Coming attractions — August 2022
By Joseph Lavers
Good morning 🐣
I’m happy to announce that SHREK WEEK 2022 was a resounding success. Not only did I finally hit 100 subscribers last week 🥳, but only one family member unsubscribed in what I can only imagine was abject horror. I count that as a win! Plus I got great feedback from some of you. It was a lot of fun and I hope y’all came away with a greater appreciation for a modern American classic. I’m truly honored to have readers like you. If we can make it through SHREK WEEK, then together we can make it through anything.
And now some new releases this month that look interesting:
Remember all the way back in 2015, when everyone who saw “Mad Max: Fury Road” in theaters couldn’t stop talking about it? Well writer/director George Miller is finally back with the romantic fantasy comedy “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. Get ready to be blown away all over again. (August 31 • in theaters • watch the trailer)
Director Dan Trachtenberg has been out of the game almost as long, since 2016’s “10 Cloverfield Lane,” and is now bringing us “Prey,” a stealth prequel to “Predator” set in the 1700s Comanche Nation. Though filmed in English, they also created an entire Comanche dub with English subtitles. (August 5 • Hulu • watch the trailer)
On the television side, catch up on the great Native American comedy drama “Reservation Dogs” because season two debuts today. (August 3 • Hulu • watch the trailer)
And don’t forget the big papa “Game of Thrones” prequel, “House of the Dragon.” (August 21 • HBO • watch the trailer)
Now watch this 👀
The very first movie rec in this newsletter (Steven Spielberg’s “West Side Story”) was a musical for a reason: a good musical is just about the most perfect distillation of cinema, squishing and stretching time and emotion with careful choreography and the play of light and color. And one actor who appeared in both screen versions of “West Side Story,” Rita Moreno, can also be found in what some consider to be the most perfect distillation of the musical: “Singin’ in the Rain” (1952 • HBO Max • watch the trailer). So that’s a fun little thread running through the pixels of Cinescape.
“Singin’ in the Rain” turns 70 this year. It’s set in 1927, a 25-year time difference between setting and when it was released. That’s like a new movie today taking place in 1997. Yikes! The film follows cast and crew stumbling through the 1920s transition from silent films to “talkies.” The Hollywood It Couple — Don Lockwood (Gene Kelly) and Lina Lamont (Jean Hagen) — have always relied on their faces alone to tell a story. Audiences have never known what they sound like! And the transition is not going well.
But it’s no dry history lesson. The physical comedy, snappy dialogue, and sheer entertainment value are topnotch. You’re guaranteed to smile throughout this movie. Donald O’Connor and Debbie Reynolds do amazing work alongside Gene Kelly, who has the charisma and singing and dancing skills of a true star. I’m gonna be lazy and quote Wikipedia:
[Gene Kelly] experimented with lighting, camera techniques, and special effects to achieve true integration of dance with film, and was one of the first to use split screens, double images, and live action with animation, and is credited as the person who made the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences.
There’s a delightful visual playfulness to the whole thing, even starting off with one of my favorite movie techniques: cutting away to reality while a character is lying. “Dignity. Always dignity.” (Kelly’s character, Lockwood, got his start in vaudeville, but claims to have studied at the finest dancing schools.) And the whole movie really feels like a cavalcade of various forms of song and dance: tap, ballet, line dancing, and more.
An interesting change to the script is when Gene Kelly sings “You Were Meant For Me” to Debbie Reynolds on an empty sound stage. The original intent was that Kelly would sing a variety of songs to her as he bounced around different movie sets, but switching it instead to a sparse room adds a simplicity and romance to a scene that’s surrounded by so much chaos. He creates a pink sunset and swirling mist for her through simple movie magic, which visually ties in with a dance sequence towards the end of the movie between Kelly and Cyd Charisse, which as you can see below is just beyond dreamy…
Film is a visual medium, first and foremost. Sounds like an obvious statement, but it’s something that seems to get forgotten by some modern filmmakers. Whether it’s dancing or fighting, the studio paid good money on choreography and the audience paid even more good money to see it, to be able to follow what’s actually going on between characters. Their movements are telling a story, conveying not only what they’re feeling in the moment, but telegraphing what comes next. When there’s a constant cut after cut after cut, it becomes hard to really appreciate the visual storytelling on screen. But “Singin’ in the Rain” luxuriates in sticking the camera on its actors and watching what they do.
The whole movie is a celebration of life, love, and “making ’em laugh.” (But not like that cheesy sign hanging above your friend’s toilet.) It’s full of color and creativity, and it’s as good a reminder as any that sometimes you just “gotta dance.”