ADAM'S RIB

SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA

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1949 - USA (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)

DIRECTOR: George Cukor
SCRIPT: Ruth Gordon, Garson Kanin
CINEMATOGRAPHY: George J. Folsey
MUSIC: Miklós Rózsa

Oh how cruel can the Gods of Passing Time be! Oh how ruthless the relativism and changing contexts are! Oh how fresh and provocative, and daring the ADAM'S RIB must have been in 1949. Well, that was a looooong, loooong time ago and today, it isn't. And while it's still a lovely film with superb performances from Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy, it simply isn't the film it thinks it is any more. And what's worse, in the world of 2013 it also turned into a bit of a bitterly ironic caricature of its own self. Oh what a cruel, cruel trick has the time played on this film indeed!

THE 42nd STREET

SOURCE: WIKIPEDIA

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1933 - USA (Warner Brothers Pictures)

DIRECTOR: Lloyd Bacon
SCRIPT: Rian James, James Seymour, Whitney Bolton (uncredited)
PHOTOGRAPHY: Sol Polito
MUSIC: Harry Warren

     Now, where was I...

Busy, is the answer. It is not a witty answer, nor especially exiting but at least it's honest and the best one I've got. Also, it's not really worth wasting any more time on, so let's just get started. There's a film's carcass on the operating table awaiting to be dissected. I better try and stop myself from the urge to lick the scalpel.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY

SOURCE: IMDB

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1968 - USA/U.K. (Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer)

DIRECTOR: Stanley Kubrick

SCRIPT: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke

PHOTOGRAPHY: Geoffrey Unsworth

MUSIC: Classical

     I was so enthusiastic about the prospect of writing about 2001 that one could almost take it for giddiness. Having to wade through the communist propaganda in the last two films, turning into my favourite genre for a change and one of most iconic titles within it as well, felt like fast-approaching holiday after winning the lottery jackpot. And then it hit me. First, as with so many other titles, I have not properly watched this film for more than ten years, maybe even longer. And second, I've just put myself in position where I am supposed to write something smart on a subject that hundreds of critics already wrote just about everything. No pressure then. 'Crap!', I thought to myself using an unorthodox (beginning with an 'f') spelling of that word. But a job's a job and a simple blogger's got to do what a simple blogger's got to do. So I sat down, whimpered a bit and then watched the 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY very carefully indeed. Here's what I found:

12 ANGRY MEN

source: Wikipedia

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1957 - U.S.A. (Orion-Nova)

DIRECTOR: Sidney Lumet
SCRIPT: Reginald Rose
PHOTOGRAPHY: Boris Kaufman
MUSIC: Kenyon Hopkins 

   Only now I properly realised what did I get myself into. And don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining about the fact that for the next 20 years or so I have committed myself into writing a blog that has a very slight significance in the grand scale of things, or that the list of films is swarming with titles which normally I would appreciate no more than a persisting itch in the gentlemanly areas. No. That I can live with, I've worked as a journalist for long enough to be able to convince myself that 'professionalism demands it' and since professionalism is a frame of mind, not being paid and hardly even read, doesn't change anything here. So no, it's not that. What really started to bother me, just before I've watched my first film, was the cold realisation, that I'm going to be reviewing films, sometimes forgotten, mostly obscure, very often quite foreign, and still try not to include spoilers. Why? Because that's something the 1001 MOVIES YOU MUST SEE BEFORE YOU DIE did not manage to achieve. And I don't want to be just as good. I need to be one step ahead. I need to be better.

Which is going to be, in publishable words, rather difficult.