Spider-Man's Custody Battle

As many have heard Sony and Disney are having a little tiff about profit sharing and Disney has elected to use Spidey's involvement in the MCU and Kevin Feige's involvement in Spider Man movies as bargaining chips to have an even profit split. Understandably, people are upset, and I'm being unironic here people love these characters and love seeing these characters interact and this tiff is putting this in jeopardy, but I find the discourse incredibly troubling.

An American in Paris (1951)

I love the glitz and excess of "The Musical" as it as been mythologized in the public consciousness and especially in the movies. However, with an industry wide shift in the 70's toward realism ,"the Musical" became less popular as a film genre to the point where musicals really only exist in the modern industry as gritty dark awards bait films like Les Miserables. It seems they can only exist if their song and dance is balanced out with a realistic narrative, characters, and visual style. An American in Paris is very much not that.

Raw Deal (1948)

Raw Deal (1948) is absolutely another standard Film Noir like Born to Kill (1947). However this particular Film Noir proved to be far more interesting than I could have anticipated. But, before I get into that I need to point out a bit of language used in the opening credits. The credits read that the movie was "suggested by a story by Arnold B. Armstrong and Audrey Ashley". Can we use that language more often? It seems most movie adaptations of books, real events, and other works are more "suggested by" than "based on". That language would really apply to the crappy Percy Jackson movies; certainly movies "suggested by" Riordan's work and not based on.

Shumacher's Gay Batman

Today's normally scheduled post is coming later, but first I had to deal with an issue that's been growing in my brain and gnawing at me for the past year. So welcome to my first bonus editorial! It has no connection with today's scratch off poster movie (Raw Deal), but everything to do with a video I recently saw on YouTube linked here. Yup this is about criticism of Joel Shumacher's Batman movies. For a bit of context I'm a fan, and have been since I initially saw them on home video as a kid, but only recently have I been bold enough to publicly declare my love of these two movies, especially Batman and Robin.

Born to Kill (1947)

Since taking a class focusing on the genre Film Noir has been my favorite genre of a bygone era. Gaining prominence just after the second World War film noir was born out of the cynicism and nuclear fears of the 40's and 50's. It is characterized by morally ambiguous heroes, manipulative femme fatales, plots of murder, large sums of money, and a general feeling of darkness and cynicism. Born To Kill (1947) is fairly exemplary example of this genre.

The Great Dictator (1940)

Having done a bit of research on this film (actually just glancing at the wikipedia page) I learned that in his biography Charlie Chaplin stated that he would not have made The Great Dictator (1940) if he had known the true extent of the violence committed against the Jewish people in Germany. Perhaps this would have been the right decision in 1940 when Hitler was still in power and the threat he represented wasn't widely known. Trivializing dangerous people can give them power by disguising their threat, however in 2019, to quote Mel Brooks, "Of course it is impossible to take revenge for 6 million murdered Jews. But by using the medium of comedy, we can try to rob Hitler of his posthumous power and myths."

Gone With the Wind (1939)

It seems Tuseday's post about Frankenstein was the perfect prelude to this post. I mean talk about a cinematic institution. Gone With the Wind is, has been, and probably always will be THE highest grossing film of all time. Sure Avengers: Endgame may hold that title in raw unfiltered numbers (after a re-release with additional footage), but if you were to adjust for inflation Gone With the Wind has made over one trillion dollars. That's a lot of money, and if that weren't enough it's widely considered to be one of the greatest achievements in filmmaking. 4 hours of engrossing drama, searing romance, lush imagery etc... After watching it for myself...