι εμφανές ότι δεν έχει καταλάβει γρυ. Δεν έχω ιδέα γιατί δεν μπορούσε να τον παίξει ο Φυσσούν που τον ντουμπλάρει. Ειδικά σε μια σκηνή που ο Καιτέλ κι ο Μιχαλακόπουλος περπατάνε μαζί αγκαζέ κι ο Μιχαλακόπουλος λέει, λέει, λέει κι ο Καιτέλ γρυλίζει κάτι "ναι", "ίσως" κλπ στα ελληνικά, που δεν μπορέι να τα πει καθόλου. Γιατί δεν είναι μόνο ότι δεν μπορεί να τα πει, είναι εμφανές ότι δεν ξέρει πότε να τα πεί. Πιθανόν να τον ζούλαγε ο Μιχαλακόπουλος στο μπράτσο για να ξέρει πότε να μιλήσει. Το αποτέλεσμα είναι ο ένας να μιλάει για τα παλιά και να του λέει εγκάρδια θυμάσαι τότε που κάναμε εκείνο (1000 λέξεις) κι ο άλλος να έχει ύφος βοήθεια, με έχει απαγάγει αυτός εδώ και μου μιλάει σε άγνωστη γλώσσα.

 

[nickel]

(και δεν έχω δει και την ταινία...)

Το χειρότερο στην περίπτωσή μου είναι που δεν θυμάμαι αν την έχω δει (αλλά δεν πειράζει, μου συμβαίνει και με καλύτερες ταινίες). :)