Scream (1996)

USA
directed by: Wes Craven
written by: Kevin Williamson
starring: Neve Campbell, Skeet Ulrich, Rose McGowan
comment: 13th February, 2016

I never saw this film as a teenager, when it would be more relevant, but only as a pompous student of film art on the verge of my so-called adulthood. But perhaps it was better this way, because it was way too "in" when I was a teenager and that would be reason enough for me to hate it right off the bat, whereas later (and also after I've seen a lot of the films "Scream" is referencing) I was able to enjoy the parodic and meta side of things. Some of that "wink wink" was a little too simple for my taste, but the obvious love for the genre made up for it very nicely. Janitor Fred in a stripped sweater, for example, or the sentence "We all go a little mad sometimes." made my inner nerd trully jump in joy.

Ben-Hur (1959)

USA
directed by: William Wyler
written by: Karl Tunberg + Lew Wallace (book)
starring: Charlton Heston, Jack Hawkins, Haya Harareet, Stephen Boyd
comment: 11th February, 2016

Even if I didn't have a brain of my own at all, there's still one gigantic reason why this film would never, never feel serious to me, and that is Monty Python's Life of Brian, of course. Another rather alienating fact is that Fellini was making his La Dolce vita at the same time as Wyler was shooting this "opus magnum". It isn't one of my favourite films and it isn't even set in the same millennium as Ben-Hur, but looking at the two and comparing the work with actors, with mise-en-scène and with basically everything, it's very much obvious which film became obsolete and which one paved the way for modern (or post-modern, should I say) cinema.

I consider Judah's bitter sarcasm to be the most impressive message/abstract of Ben-Hur, since his deliverance/salvation seems unconvincing to me. But it is entirely possible and even probable that I just/simply don't understad the subject matter.

Seven Chances (1925)

USA
directed by: Buster Keaton
written by: Clyde Bruckman, Jean C. Havez, Joseph A. Mitchell + Roi Cooper Megrue (original play)
starring: Buster Keaton, T. Roy Barnes, Snitz Edwards, Ruth Dwyer
comment: 8th February, 2016

Oh no, what does it mean that Buster has white actors in blackface alongside real actors of colour? I didn't notice that before. But through a mild research I found out that this is a proof of state of affairs in Hollywood at the time and not of Buster's close-mindedness. He grew up amongst vaudeville performers from around the world and had no time to develop fear of anything different or foreign. Real black actors could only appear as extras and studios did not accept them as actors for speaking roles and such.

And now to the film itself: I often admire Buster's signature dramaturgy of bizzare, which reaches one hundred and ten percent in this flick. His films starts off quite realistically, actually, quite normally, just a common loser encounters a problem and by trying to deal with it he pushes the solution further and further away, if not making it entirely impossible. And then the whole fictional universe morphs into something very absurd and abstract, in this case a clever chase with a bunch of brides turns into a primordial fight for survival, where honor and flying bricks go against each other, and then it evolves in a symbolic fight between man and his destiny, here in a form of an artificial avalanche threatening to bring doom to all. The story only plays a second fiddle, Buster goes where his instinct and his body limits lead him and let him. And boy, if it isn't a fantastic ride.