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dangermousieI've been rather neglectful of LJ lately. What with being exhausted, various RL commitments and similar, less lj time for me. Am sorry :)
First off, I finished Nodame Cantabile. It's not the kind of drama I have a lot (or any) meta for, but it was a great deal of fun. Two pet peeves: (1) whoeverplayed Straseman. I want to drown him. There is fun OTT and then there is this. Plus, if he is not Japanese, I'll eat my hairbrush. and (2) a bit too cartoonish in some reactions. I know it's on purpose, but it didn't work all the time. But overall, it was fast, fun, breezy and Tamaki Hiroshi is yummilicious.
Second (on Bednaya Nastya): Die, Michael! Seriously, I wasn't mad at his being angry on finding out Anna is a serf (she did lie to him), but his horrible reaction to her confessing to him that she went to Vladimir's room at night, prepared to 'sacrifice' herself to prevent the duel, made me want to choke the life out of him! He knows nothing happened, he knows she loves him (well, she is divided, but no character, her included, is aware of it yet). WTF is wrong with him! He treats her like some sort of leprous whore! He tells her to go back to Vladimir's bed etc etc. He asks her why she didn't come to his bed instead? (Did he want her to wade through the snow for miles, after dark, and try to break into a strange house?) I hate him. Seriously. I am also 'amused' to note that he has never mentioned marriage to her: he took her to a secluded room for sex, true, and was all about them being together, but not a word of marriage. Very honorable of him. *stab*
And oh, the duel itself. I love, when after it all, when Vladimir tells her that 'Baron Vladimir Korf has been slain' and she whispers, because she is so confused and in love, even though she doesn't realize it 'I didn't pull the trigger' (she was threatening him to drop the gun) and he replies 'nontheless, he is dead, and all that remains is to fulfill his last will' and gives her the freedom papers. OMG. And as he is about to ride off he tells Michael, quietly that he started this whole 'charade' with the duel, with only one goal in mind: for Michael to kill him (and it explains so much. He gave Michael first shot, and just stood there, eyes closed. OMG. Anna, he loves you so much!) and tells Michael that sometimes his (Michael's) nobility (in not killing Vladimir) is wrong and a punishment.
But I posted about this scene, with vids/translations before, but case you mised it,
Anna interrupts the duel:
Anna: Vladimir. Stop. Stop, put down the gun. Vladmir, put down the gun or I will shoot.
V: Your care is very praiseworthy, madam. But there is the Code Duello so I must take my shot.
A: You won't take it.
V: Madam, I will.
Michael: Anna, Vladimir is right, you can't violate duelling rules.
A: Is murder done according to rules? Why are you both saying such nonsense? I told you, drop the gun or I will kill you.
V: Why are you waiting? Shoot. Aren't you going to kill me?
A: Drop the gun
V: (with the gun against his forehead) All you have to do is squeeze the trigger, and you get rid of a hated person forever.
M: Vladimir, get back to position.
V: We are not playing by the rules today. (to Anna) Come on, it's a mere movement of the finger. (moves the gun to his heart)
A: Stop.
*Michael comes and grabs Vladimir's gun*
M: Anna, Vladimir forgot to tell you. This gun is empty, it was already fired.
V: Doctor, we won't need your help.
Doc: Praise be, then I am going home.
M: Why didn't you shoot?
V: I don't have to explain it. (to Anna) Your appearance finished it all off. You made your choice. And to kill the man you chose would have been really unfair on my part.
M: Vladimir, we wouldn't have been able to shoot at each other anyway.
V: I can't pretend I am happy for the both of you. You shot me dead anyhow, Anna.
A: But I didn't pull the trigger [is she mentally challenged?]
V: Nontheless, Baron Korf is done for. All that's left is his last will. [these are her freedom papers OMG. I guess he thought he was going to die] Take these. Be happy.
V: Stop!
A: Michael.
M: What? What is there?
A: He gave me my freedom papers.
M: Thank you.
V: No need. Be happy.
M: Give me yor hand, I am so proud of you [argh, they are all being so noble I want to gag]
V: Last night I realized how much Anna loves you. If a woman is prepared to sacrfice like that, nothing will change her feeling.
M: What happened last night? [heeeeee]
V: Doesn't matter now. And all of today's farce had only one goal for me.
M: What?
V: For you to kill me. Remember, Michael. Nobility isn't always a good thing, sometimes it ruins things.
Vladimir after the duel. There is snow all over, but since this isn't a kdrama, he shall not freeze to death. Just be emo. Seriously, it's two minutes of hot angst:
Ghost of his Dad (I assume imagined, if not I'd call Buffy): It's hard for you today, my boy.
He: I thought I was hearing your voice, whenever I did something wrong.
Ghost: You don't need me any more.
He: I don't need anyone any more [what is he, a Goth centuries before they got invented?] I am going to live like a hermit, and not need much [OK, maybe he is 15?]
Ghost: Ehhh, you'll stop being blue, my friend. Don't be downcast, open champaigne bottles. [literally he says to shoot the champaigne bottle corks out to the ceiling. Dad used to to that :)]
He: Why did you come?
Ghost: To tell you I am proud of you.
He: So why am I feeling so awful? [Because you are a telenovela hero, duh, you poor adorable honey]
Oh, Vladimir. And then Lisa shows up and they have OMG OMG a night together. And he is so sweet and just tries to be nice and comforting but she basically is begging for a one-night stand, no strings, and he thinks he lost Anna forever, so he gives in. And in the morning, I love the scene, where he is very gentle and sweet but just as closed off as ever to her, and so Lisa realizes she's lost and nothing has changed and leaves. But OMG Anna is back and their scene together just kills me. Because he doesn't know about her break with Michael. And he is so uncertain and just the sweetness and the loss and adorableness kills me.
In other news, Natalie and Alexander's pillow fight=WIN. They have great chemistry and his (finally) confession of his feelings being real is amazing. And when he sheds a tear later OMG. And she runs away to her fiance because he is safe and I bet she is in love and so overwhelmed.
The movie selection for today is one of my favorite movies, the bleakly smart The Manchurian Candidate. I refer to the 1962 version with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury, not the recent remake, which I did not even bother to watch because when the original is one of my all time favorite movies, why would I?
TMC, for those who do not know the plot, involves political assassination, brain-washing, and a bunch of characters who you love (or love to loathe).
The movie opens during the Korean War, when a platoon of American troops, among whom are Ben Marco (Sinatra) and Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), is ambushed. However, soon the boys are back home, having been heroically rescued by Raymond, a blue-blooded, aloof stepson of a slimy politician, Sen. John Iselin. Raymond even receives a Congressional Medal of Honor for his efforts, along with gratitude of his mates. And yet…shall-shocked Marco is haunted by nightmares of the time in Korea, nightmares that show a rather different picture. And he is not the only one. What really happened out there? And what does it really mean, for Marco, and for Raymond, and for the rest of the characters, including, in a completely tour-de-force, Raymond’s loathsome mother played by Angela Lansbury.
TMC is a clever-clever, bitter-bitter movie that takes no prisoners. But what I really love about it is that along with the twisty, intelligent plot, it actually makes you care for the characters. You care for the tough, messed-up, cynical, falling-apart-in-front-of-your-eyes Marco. But what is even better, and makes the movie so worthwhile, IMO, is that the movie makes you care about Raymond (who is my favorite character in the movie, actually. Hey, you know me. Messed up and aloof? Am so there).
Anyway, the rest is spoilery so behind cut. Spoilers for the whole enchilada. Seriously, you don’t want to be spoiled for the movie.
It would have been very easy to frame the story as purely a hunt for the brain-washed assassin, or, once the identity is known, the search to eliminate him or expose his trigger.
But while it is, of course, all of that, the movie never forgets that Raymond is a person. It’s not just a hunt for the assassin, it’s equally a story of how a person: messed-up, good, much too haughty, in love, dysfunctional, whatever, but in all of it, a person, is made to surrender any individuality and free will he has. Raymond is the biggest victim in the story, and (at least to me) his story arc was the most compelling of the bunch.
I also think his scenes with his OTP Jocie, daughter of a rival senator to Iselin, are the only ‘pure’ scenes in the whole movie: full of promise and hope and love. I love that it is she (symbolically) who breaks his mother’s (literal) hold on him, because she is dressed as the Queen in Solitaire (and that is his code, to either snap into brain-washedness, or out of it. And when he is in that trance, she comes in from a masked party and he snaps out). Of course, this being the movie it is, any respite is temporary, and only to be squished flat.
My favorite scene in the whole movie is actually when he is made to kill Jocie’s father (because he is a rival to Iselin) and he sees Jocie there and shoots her as well, because he is programmed to eliminate any witnesses, of course. And he is an automaton so he does it, even though she is the one person he’s ever loved, but as he steps over the corpses, to walk out to his handlers, he is crying even though he is a machine who doesn’t know why. That just kills me.
And it adds a huge stakes-poignancy to the whole thing, because it’s not a soulless killer Marco et al are hunting, it’s a man just like them. It could have been them, The brain-washers could have picked anyone out of the captured platoon. It could have been Marco himself. Heck, as Marco gets to know Raymond and to know why he is so prickly and frozen, he ends up liking Raymond and becoming his friend.
Of course, the reason it wasn’t Marco or any of the others was because of Angela Lansbury (yikes! I don’t think I was ever able to really watch her in anything positive after this because she freaked me so much). In a delicious bit of paranoia (and social commentary on real enemies of liberty), the Communists are covered by the ‘super-right-wing-end-liberty-now-otherwise-commies-will-win’ Angela Lansbury and her husband. I love the scene where AL tells her brain-washed son that the communists did it to bind her closer to them, but they will pay for ‘so contemptuously underestimating me’ because that is her real objection and hatred, not what they did to her kid. Of course, considering that right afterwards she uses the fact that her son is in the ‘machine’ mode and thus will obey any commands, to have an incestuous encounter with him…perhaps mother of the year award is not in the offing. (Or is he? At that point? I think in the movie, unlike in the book, his programming has been broken by that point, so he might be ‘awake’ but is pretending so as to have the opportunity to end it all later. In which case, it is even sicker. But hey, at that point he is so full of self-loathing and falling-apartness, not to mention that I think even despite Marco not allowing that part to be deprogrammed, he figured out he is the one who killed Jocie, I think he is so messed up by that point, he is up to anything).
I love Marco’s angry, baffled decency throughout the whole movie. He is probably the only character both good enough and whole enough to be able to feel it, and it’s rather nice to have moral indignation in this story sometimes. He fights as much against the notion that people can be puppets (as a brainwasher demonstrates to another, the story that brainwashed people will not do what they would normally not do is a lie. And it’s borne out: Raymond is made to kill his mentor, and the senator he admires, and Jocie his wife) as he does against political conspiracy. And as he persists in trying to unravel the tangle, he is not all too sane himself but his drive overwhelms everything.
And of course the awesome ending, when Marco is fearful the programming held and is looking for him everywhere, but Raymond, instead of shooting the nominee at the convention, shoots his mother and stepfather and turns the gun on himself.
And the movie ends with Marco, in the apartment with his girlfriend, and there is no easing or happiness or safety but him just saying ‘Oh hell…hell…’ at a loss.
Love that movie so much!
First off, I finished Nodame Cantabile. It's not the kind of drama I have a lot (or any) meta for, but it was a great deal of fun. Two pet peeves: (1) whoeverplayed Straseman. I want to drown him. There is fun OTT and then there is this. Plus, if he is not Japanese, I'll eat my hairbrush. and (2) a bit too cartoonish in some reactions. I know it's on purpose, but it didn't work all the time. But overall, it was fast, fun, breezy and Tamaki Hiroshi is yummilicious.
Second (on Bednaya Nastya): Die, Michael! Seriously, I wasn't mad at his being angry on finding out Anna is a serf (she did lie to him), but his horrible reaction to her confessing to him that she went to Vladimir's room at night, prepared to 'sacrifice' herself to prevent the duel, made me want to choke the life out of him! He knows nothing happened, he knows she loves him (well, she is divided, but no character, her included, is aware of it yet). WTF is wrong with him! He treats her like some sort of leprous whore! He tells her to go back to Vladimir's bed etc etc. He asks her why she didn't come to his bed instead? (Did he want her to wade through the snow for miles, after dark, and try to break into a strange house?) I hate him. Seriously. I am also 'amused' to note that he has never mentioned marriage to her: he took her to a secluded room for sex, true, and was all about them being together, but not a word of marriage. Very honorable of him. *stab*
And oh, the duel itself. I love, when after it all, when Vladimir tells her that 'Baron Vladimir Korf has been slain' and she whispers, because she is so confused and in love, even though she doesn't realize it 'I didn't pull the trigger' (she was threatening him to drop the gun) and he replies 'nontheless, he is dead, and all that remains is to fulfill his last will' and gives her the freedom papers. OMG. And as he is about to ride off he tells Michael, quietly that he started this whole 'charade' with the duel, with only one goal in mind: for Michael to kill him (and it explains so much. He gave Michael first shot, and just stood there, eyes closed. OMG. Anna, he loves you so much!) and tells Michael that sometimes his (Michael's) nobility (in not killing Vladimir) is wrong and a punishment.
But I posted about this scene, with vids/translations before, but case you mised it,
Anna interrupts the duel:
Anna: Vladimir. Stop. Stop, put down the gun. Vladmir, put down the gun or I will shoot.
V: Your care is very praiseworthy, madam. But there is the Code Duello so I must take my shot.
A: You won't take it.
V: Madam, I will.
Michael: Anna, Vladimir is right, you can't violate duelling rules.
A: Is murder done according to rules? Why are you both saying such nonsense? I told you, drop the gun or I will kill you.
V: Why are you waiting? Shoot. Aren't you going to kill me?
A: Drop the gun
V: (with the gun against his forehead) All you have to do is squeeze the trigger, and you get rid of a hated person forever.
M: Vladimir, get back to position.
V: We are not playing by the rules today. (to Anna) Come on, it's a mere movement of the finger. (moves the gun to his heart)
A: Stop.
*Michael comes and grabs Vladimir's gun*
M: Anna, Vladimir forgot to tell you. This gun is empty, it was already fired.
V: Doctor, we won't need your help.
Doc: Praise be, then I am going home.
M: Why didn't you shoot?
V: I don't have to explain it. (to Anna) Your appearance finished it all off. You made your choice. And to kill the man you chose would have been really unfair on my part.
M: Vladimir, we wouldn't have been able to shoot at each other anyway.
V: I can't pretend I am happy for the both of you. You shot me dead anyhow, Anna.
A: But I didn't pull the trigger [is she mentally challenged?]
V: Nontheless, Baron Korf is done for. All that's left is his last will. [these are her freedom papers OMG. I guess he thought he was going to die] Take these. Be happy.
V: Stop!
A: Michael.
M: What? What is there?
A: He gave me my freedom papers.
M: Thank you.
V: No need. Be happy.
M: Give me yor hand, I am so proud of you [argh, they are all being so noble I want to gag]
V: Last night I realized how much Anna loves you. If a woman is prepared to sacrfice like that, nothing will change her feeling.
M: What happened last night? [heeeeee]
V: Doesn't matter now. And all of today's farce had only one goal for me.
M: What?
V: For you to kill me. Remember, Michael. Nobility isn't always a good thing, sometimes it ruins things.
Vladimir after the duel. There is snow all over, but since this isn't a kdrama, he shall not freeze to death. Just be emo. Seriously, it's two minutes of hot angst:
Ghost of his Dad (I assume imagined, if not I'd call Buffy): It's hard for you today, my boy.
He: I thought I was hearing your voice, whenever I did something wrong.
Ghost: You don't need me any more.
He: I don't need anyone any more [what is he, a Goth centuries before they got invented?] I am going to live like a hermit, and not need much [OK, maybe he is 15?]
Ghost: Ehhh, you'll stop being blue, my friend. Don't be downcast, open champaigne bottles. [literally he says to shoot the champaigne bottle corks out to the ceiling. Dad used to to that :)]
He: Why did you come?
Ghost: To tell you I am proud of you.
He: So why am I feeling so awful? [Because you are a telenovela hero, duh, you poor adorable honey]
Oh, Vladimir. And then Lisa shows up and they have OMG OMG a night together. And he is so sweet and just tries to be nice and comforting but she basically is begging for a one-night stand, no strings, and he thinks he lost Anna forever, so he gives in. And in the morning, I love the scene, where he is very gentle and sweet but just as closed off as ever to her, and so Lisa realizes she's lost and nothing has changed and leaves. But OMG Anna is back and their scene together just kills me. Because he doesn't know about her break with Michael. And he is so uncertain and just the sweetness and the loss and adorableness kills me.
In other news, Natalie and Alexander's pillow fight=WIN. They have great chemistry and his (finally) confession of his feelings being real is amazing. And when he sheds a tear later OMG. And she runs away to her fiance because he is safe and I bet she is in love and so overwhelmed.
The movie selection for today is one of my favorite movies, the bleakly smart The Manchurian Candidate. I refer to the 1962 version with Frank Sinatra, Laurence Harvey and Angela Lansbury, not the recent remake, which I did not even bother to watch because when the original is one of my all time favorite movies, why would I?
TMC, for those who do not know the plot, involves political assassination, brain-washing, and a bunch of characters who you love (or love to loathe).
The movie opens during the Korean War, when a platoon of American troops, among whom are Ben Marco (Sinatra) and Raymond Shaw (Laurence Harvey), is ambushed. However, soon the boys are back home, having been heroically rescued by Raymond, a blue-blooded, aloof stepson of a slimy politician, Sen. John Iselin. Raymond even receives a Congressional Medal of Honor for his efforts, along with gratitude of his mates. And yet…shall-shocked Marco is haunted by nightmares of the time in Korea, nightmares that show a rather different picture. And he is not the only one. What really happened out there? And what does it really mean, for Marco, and for Raymond, and for the rest of the characters, including, in a completely tour-de-force, Raymond’s loathsome mother played by Angela Lansbury.
TMC is a clever-clever, bitter-bitter movie that takes no prisoners. But what I really love about it is that along with the twisty, intelligent plot, it actually makes you care for the characters. You care for the tough, messed-up, cynical, falling-apart-in-front-of-your-eyes Marco. But what is even better, and makes the movie so worthwhile, IMO, is that the movie makes you care about Raymond (who is my favorite character in the movie, actually. Hey, you know me. Messed up and aloof? Am so there).
Anyway, the rest is spoilery so behind cut. Spoilers for the whole enchilada. Seriously, you don’t want to be spoiled for the movie.
It would have been very easy to frame the story as purely a hunt for the brain-washed assassin, or, once the identity is known, the search to eliminate him or expose his trigger.
But while it is, of course, all of that, the movie never forgets that Raymond is a person. It’s not just a hunt for the assassin, it’s equally a story of how a person: messed-up, good, much too haughty, in love, dysfunctional, whatever, but in all of it, a person, is made to surrender any individuality and free will he has. Raymond is the biggest victim in the story, and (at least to me) his story arc was the most compelling of the bunch.
I also think his scenes with his OTP Jocie, daughter of a rival senator to Iselin, are the only ‘pure’ scenes in the whole movie: full of promise and hope and love. I love that it is she (symbolically) who breaks his mother’s (literal) hold on him, because she is dressed as the Queen in Solitaire (and that is his code, to either snap into brain-washedness, or out of it. And when he is in that trance, she comes in from a masked party and he snaps out). Of course, this being the movie it is, any respite is temporary, and only to be squished flat.
My favorite scene in the whole movie is actually when he is made to kill Jocie’s father (because he is a rival to Iselin) and he sees Jocie there and shoots her as well, because he is programmed to eliminate any witnesses, of course. And he is an automaton so he does it, even though she is the one person he’s ever loved, but as he steps over the corpses, to walk out to his handlers, he is crying even though he is a machine who doesn’t know why. That just kills me.
And it adds a huge stakes-poignancy to the whole thing, because it’s not a soulless killer Marco et al are hunting, it’s a man just like them. It could have been them, The brain-washers could have picked anyone out of the captured platoon. It could have been Marco himself. Heck, as Marco gets to know Raymond and to know why he is so prickly and frozen, he ends up liking Raymond and becoming his friend.
Of course, the reason it wasn’t Marco or any of the others was because of Angela Lansbury (yikes! I don’t think I was ever able to really watch her in anything positive after this because she freaked me so much). In a delicious bit of paranoia (and social commentary on real enemies of liberty), the Communists are covered by the ‘super-right-wing-end-liberty-now-otherwise-commies-will-win’ Angela Lansbury and her husband. I love the scene where AL tells her brain-washed son that the communists did it to bind her closer to them, but they will pay for ‘so contemptuously underestimating me’ because that is her real objection and hatred, not what they did to her kid. Of course, considering that right afterwards she uses the fact that her son is in the ‘machine’ mode and thus will obey any commands, to have an incestuous encounter with him…perhaps mother of the year award is not in the offing. (Or is he? At that point? I think in the movie, unlike in the book, his programming has been broken by that point, so he might be ‘awake’ but is pretending so as to have the opportunity to end it all later. In which case, it is even sicker. But hey, at that point he is so full of self-loathing and falling-apartness, not to mention that I think even despite Marco not allowing that part to be deprogrammed, he figured out he is the one who killed Jocie, I think he is so messed up by that point, he is up to anything).
I love Marco’s angry, baffled decency throughout the whole movie. He is probably the only character both good enough and whole enough to be able to feel it, and it’s rather nice to have moral indignation in this story sometimes. He fights as much against the notion that people can be puppets (as a brainwasher demonstrates to another, the story that brainwashed people will not do what they would normally not do is a lie. And it’s borne out: Raymond is made to kill his mentor, and the senator he admires, and Jocie his wife) as he does against political conspiracy. And as he persists in trying to unravel the tangle, he is not all too sane himself but his drive overwhelms everything.
And of course the awesome ending, when Marco is fearful the programming held and is looking for him everywhere, but Raymond, instead of shooting the nominee at the convention, shoots his mother and stepfather and turns the gun on himself.
And the movie ends with Marco, in the apartment with his girlfriend, and there is no easing or happiness or safety but him just saying ‘Oh hell…hell…’ at a loss.
Love that movie so much!
