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"The Last Temptation of
Christ", from Johnny Web
This movie was received
with a lot of negative vibes. Generally, people
only object to artistic license when it concerns
recent historical figures, like Kennedy and
Nixon. This is why Oliver Stone gets into so much
trouble. On the other hand, people will tolerate
any kind of distortion of historical figures from
distant times.
But there are
exceptions. Christ is one of them. For every
individual, Christ has a personal meaning, and
that often involves beliefs held steadfast from
childhood, and/or beliefs that involve faith and
trust in the people who instilled the beliefs in
us. Therefore, when somebody else shows us his
own personal interpretation, and that
interpretation is unusual and in conflict with
our own, we react with our emotions. That why
this movie was so controversial.
But I don't think it is
possible to argue that it is not a deeply
spiritual story. The eponymous book, by the famed
Greek author Nikos Kazantzakis ("Zorba the
Greek") is, in my opinion, one of the 10 or
so truly great literary achievements of the 20th
century, on a literary level with the best of
Joyce and Nabokov, and perhaps greater in some
respects than either, because Joyce and Nabokov
are the masters of language, but Kazantzakis is
the master of the spirit. With this book, he asks
a simple question - what would life have been
like for Christ - real life, now - if he had been
both man and God, and his human side needed time
to understand the responsibilities of his divine
side and the will of the Father. Wouldn't Satan's
temptations, for example, prey upon the
weaknesses of a human side with human needs and
limitations and the ever-troublesome free will?
Assuming Judas was a real man and not just a
melodramatic Snidely Whiplash cartoon bad guy,
what would have motivated Judas to betray his
master? Just money? Nah, has to be something much
deeper than that.
It is a simple story,
beautifully told. Not at all iconoclastic, just a
deeply-realized personal vision that takes
Christ's duality of nature completely seriously
and tries to understand it. "Mystical"
might be the right word.
Roger Ebert wrote a
beautiful sentence about this movie, both
accurate and sublimely worded, and I can't hope
to better it. "The film has offended those
whose ideas of God and man it does not reflect.
But then, so did Jesus."
Martin Scorsese
directed, and he just tried to keep himself out
of the way and let Kazantzakis' story unfold
accurately. He did tons of research to make sure
that he got the visuals and all elements of the
time period exactly right. For example, he
approached The Last Supper with the same
seriousness that Kazantzakis took toward
homoousia. He assumed it really happened, and
therefore portrayed it as it actually would have
looked, not as it was painted in the Renaissance
(a beautiful visual - see the top of Hershey
collage #6). He hired the best actors he could
find, and he put it all together beautifully. Is
the film really a great masterpiece, as some have
argued? I don't know. I think the story is too
internal to translate to a perfect movie. The
book is more of a theological argument than a
story, sometimes presenting all sides of the
argument in the form of character voices. Deep
spirituality makes for a good book, since a book
can be our companion for days, but doesn't
necessarily make for a great movie, a medium
which has only two hours of our lives to make its
impact. It's a good movie, no question about it,
but one with limited appeal. It's really not much
to my taste, and judging from the general
reactions to it, not much to the mass taste
either.
One of the reasons for
the controversy centered around Mary Magdalen, in
some graphic scenes of sex and nudity, as
portrayed (beautifully, I think) by Barbara
Hershey (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6)
Extras (1,
2)
"The
Coroner", from Johnny Web
The latest from the
Roger Corman team, so I think you can probably
figure what to count on and what not to count on
from this flick.
Most coroners wait for
people to die before carving them up, but not
Leon Juraski, who prefers to hear them scream a
bit. Dr Juraski is especially fixated on women
who tried to commit suicide and failed. In his
mind, he has been cheated of a stiff when this
happens, so he seeks out the survivors and helps
them along on their trip to his table. I think
you can see that this will be a sensitive and
heart-warming family pic, ala Old Yeller.
The film starts with a
scene in a strip club, plenty of anonymous flesh.
In the middle somewhere there is a scene of a
woman stripping on a table for her lover. This is
completely unrelated to the movie. They tied it
in through a very indirect connection, but it's
absolutely irrelevant and gratuitous. This is
what makes Corman movies so great.
In addition to the
furniture commercial level of acting, the
continuity is laughable. In the sex scene with
the star, she is in one position, she and her
lover move to another position and her panties
disappear, then she's right back in the original
position with the panties still on. In one scene
she reads a newspaper, and if you look beneath
the headlines, the story is about Batman! When
she throws the paper down, they do a close-up of
the front page again - only this time the story
is about a different victim - and she hasn't died
yet! There are a whole bunch of people in the
credits who do not appear in the movie, as far as
I can see, and at least two characters with major
parts (in collages below) who I can't match to
the credits, including one who has a name in the
script, but no character by that name is listed
in the credits. Ah, the world of grade-b
entertainment! Ya gotta love it. When I wasn't
sure, I left the collages without a name. My best
guess is in the file name. If anyone knows for
sure who these women are, let me know.
Jane Longenecker or Jane
Longnecker - her name is spelled one way in the
opening credits and another in the closing
credits. Perhaps she changed her name during the
picture. I know I would if I were in it. She's a
very petite woman in excellent physical shape.
Her bio even says that she's a veteran
Shakespearean stage actress. Unfortunately,
either she couldn't make the transition from
stage to movies, or the rest of the cast kind of
dragged her down to their level, because she was
unnatural in some scenes, although quite good in
others. She was the only one with any good
moments. The rest of the cast follows the usual
grade-b path. (1,
2,
3)
Joyce Westergard, or
somebody else. Whoever she is, she is late 30's
to early 40's, and speaks with an accent from
somewhere in the germanic language group - maybe
Danish, but I'm not sure. Let me know if you can
identify her. (1,
2)
Stacy Leigh Mobley, or somebody else. She is cute.
Bardot
Festival, from Tuna
Here're Tuna's comments
on Dance With Me. "One of the 4 new region
one DVDs just released. Brigitte marries a
dentist against the wishes of her wealthy father.
She leaves the house after a lovers spat, and he
heads out to dinner and drinks. He is picked up
by the owner of a dance studio, who takes him to
her house, tries to seduce him, and has an
accomplice taking pictures for blackmail. He
resists, but the pictures look bad. She attempts
to blackmail him, but is murdered by someone who
tries to frame the dentist. Brigitte tries to
solve the murder to free her husband and gets in
all sorts of mischief. Again, no real nudity, but
a good see-through or two. I enjoyed this movie a
lot. Her personality comes through, and she looks
fresh and desirable throughout." Please Not
Now. It is a Roger Vadim movie from 1961 and
therefore features Bardot in her mid twenties
working with the director who discovered her.
Tuna's comments: "1961 film in B & W and
finally some exposure. We have clear butt shots,
and out of focus nudity, along with several great
teases. After a 4 film marathon, I have become a
huge fan of Ms. Bardot. She danced in two of the
films, which is no surprise since she started out
to be a dancer. She was in the same conservatory
class as Leslie Caron, and beat her in an annual
competition. She is indeed one of the sexiest
women to appear on the silver screen, and not
just for her lovely body or full-lipped sensuous
pout. Her screen presence was an irresistible
mixture of coquette and naivete. She never
studied acting, and learned on the job. Please
not now is a sort of farce with some truly funny
moments. Bardot is a model who has had an 18
month affair with her photographer/boss. When he
dumps her for another woman, she swears revenge,
which starts with a pie-in-the-face at a fancy
restaurant. Another diner falls instantly in love
with her, and offers to help her get revenge and
win the photographer back as a pretext to be near
her. They all end up in the same hotel at a Swiss
ski resort. It is a farce, and resorts to a lot
of physical humor, but I enjoyed it anyway. I
suspect that if Bardot became an altar boy, I
would find mass entertaining."
thumbnails for Please Now Now thumbnails for Dance With Me Please Not Now (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9,
10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16) Dance With Me (1,
2,
3,
4,
5,
6,
7,
8,
9)
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