Award-winning crime novelist Megan Abbott discusses her formative experiences as a film lover in the latest episode of our Channel-exclusive series Adventures in Moviegoing.
Thursday, 1 March 2018
Could Elsa Get a Girlfriend in ‘Frozen 2’?
By Sheryl Oh
Director Jennifer Lee weighs in. Unfortunately, her remarks seem disappointingly ambiguous.
Is the world ready for round two of Frozen fever? There is still over a year to go before Frozen 2 hits cinemas. However, given that the first film was such a smash hit for Disney, it is doubtful that anyone truly left its winter wonderland in the dust.
There is a lot at stake with Frozen 2, both financially and culturally. The 2013 animated feature took the world by storm and made children everywhere croon along to some seriously overplayed music. But if you look past weathered parents everywhere (okay, enough puns), you’ll find that Frozen managed to posit some vital messages about self-love. The film has proven to be particularly important to LGBTQ+ viewers, who identify with its themes of acceptance and confidence.
The good news is these fan interpretations of Frozen haven’t gone unnoticed. Writer/director Jennifer Lee is aware that many fans want Elsa (voiced by Idina Menzel) to get a girlfriend in the sequel. A hashtag exists, and petitions have been made championing a canonically lesbian Elsa. According to The Huffington Post, Lee is supportive of introducing more LGBTQ+ storylines into the franchise. Or rather, she’s perfectly open to the notion of creating a more inclusive world in Frozen 2. This week, while promoting her new movie, A Wrinkle in Time, Lee acknowledged the wider cultural impact that Frozen has had on young viewers, although she does not speak with much specificity over where Elsa will go next in the sequel.
According to Lee:
“I love everything people are saying [and] people are thinking about with our film ― that it’s creating dialogue, that Elsa is this wonderful character that speaks to so many people. It means the world to us that we’re part of these conversations.
“Where we’re going with it, we have tons of conversations about it, and we’re really conscientious about these things. For me … Elsa’s every day telling me where she needs to go, and she’ll continue to tell us. I always write from character-out, and where Elsa is and what Elsa’s doing in her life, she’s telling me every day. We’ll see where we go.”
Lee’s remarks, although positive overall, don’t really tell us anything we don’t already suspect. Sure, the idea of Elsa having a girlfriend is fantastic, but will anyone actually put that into the script? Menzel herself is “excited” about the prospect of Elsa liking girls — or rather, she’s happy that Frozen allows audiences to “have these kinds of conversations.”
Elsa’s solo song “Let It Go” — excessively played as it was — has been called a coming-out anthem. Her overall arc in Frozen is all about self-acceptance, and sends an empowering message to audiences of all ages. Especially for young LGBTQ+ fans, this could mean multitudes and makes Elsa — whether she’s gay or bisexual — so vital to the cultural conversation.
Clearly, Lee and Menzel have good intentions. For the time being, they’re not even actually making promises they’re bound to break. But while the thought counts, Frozen 2 can only go so far without a more adamant stance on representation within it, especially when you remember that this is Disney. LGBTQ+ love is minimal and at times rather iffy in their movies and that needs to change. Ideally, the entire Le Fou debacle from last year’s Beauty and the Beast would be a wake-up call for the studio to at least try when it comes to inclusivity. Enough with morally shady characters with ambiguously “not-straight” traits.
Of course, for now, we don’t know the definitive future of Frozen 2. Considering the number of straight relationships that flourish in many Disney films, the excuses against LGBTQ+ inclusion run thinner and thinner. It would just be great if Lee unequivocally wrote Elsa as a woman who loves women. Don’t be like J. K. Rowling; break the pattern of coy sidestepping.
#GiveElsaAGirlfriend cuz damn if there was representation when I was a kid I would have known that luv isn't only between a guy and girl
— gabzy (@gabzydiana) May 2, 2016
The article Could Elsa Get a Girlfriend in ‘Frozen 2’? appeared first on Film School Rejects.
Got anything to ask Steven Soderbergh? We’re working on a new edition of sex, lies, and videotape, and the director will be answering some of your burning questions on the release.
Blumhouse is Making a True Crime Series About a Case No One Wants Solved
By Anna Swanson
Blumhouse is right to get in on the true crime trend, but they should probably choose a new direction for it.
Last year, Blumhouse Productions contributed to a 10-episode revival of the A&E true crime series Cold Case Files, each episode of which documents the investigation of unsolved murders. According to Deadline, the studio is now set to deepen their investment in the true crime genre with No One Saw A Thing, a TV series to be made for SundanceTV and the streaming service Sundance Now. The description of the program is as follows:
The six-episode series examines an unsolved and mysterious death in the American Heartland and the corrosive effects of vigilantism in small town America. The case garnered international attention in the early 1980s after a resident was shot dead in front of almost 60 townspeople. These witnesses deny having seen anything, to this very day.
This reads as deliberately vague, but true crime fans — or anyone who watches Buzzfeed Unsolved — can probably pick up on the fact that this case is almost certainly that of Ken McElroy. McElroy was known as the town bully of Skidmore, Missouri, until he was shot dead while sitting in his car in 1981. McElroy had been accused of crimes including burglary, child molestation, rape, assault, and arson. Though he was indicted 21 times in his life, he escaped conviction all but once, often through witness intimidation. One day, after Skidmore residents decided they’d had enough of him, he was shot and killed in front of a crowd of people, but all of these potential witnesses denied having seen anything, and no one has ever been charged for the crime.
This case is undeniably unique and is able to provoke debates about vigilantism. But it isn’t a cold case that anyone is clamoring to see solved. The general consensus among true crime fans and those familiar with the case is that 37 years after the crime, attempting to find the killer is a waste of resources. Blumhouse Productions and SundanceTV seem to disagree with that.
Jan Diedrichsen, a general manager of SundanceTV and Sundance Now, said the series will satisfy their fan base’s “appetite for a thought-provoking — and unsolved — true crime story.” This sentiment was echoed by Jeremy Gold, co-president of Blumhouse Television, who stated the aim of the show is “to get to the truth.”
The McElroy case may be thought-provoking, but in an era where other true crime movies and shows — such as The Jinx, which captured a potential confession from its subject, Robert Durst — have proven that documentaries can have a real impact on an unsolved case, No One Saw A Thing sounds like a waste of time and effort for both creators and audiences.
If the series accomplishes its goal of finding the truth, then the assailant, who, after all this time may not even be alive, will potentially be charged with a murder that his or her own fellow citizens decided 37 years ago they didn’t want to see solved. For audiences, uncovering the truth would likely be rather anticlimactic considering part of the lore and intrigue around the shooting is that no witnesses ever came forward.
If Blumhouse and Sundance are intent on creating a series in order to potentially solve a case, there are, unfortunately, a seemingly infinite number of other cold cases they could have chosen from. There are unsolved cases — such as a potentially active serial killer in Long Island or the disappearance of nine-year-old Asha Degree, which happened just over 18 years ago on February 14, 2000 — that could benefit from the exposure that a TV series would provide.
Sundance’s Diedrichsen also spoke about wanting to examine the impact of true crime “stories on popular culture.” This is a broad topic that could go well beyond the exploration of only one individual case. If this is what Sundance and Blumhouse seek to accomplish, they could have taken inspiration from the upcoming HBO documentary I Am Evidence, which is about the backlog of untested rape kits in the United States, or Finding Dawn, a film about missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada. Both of these docs go beyond examining one particular case and turn their attention to questions about the impact of crime on society. They also both examine crimes that need proper resources in order to be solved.
Frustratingly, many of those involved with No One Saw A Thing are knowledgeable about creating good, thought-provoking, and worthwhile documentaries. Avi Belkin, an award-winning Israeli documentary filmmaker, is attached to direct, and Alexandra Shiva, who made the HBO documentary How to Dance in Ohio is set to executive-produce the series. But talent behind the camera can only go so far without a good case in front of it.
The choice of subject for No One Saw A Thing reveals a troubling disconnect between Sundance, Blumhouse, and their audience. Blumhouse Television’s co-president Marci Wiseman stated that fans will “have an opportunity to share their own conspiracy theories over social media.” However, in a recent episode of Buzzfeed Unsolved, the popular YouTube series that covers unsolved crimes, viewers responded to the McElroy case with questions about it, none of which involved theories about who killed McElroy or a desire to find out. Of course, these Buzzfeed Unsolved viewers do not represent all true crime fans and there could indeed be some who have conspiracy theories about the case, but they are not in the majority. The general consensus from the episode and in true crime circles is that whoever shot McElroy should remain anonymous.
If Blumhouse seeks to continue with its true crime venture, the studio would be wise to reexamine Cold Case Files. A number of the crimes featured on that show remain unsolved, and without coverage keeping them in the spotlight, they will likely remain that way.
It’s highly unlikely the production of No One Saw A Thing, which is set to air in 2019, will actually lead to an arrest. Chances are the most the series can accomplish is a debate about vigilantism, a debate that could even be worthwhile. But after 37 years have passed, and considering how many other cases deserve to be solved, Blumhouse and Sundance should probably let the citizens of Skidmore, Missouri, maintain their silence.
The article Blumhouse is Making a True Crime Series About a Case No One Wants Solved appeared first on Film School Rejects.
‘Dope’ Director Rick Famuyiwa Gets Sucked Down a ‘Black Hole’
The uncanny mutants of Charles Burns’s graphic novel will plague your local multiplex.
Imagine the X-Men but without the cool super powers. Just a group of teenagers who have contracted a mysterious physical mutation as a result of a sexually transmitted disease nicknamed “The Bug.” You don’t get laser eyes or control over the weather; instead you can enjoy some rad devil horns to preen. Charles Burns’s graphic novel “Black Hole” is a seminal example of sequential art. It’s the book for those who have always wanted to see David Lynch take on the superhero genre. Others prone to goosebumps and nightmares may want to steer away.
According to Variety, Rick Famuyiwa, the writer/director of Dope, whom we last saw getting hired and fired from the DCEU’s aborted The Flash franchise, will now be adapting Burns’s book for New Regency and Brad Pitt’s Plan B. That seems like a pretty good fit. As he proved with Dope, Famuyiwa has a strong connection to the plights of teenagers, and he’s obviously been itching to scratch his passion for comic books. “Black Hole” is a deeply troubling exploration of that physiological change we all go through, and set inside a high school arena that’s as bloody as any battlefield.
“Black Hole” shares a story of alienation taken to the extreme. This is not a fantasy in which a few brilliant minds come together to fight the disease, or bring understanding to the infected. This is the struggle of The Breakfast Club, but instead of cute little stereotypes who learn to find the similarities that bind them, there’s a teen plague that simply exposes the pain we all suffer at that age. We’re splayed out there like those vivisected frogs in Biology class.
How did any of us survive such misery? Pop Culture. Movies, music, and art. The infected of “Back Hole” flee into the majesty of those who escaped their own adolescent hell and flourished in their creativity. At least in suburban Seattle of the 1970s they had the phantasmagorical revelation of David Bowie. The hippie generation had died out, and the spiders of Mars were there to rescue them. When the world doesn’t make any damn sense, our teenage obsessions are often the only things that get us from day to day.
Throw in a few murders for good measure, and “Black Hole” manages to be as thrilling as any X-Men adventure with the added bonus of genuine, real-world dread. The success of the film will be in Famuyiwa’s ability to capture the creep of Burns’s panels. Of course, the kids will be the critical element. My suggestion is to look towards Marc Meyers’s My Friend Dahmer and steal their casting director.
While not all their productions have been winners, Plan B is a company that goes for the big swing. Recently, they’ve been behind Okja, Moonlight, The Lost City of Z, The Big Short, and Selma. To see their confidence behind Famuyiwa and Black Hole is exciting. I don’t imagine this will be the kind of film to run away with the box office, but there’s no doubt it will have an impact on those that dare to see it.
The article ‘Dope’ Director Rick Famuyiwa Gets Sucked Down a ‘Black Hole’ appeared first on Film School Rejects.
Brad Pitt Joins Leonardo DiCaprio For Quentin Tarantino’s Next Movie
By William Dass
Get ready to squee. And then also to shake your head and mutter “Classic Tarantino.”
It’s official. We’ve got a title. And, so much more. Stars. Roles. A setting. Finally, some details! Quentin Tarantino‘s ninth film, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, is set in Los Angeles in 1969 and will star Leonardo DiCaprio and Brad Pitt. There have been rumors of their involvement. Folks thought it was possible DiCaprio had signed on to play Mr. Helter Skelter, race-war inciter himself, Charles Manson. Nope. DiCaprio will play Rick Dalton, an ex-TV Western star who’s watched Hollywood pass him by. Pitt will play Cliff Booth, Dalton’s longtime stunt double.
Well, goddamn. You just go ahead and marinate in that for a moment. Brad Pitt is gonna play DiCaprio’s longtime stunt double. Y’all, I’m there for it.
Oh, and Dalton lives next door to Sharon Tate and Roman Polanski.
Let’s dig into this a bit. What do all these details add up to?
DiCaprio’s first role after his Oscar-winning performance in The Revenant will be as a Hollywood star who has aged out of the in-crowd. Which tells us everything we need to know about the quality of the part. It’s a critical moment for an actor, having just won an Oscar. Everyone will be watching to see what you do. Who will you become? “Past my prime,” says the Oscar winner.
Tarantino offers great roles. Calvin Candie, DiCaprio’s role in Django Unchained, is so gross and evil and sick and fucking watchable. All of that is down to the fact that DiCaprio went to work on the part of that racist, murderous, stupid-ass nonsense science-believing dirtbag with unparalleled gusto.
Tarantino said he’s been working on the script for Once Upon a Time in Hollywood for five years. Given that he sold DiCaprio on taking the exact part he’s probably worried about living in real life, I’m very optimistic the script is high quality.
Surprisingly, the two actors have never really shared the screen together. Both of them appeared on Growing Pais early in their careers (Pitt as two different guest roles in the third and fourth seasons; DiCaprio as a regular in Season 7), and Pitt produced the DiCaprio-led The Departed, while they are both in Martin Scorsese’s casino-ad short film The Audition. Even there, they aren’t ever in the same scene.
So, imagine Pitt and DiCaprio finally playing off each other. It’s exciting. But what is Tarantino going to have these mega-stars get up to in the movie?
The filmmaker described Dalton as someone “struggling to make it in a Hollywood they don’t recognize anymore.” That fits for the time period. Even if in 1969, Gunsmoke and Bonanza were still the second and third highest-rated primetime shows on television. Just six years later, there wasn’t a TV Western to be found. It was a tectonically significant time in a Hollywood of major transition. Careers were lost. Stars were cast aside. Growth and change go hand in hand with destruction.
Tarantino doesn’t do anything so one-dimensionally dramatic. Nope. He’ll set this cultural shift against the murders perpetrated by the Manson cultists. The desperation of a leading man and an outmoded stuntman, forced to make sense of creation through the lens of destruction, will be contextualized with the murder of a young, female Hollywood star. Herself the wife of filmmaker (and later, notable statutory rapist) Roman Polanski.
While it isn’t clear how big a role Tate (and her murder by the Manson cultists) will have in the movie, Tarantino has announced the film will be released worldwide on August 9, 2019. That will be 50 years to the day since the murders.
There’s the loud, casually provocative Tarantino we know. Leave it to him to market that movie using the anniversary, in living memory, of the deaths of real humans. I mean, fuck.
That’s Tarantino to a fucking T. Go ahead and shake your head. Classic Tarantino.
He really doesn’t care all that much for historical fidelity, though (see Inglourious Basterds). It’s just as likely Tate kills Manson. So, who can really say where this is all going to go? Regardless, he’s built himself an interesting field of play, steeped in the passing of an era and a notorious cult murder ripe for Tarantino’s unique love for exploitative ultraviolence and gore.
The article Brad Pitt Joins Leonardo DiCaprio For Quentin Tarantino’s Next Movie appeared first on Film School Rejects.
“His face did something to me. Or, rather, the film, with its compassion and its utterly jarring ending, which I won’t give away, did something to me. But, then again, you could also say that, in some sense, the film was only his face: his face . . .
Jessie Buckley in Official UK Trailer for Psychological Mystery 'Beast'
"Maybe I've been to soft on you." Film4 has unveiled an official trailer for the psychological mystery-thriller film titled Beast, which has been playing at major film festivals including Toronto, London, and Sundance this year. The title Beast is a reference to a true-life notorious criminal case known as "the Beast of Jersey", which is why the title of the French poster below is Jersey Affair. Jessie Buckley plays a troubled woman living in an isolated community, who finds herself pulled between the control of her oppressive family and the allure of a secretive outsider suspected of a series of brutal murders. Johnny Flynn stars as the creepy guy, and Geraldine James as her mother, with a full cast including Charley Palmer Rothwell, Hattie Gotobed, Shannon Tarbet, Trystan Gravelle, Emily Taaffe, Olwen Fouere, and Tim Woodward. Based on the buzz, this is definitely a film you should see without knowing anything about it before going in.
Here's the first official UK trailer (+ poster) for Michael Pearce's Beast, direct from YouTube:
Beast is a love story trapped within a horror film -- a dark fairytale about an emotionally isolated woman (Jessie Buckley) who comes under the spotlight of an island community when she falls in love with a man (Johnny Flynn) who is suspected of a series of brutal murders. Beast is both written and directed by English filmmaker Michael Pearce, making his feature directorial debut after a few short films previously. This premiered at the Toronto Film Festival last year, then played at the London, Stockholm, Torino, and Rotterdam Film Festivals, as well as this year's Sundance Film Festival in January. Pearce's Beast will open in the UK first in April, then play in select US theaters starting May 11th this summer. What do you think?
Second Trailer for 'Chappaquiddick' with Jason Clarke as Ted Kennedy
"What the hell happened last night?!" Entertainment Studios has debuted a second trailer for the film titled Chappaquiddick, referencing the Chappaquiddick Island in Massachusetts and the accident that occurred there in July of 1969 involving the Kennedy family. Chappaquiddick stars Jason Clarke as politician Ted Kennedy, whose political career became derailed in the aftermath of a fatal car accident that claimed the life of a young campaign strategist, Mary Jo Kopechne, as played by Kate Mara. Find out the truth in this film. The cast includes Clancy Brown, Ed Helms, Bruce Dern, Jim Gaffigan, Andria Blackman, Olivia Thirlby, and Taylor Nichols. This played at the Toronto Film Festival last year to mostly positive reviews, and seems like it's worth a watch. I'm curious how the politics of this story relate to today's political climate.
Here's the second official trailer for John Curran's Chappaquiddick, found direct on YouTube:
You can still watch the first official trailer for Chappaquiddick here, to see more footage from this film.
Ted Kennedy's (Jason Clarke) life and political career become derailed in the aftermath of a fatal car accident in 1969 that claims the life of a young campaign strategist, Mary Jo Kopechne (Kate Mara). Chappaquiddick is directed by American filmmaker John Curran, of the films Praise, We Don't Live Here Anymore, The Painted Veil, Stone, and Tracks previously. The screenplay is written by Taylor Allen and Andrew Logan. This first premiered at the Toronto Film Festival earlier this fall, and it also played at the Philadelphia and Austin Film Festivals this year. Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures will open Curran's Chappaquiddick in select theaters starting on April 6th, 2018 next spring. Who's interested in seeing this?
The Forgotten: Ozploitation
It's been said of L. Frank Baum, perhaps not quite fairly, that everything he ever did involving the fantasy kingdom of Oz was a huge success, and everything he did without it was a calamitous disaster. Certainly he made a bit of money late in life as the producer of Oz-themed silent movies, before he died and his son bankrupted the company, showing that only one Baum had the magic touch.
The first Oz short of 1910, Dorothy and the Scarecrow in Oz is actually the closest, plot-wise, to the familiar 1939 version, and it has a cool cast, including nine-year-old Bebe Daniels as Dorothy and future director Norman Z. McLeod as the Scarecrow. But Baum really hit his stride as a mogul four years later, with the release of three feature films, in the year when features had only just started appearing in America. And His Majesty the Scarecrow of Oz, The Patchwork Girl of Oz, The Magic Cloak (of Oz) are all a lot more entertaining than Cecil B. DeMille's The Squaw Man, the earliest of 1914's surviving American features.
Let's look at Patchwork Girl. On the assumption that the audience already knows the story world, this movie dispenses with all Kansas-bound scene-setting and introduces us to a Munchkin boy, Ojo, and his Uncle Nunkie. But, unlike in the MGM classic, munchkins in this movie are played by life-sized actors, albeit not tall ones. Ojo the Munchkin Boy is played by a girl, Violet McMillan, who appears in the other films in other roles. Considering the films must have been shot back-to-back-to-front, they play really fast and loose with their casting.
As with the earlier film, the cast is a veritable who's-that? of screen talent, though all the famous players are heavily disguised (and in the wrong job). A young Harold Lloyd cavorts topless as a "Tottenhot," unrecognizable amid the throng in his distressed afro wig and full-body blackface (blackbody?). His future boss, legendary producer Hal Roach, is a lion, though whether cowardly or not is never established. He just reclines through a few crowd scenes, desperately trying to upstage his co-stars with random little movements, but since they're all doing the same, it's hard to know if he's succeeding because he's gifted, because he's Hal Roach, or because he's a lion.
Hal Roach is on the far right of frame, apparently.
The strangest cameo of all comes from Bert Glennon, never an actor, always a cameraman (Stagecoach, The Scarlet Empress), who turns up late in the story cast as the scarecrow. Which makes no sense at all, but seems to be confirmed. And indeed, while the rest of the cast seem to be filled out with vaudeville comedians and clowns, masters of movement, the scarecrow's performance, while ambitiously attempting a cinematographer's idea of how a creature without bones or muscles might move, walks kind of like a drunken chimpanzee with tertiary syphilis.
Bert Glennon is front left, and I'm very much afraid that may be Harold Lloyd on the right.
The story is simple, yet worried into bizarre convolutions by Baum's restless mind. Ojo and Unc Nunkie are walking to Oz to make their fortune (it seems that there's poverty even over the rainbow) when they happen upon Dr. Pipt, the crooked magician (crooked as in hunchbacked and bowlegged, and this actor is a good mover, but unfortunately he never bloody stops) who is just completing his quest to create artificial life. This being an Oz story, he imbues life into a duvet-creature fashioned by his wife, the idea being that this eiderdown homunculus will take over the housework. But, like an elfin Dwight Frye, Ojo sabotages this scheme, apparently outraged at the idea of indentured servitude in this day and age, even in a magical fantasy dreamworld (Oz is not Gor), so s/he injects the quilted golem with a suffusion of "magic brains," from the helpfully marked Magic Brains Cabinet.
Disaster! The Patchwork Girl (blatantly, from her movements, a tall, energetic male tumbler) runs amok and, in a piece of missing footage, douses three supporting cast members in petrifying powder! So now there's a proper plot, though the film struggles to keep its mind focused on it: the three loved ones of the human statues must gather three ingredients to brew an anti-petrification spell.
You won't be surprised to know there's a happy ending, so let's skip the rest of the narrative and talk about creatures. Baum loves his creatures, and distributes them with largesse. We meet a mule, "Mewl, who is everybody's friend," but has no plot function at all, though the title informing us that he's played by "Mr. Fred Woodward," is priceless, followed as it is by a shot of the pack animal scratching his arse on a tree. Undignified, but at least he's a Mister. Mr. Woodward plays all the quadrupeds, doubling as "the Woozy, a Quaintness," a strange, box-shaped cat-thing with heat vision, and tripling as "the Zoop, a Mystery," a chimp-like wanderer of the wilderness.
I'm afraid you can't frame-grab the Woozy so it makes sense, and the Patchwork Girl is always a blurry nightmare.
To play the first two four-legged friends, Mr. Woodward employs arm extensions so he can accurately simulate the posture of a mule and what we must assume is the posture of a Woozy: this put me in mind of the villainous Wheelers of Walter Murch's underrated Return to Oz (1985), who had regrettable roller-disco tendencies but nevertheless captured some of the contorted charm of this movie's approach. The Zoop seems a forerunner of the Wicked Witch's flunkies from the '39 outing.
This being 1914, director J. Farrell MacDonald is gamely butting up against the limitations of film language as it was then understood. When Ojo spots something exciting in the road up ahead, he points, but since cinema hasn't really invented the reverse angle or the POV, we don't get to see what's exciting him/her so much, the scene changes with us none the wiser, and when we rejoin our little pal the suggestion seems to be that the thrilling view was a mule scratching its arse on a tree.
But the visual effects department has a few surprises in store. The magical assembly of the Patchwork Girl-Man is achieved with moderately crude stop motion, suggesting perhaps the influence of Segundo de Chomón. A similar trick is used to show the haunted furniture of the Magic House moving of its own volition. (The Magic House, paradoxically, is the film's one real structure, a perfectly mundane, weather-beaten bungalow.) Here, cinematographer and optical effects guru James A. Crosby does something startling: he tracks in, past a recumbent Pipt, until the furniture fills the frame and gets frisky. The main purpose for the unique movement seems to be to get the actor out of shot to allow a switch from live action to stop motion, but the added value is a sense of real magic, of things happening that have nothing to do with vaudeville actors and stage scenery, everything to do with the secret life of stuff, the way the world behaves when we're not looking...
Georges Méliès was still making films, barely, in 1914: this movie gives a suggestion of what he might have done if he'd kept going. But he didn't like these newfangled features: they were too disturbingly involving, too seductive, too realistic.
***
The Forgotten is a fortnightly column by David Cairns, author of Shadowplay.
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