Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Sunday, March 24, 2019

Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018)

Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018)

Cast: Joanna Kulig, Tomasz Kot, Borys Szyc, Agata Kulesza, Cédric Kahn, Jeanne Balibar. Screenplay: Pawel Pawlikowski, Janusz Glowacki, Piotr Borkowski. Cinematography: Lukasz Zal. Production design: Benoît Barouh, Marcel Slawinski, Katarzyna Sobanska-Strzalkowska. Film editing: Jaroslaw Kaminski.

Saturday, March 23, 2019

The Silence (Ingmar Bergman, 1963)

The Silence (Ingmar Bergman, 1963)

Cast: Ingrid Thulin, Gunnel Lindblom, Jörgen Lindström, Håkan Jahnberg, Birger Malmsten. Screenplay: Ingmar Bergman. Cinematography: Sven Nykvist. Production design: P.A. Lundgren. Film editing: Ulla Ryghe. Music: Ivan Renliden.

Friday, March 22, 2019

Broadway Melody of 1940 (Norman Taurog, 1940)

Broadway Melody of 1940 (Norman Taurog, 1940)

Cast: Fred Astaire, Eleanor Powell, George Murphy, Frank Morgan, Ian Hunter, Florence Rice. Screenplay: Leon Gordon, George Oppenheimer, Jack McGowan, Dore Schary. Cinematography: Oliver T. Marsh, Joseph Ruttenberg. Art direction: Cedric Gibbons. Film editing: Blanche Sewell. Songs: Cole Porter.

Thursday, March 21, 2019

Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

Isle of Dogs (Wes Anderson, 2018)

Cast voices: Bryan Cranston, Koyu Rankin, Edward Norton, Bob Balaban, Jeff Goldblum, Bill Murray, Kunichi Nomura, Akira Takayama, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Akira Ito, Scarlett Johansson, Harvey Keitel, F. Murray Abraham, Yoko Ono, Tilda Swinton, Ken Watanabe. Screenplay: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola, Jason Schwartzman, Kunichi Nomura. Cinematography: Tristan Oliver. Production design: Paul Harrod, Adam Stockhausen. Film editing: Edward Bursch, Ralph Foster, Andrew Weisblum. Music: Alexandre Desplat.

Little Women (George Cukor, 1933)

Little Women (George Cukor, 1933)

Cast: Katharine Hepburn, Joan Bennett, Jean Parker, Frances Dee, Spring Byington, Paul Lukas, Henry Stephenson, Douglass Montgomery, Edna May Oliver, John Lodge. Screenplay: Sarah Y. Mason, Victor Heerman, based on a novel by Louisa May Alcott. Cinematography: Henry W. Gerrard. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase. Film editing: Jack Kitchin. Music: Max Steiner.

Tuesday, March 19, 2019

My Favorite Wife (Garson Kanin, 1940)

My Favorite Wife (Garson Kanin, 1940)

Cast: Cary Grant, Irene Dunne, Randolph Scott, Gail Patrick, Ann Shoemaker, Scotty Beckett, Mary Lou Harrington, Donald MacBride, Granville Bates, Pedro de Cordoba. Cinematography: Rudolph Maté. Art direction: Van Nest Polglase, Mark-Lee Kirk. Film editing: Robert Wise. Music: Roy Webb.