I want you to know three things about The Shape of Water.
They are, in no particular order, that it is:
Beautiful, lyrical, and absolutely deserving of the buzz surrounding it; the fact that there is so much buzz around it and that people are appreciative of such a daring story is wonderful.
Marvelous, in that it literally contains marvels of all sorts. Acting, effects, imagery, characters, sets, dialogue, music, production, you name it, there is something in this movie to dig into.
Inspiring a much, much longer review from my co-blogger Achariya and I that we will hash out tomorrow and post in the next day or so. I will keep general comments above a cut, but deeper discussion will need to contain spoilers so those will go below the cut.
Man. That was something. I cannot WAIT to write more, but it’s late and this sort of thing requires a proper marination of the brainmeats before anything can be said.
I’m going to assume you are familiar with these films and the objects, and not explain the films so much as why I am willing to spend an hour with a needle in my arm to own them. Here we go!
Recently I was contacted by Ryan Stills of Invaluable.com, an auction site for anything from estate lots to fine art to fine wines. I poked about on the site and found some really neat stuff, I must say. They even have antique furniture! REAL antique furniture, from 17th-century England! POSH!
The company does auctions on movie props, and he asked me what props I might like to own to help get an idea what kinds of things movie fans might be interested in owning. The question really got me thinking. I don’t collect much stuff anymore, for the following reasons:
THEN I knew that Del Toro had in fact been reading my diary because GOD ALMIGHTY– a well-dressed, incredibly dapper gent who turns up out of nowhere, has intelligent input on her writing, and exudes manners and charm?
October is Horror Movie month, where we let down our hair and celebrate all things macabre and scary! Not that we don’t during the rest of the year, but still… HORROR MOVIES! People who don’t like horror are encouraged to check back November 1st for less bloody and/or disturbing films. For everyone else, let’s put on our galoshes and WADE INTO THE MIRE!
Creepy, Creaky Old Houses Week is a gear-switch from Hell Week; in Hell Week we donned our raincoats and galoshes to wade into the Hellraiser movies– bloody, fleshy, hooky, painy, S&My wonders that they are. This week is all about subtle, understated horror, with very little blood, highbrow content, and plenty of atmospherics. So put on your Edwardian nightclothes and some hard-soled shoes– we’re creeping slowly up staircases while clutching unreliable lighting sources this week!
Today’s entry is Crimson Peak, which just opened last week! Since it’s still in theaters today’s entry will contain NO SPOILERS.
The colors! The colors!
If I had to describe Crimson Peak in a single long word without taking a breath, it would be RomancySwoonyBloodySteampunkySexyCostumeyVictorianyHiddlestonsassy. There, you’re all caught up! I leave it up to you if that last one is ‘Hiddleston sassy’ or ‘Hiddlestons assy’ because both are apt.
Ripped from the sweat-stained pages of my secret smut diary!
I was SO. EXCITED. when the trailer came out almost a year ago. Maybe my expectations were overbuilt or something, because although there were many, MANY things I loved about Crimson Peak, I did feel myself a bit let down. I just wasn’t feeling it… I cried big ugly sobs during so many of Guillermo Del Toro’s other films– even Hellboy 2!– but for some reason the emotional center of this film never gelled for me.
Without a doubt, the film:
Is composed of a beautifully twisted world of extremes: the sun-drenched golds of Buffalo and the slate-sky’d, wintry moors surrounding Allerdale Hall define the light spectrum of the film
Contained some of the most magnificent sets and costumes, especially the aforementioned Allerdale in all its decrepit, strangely sentient glory
Is atmospheric almost to a fault
Was advertised as brain-melting horror but never quite got inside my head– the ghosts were grotesque, but ultimately quite sad
Held fascinating characters, an engaging setup, and plenty of promise
Reminded me of Poe’s The Fall of The House of Usher, and I wondered why I haven’t seen that mentioned in reviews.
Edith Cushing is a young, well-to-do lady not content to lay around and spend her father’s hard-earned money; she’s got a dream. She’s a writer, so right away my interest was peaked (HA! yes we are still doing bad puns). Literally stained with ink, she waits, with her heart in her throat, while an editor boredly pages through her work. He dismisses it and tells her that since she’s a woman, she ought to write romances instead of ghost stories. She astutely points out that it’s not a ghost story, but a story with a ghost in it, which all but sets up the film for us. Undaunted by the rejection, Edith resolves to learn to type so that her feminine handwriting won’t give away her gender to the next editor.
“Who’s that idjit dancing with Edith?” I LOVE JIM BEAVER SO MUCH EVER SINCE DEADWOOD!!
Her industrialist father Carter, played by Jim Beaver, is supportive of her dream and so she practices her typing at his firm’s typewriter, which is at the front desk of the firm. It is there she meets Sir Thomas Sharpe, baronet whose come to town to drum up financial support in a machine he’s designed. Believe me when I say his intro is magic; with a spring in his step and tophat on his head, he saunters along a ray of sunshine, radiating confidence and integrity. He notices her story and picks it up, fascinated, and THEN I knew that Del Toro had in fact been reading my diary because GOD ALMIGHTY– a well-dressed, incredibly dapper gent who turns up out of nowhere, has intelligent input on her writing, and exudes manners and charm?
I’d faint if I weren’t so busy swooning… oh, what the hell. *thump*
Although she’s sort of attached to ultra all-American Dr. Alan McMichaels (Charlie Hunnam) she is quickly swept off her feet by the dashing Sir Sharpe when he literally waltzes her around the room. But Sharpe has a secret that Carter hires Holly (Burn Gorman, who is in EVERYTHING, I say! EVERYTHING!) to ferret out. A murder, a funeral, and a marriage follow, in that order.
Although the characterizations start out strong, they start to fall apart as the movie loses its footing. For example: Edith is from BUFFALO, a town famous for encountering ridiculously harsh winters. And yet later in the film when shit has Gotten Real, she is only too ready to run out into the snow in her bedclothes to escape the house. I found that hard to swallow, and it’s one of the main reasons I don’t get why people are calling her such a great character. The situation wasn’t so dire that she had to escape right away, and she would know full well that such a move would get her frozen faster than if she asked her sister-in-law Lucille for a hug.
My hair caught fire from just looking at this picture
Another dumb nit I must pick – there is a huge hole in Allerdale Hall’s roof, through which leaves tumble gently in a continual cascade. And yet– there are no trees around the house!
File 404 Error: Foliage Not Found
I know it’s a stupid thing to focus on in this otherwise beautiful and haunting film, but I can’t help it. I pick because I care!
I won’t tell you Crimson Peak isn’t good – it’s great and it does a lot of things right. For one thing, it turns the gothic romance genre on its head in a lot of ways, even as it celebrates them. Thomas is dashing and mysterious, but he’s also an inventor who’s trying to rebuild his family’s lost fortune, and his endearing sweetness sets him apart from the usual brooding hunks you find in these films. Allerdale Hall is perfectly vast, creeply and creaky, but it’s also falling apart and slowly sinking into the red clay upon which it’s built. A perfectly cast Jessica Chastain appears as Lucille, an aristocratic iceberg who must do most of the housework herself since the Sharpe fortune is long gone.
The critics are raving about it, it’s already got a built-in fandom, and I will definitely add it to my Del Toro collection when it’s out on blu-ray.
Thanks for reading this installment of Creepy Creaky week! Sorry there are only two entries, I have some personal business going on that precludes me from blogging. Next week’s theme will be Halloween And the Kitchen Sink, in which we explore horror movies that threw everything Halloweenish at the viewer, including the kitchen sink!
Like your standard costume drama, they go back and forth for approximately 800 years before they get together. By the end of the show he’s financially ruined despite all his hard work, and the experience has broken many of his tightly-held conceptions about life. And this is symbolized in him appearing in public with his shirt undone, which shouldn’t be that big a deal and yet it is, because Armitage releases some weapons-grade smolder.
Hats! Cravats! Emotional turmoil! Heaving bosoms!
Miniseries time!
I am going through a breakup, and so what better time to obsessively fixate on an unattainable ideal? And who better than Richard Armitage, who is SO HOT right now! YAY!!! *takes another shot*
Armitage first showed up on my radar when he appeared as Thorin Oakenshield in The Hobbit. I hadn’t heard of him, and looked for more of his work, preferably the smutty kind.
My friend, another Armitage fan, recommended the show to me. I gave it a try a while ago but couldn’t quite get into it. A snail with a twisted ankle could outstrip it when it comes to pacing.
The story is actually fascinating: Margaret Hale is a young woman from the South of England who moves with her family to the North. Her father is a rector who has lost his faith, and so chose to move to the North and be a teacher, which will cause his family to live “in reduced circumstances,” which is British Dramatic Speak for “no longer wealthy.” Margaret, while scouting for a new house to rent, overhears some men gossiping about her father’s recent social descent and speculating that it might have been due to something scandalous. She demands to be taken to their boss, Mr. Thornton the factory owner (Armitage) who has taken it upon himself to help the family find a house.
She meets our luscious hero just when he is in the midst of lurid exhortations, which sounds sexy but really means “beating the shit out of a factory worker.” It transpires Thornton has lost his temper because the worker was smoking in the middle of a COTTON MILL, which is only slightly less flammable than a Chinese firework marinated in lamp oil, and he has seen the result of gruesome factory fires before. He considers his position as the factory owner as a kind of steward of his employees, even if he begrudges them their salaries.
SMOLDER!!
There are some interesting moments where worlds collide; Thornton, a member of the emergent bourgeoisie, carries a chip on his shoulder about having been born poor, as does his Mother, although his sister is delighted at having “gone up” in the world. Hale has a bad moment where she is engulfed in a crowd of rough working class folks, who jeer and frighten her before she is rescued by Nicholas Higgins, played by Brendan Coyle (who is best known as Mr. Bates from Downtown Abbey). The working class have power, they aren’t afraid to pick on an unattended upperclass lady and both of them know it. Ever after there little moments of socioeconomic overlap, sometimes overt and sometimes very subtle, but still there.
It began to dawn on me somewhere in the second episode that this was how the show was going to be. There would be no rogering or nudity, and since I didn’t know how long the show was I was very concerned that I would spend 25 hours of my life for the privilege of watching someone loosen their cravat. Luckily the show was only 4 episodes, and I was having fun with it, so I watched the rest.
And MAN.
Tenderness! WOOO TOUCH HER HAIR!!!
Margaret is a likeable enough character, but I’ll be honest and say that I wasn’t really moved by her plight, possibly because she didn’t launch herself crotch-first at Thornton upon his first appearance like any sensible person would. She puts him off and insists she doesn’t like him, even when he approaches her with an offer of marriage.
Like your standard costume drama, they go back and forth for approximately 800 years before they get together. By the end of the show he’s financially ruined despite all his hard work, and the experience has broken many of his tightly-held conceptions about life. And this is symbolized in him appearing in public with his shirt undone, which shouldn’t be that big a deal and yet it is, because Armitage releases some weapons-grade smolder.
Oops, there go my pants! INTO FLAMES.
Trends come and go. Currently we are stuck in a “actors and actresses barely wear clothes” cycle. I’m not advocating we all wrap ourselves up in layers and layers of shamecloth, but there’s something to be said for a less is more approach, sometimes. It’s nice to have to use your imagination now and then.
When it’s done right, with the right performers and good direction, an undone button can butter more crumpet than a pile of porn mags. But maybe it’s just me.
North and South is available on Instant Watch. If you already watch a lot of these types of shows you might enjoy it, and the history is very interesting. Watch the first episode and see what you think!
*finishes off the bottle, goes to sleep in the empty bathtub*
A movie like this is bittersweet, because while it enriches the viewer, I can think of countless people who would benefit from the kind of psychological ‘time out’ that Phil experiences. Because that’s what it is – someone basically said ‘You sit in this corner and think about what you’ve done,’ except on a cosmic scale.
Phil Connors: What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?
Ralph: That about sums it up for me.
Seriously. This is amazing.
Groundhog Day.
You’ve seen it or, or you haven’t, or you’ve seen it, and wondered what all the fuss was about.
Or you’ve seen it, and you know exactly where I’m going.
Harold Ramis’s 1993 film Groundhog Day stars Bill Murray as egocentric megabastard Phil Connors, a cynical weather man with disdain for only the whole of creation, who is trapped in a strange time flux and relives the same day over and over again.
The premise sounds corny, and when I first saw the movie at age 12 or so I wondered what the hell was going on with it. But it stuck with me. It’s like bookmarking a page that has a word you don’t understand and mean to look up, and then years later you either understand the word or have enough experience under your belt that you can figure out what it means. I love things like that. . . that you need to mature in order to understand.
Newsman Phil has to go to Punxatawney Pennsylvania to report on the verdict of Punxatawney Phil, the most famous groundhog in the US, on whether or not to expect more spring or winter. Each day is begun with the alarm clock playing Sonny and Cher’s ‘I got you, babe,’ and at first Phil makes the most of his situation–since everything happens the same way every day, through observation he is able to later manipulate situations to his own advantage, and uses this knowledge to rob banks, romance women, eat horribly, and generally sate his most base appetites. When he realizes the one thing he wants that he can’t have is Rita, he embarks on a journey of never-ending self-destruction: despondent about being trapped forever in a small town with no consequences to his actions, he throws himself off buildings and crashes cars or steps in front of trucks in the hopes of killing himself and escaping the hell that is a never-ending Groundhog Day.
Get used to this image.
Groundhog Day was incredibly underrated when it came out–which is a shame, because it’s much smarter than the average crappy romance comedy/fantasy. There’s a key line that ties the whole movie perfectly together.
While attempting to romance the unwilling object of his affection, Rita, played by Andie MacDowell, Phil screws up and draws her ire. She slaps him and asks if the whole day has been some some big ploy to get her to love him. He responds with the incredibly apt: ‘But I don’t even like myself.’
That’s the key part of the whole movie–Phil’s cynicism and misery springs from the fact that he really, truly hates himself, and therefore everything and everyone else in the world.
Here’s the interesting part, where the movie goes from a goofy romance-comedy to a brilliant character study; we get to see Phil really grow and change as a person. He starts out a childish, selfish douchebag, belittling anyone who shows him kindness and dismissing kind people as weak. As he begins to manipulate situations to his advantage, thus getting anything he wants, he realizes that this is boring. He attempts to woo Rita, meticulously researching her likes and dislikes and trying desperately to synthesize a personality that she finds attractive: studying French poetry, memorizing her favorite things, and asking her endless questions to get to know her better. Alas, she sees through his attempts for what they are: a facile attempt to fool her into liking him.
He really does play in real life, I think.
After she drops him, his despondence leads to the aforementioned many suicide attempts. He is truly, truly miserable now, in a hell of his own making.
Since being a selfish bastard didn’t make him happy, he decides to try going in the opposite direction: he becomes the town’s worker of small miracles, changing tires for old ladies, helping the helpless, etc. His crusade of selflessness includes trying to save an elderly homeless man from death, and here he really begins to evince the change: unable to save the man, he finally begins to understand what caring for others is.
Since he seems to have unlimited time, he learns the piano and reads classical literature, teaches himself too cook and other tasks he might have overlooked or been uninterested in previously. This intellectual banquet leads him to further realize how petty and mean he was before this strange phenomena happened to him, and his bad attitude is tempered and reshaped over the small eternity he spends on Groundhog Day.
A movie like this is bittersweet, because while it enriches the viewer, I can think of countless people who would benefit from the kind of psychological ‘time out’ that Phil experiences. Because that’s what it is – someone basically said ‘You sit in this corner and think about what you’ve done,’ except on a cosmic scale.
It’s only when Connors learns to love himself, and by extension other people, that he is able to escape from Groundhog Day.
I like Groundhog Day because it imagines that even the most cold-hearted bastard is capable of change, given the right amount of time and right circumstances. Murray is the perfect person for this role, since he knows how to portray someone both cynical and warm: after all, cynics are usually people whose soft hearts were broken early in life, and grow callous and cold in an attempt to prevent it from ever happening again. Having been a cynic and grown up around them, I know exactly what I’m talking about. Murray probably knows that or experienced it in some form himself, since he illustrates it so beautifully in his characters. Sure, he doesn’t have the world’s widest range, but he has what he does down to a science.
