A disgrace to the forces of evil

[sovay]

I aten't dead! I have seen four movies this weekend, three of them as part of the Somerville Theatre's 70 mm & Widescreen Festival and one from the Brattle's Wicked Queer Flashback. I should like to write about all of them, although I have some other things I want to get out of my head first. For the record, Sleeping Beauty (1959) and Tron (1982) are knockouts in 70 mm; the first is much more beautiful and much more self-aware than I remembered or could perceive in elementary school and the second, while it has some very weird script problems, holds together much better than I'd thought from its reputation and still doesn't look like anything in this universe. I really need to see Maleficent (2014). I should also buy some groceries now that I have a pantry again.

Comments

[rosefox]

Sleeping Beauty was from 1959?! Wow. I had no idea it was that old. I guess since I watched it when I was a kid I assumed it dated from when I was a kid!

[movingfinger]

Oddly, I thought it was even earlier than that, say 1952-4! I probably jumbled it up with Cinderella (checking... 1950).

The visual style in Sleeping Beauty is both beautiful and oddly flat-feeling to me. It's probably better on widescreen, though.

I remember seeing Mary Poppins in widescreen before they chopped the hometown theater up. It was truly immersive before we had immersive theaters.

[swan-tower.livejournal.com]

I <3 Sleeping Beauty.

And I believe I read somewhere that the voice actress for Maleficent, who also had ballet training, did some motion studies the animators used in drawing Aurora, which explains why she moves the way she does.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

As a little kid, I had Viewmaster disks of Sleeping Beauty (did you ever have one of those? They were essentially modern-day stereopticons that showed images in 3D) I *loved* it, and was very happy when I finally got to see the movie (fairly early in my childhood--either it or National Velvet was the first movie I saw in theaters).

I'd like to see Maleficent too.

I thought of you during the past week, because I was in Lexington, but I mused that probably you were in the process of moving back out from there, and it looks like I was right!

[handful-ofdust.livejournal.com]

I remember being terrified and fascinated by the "Touch the spindle!" sequence from the very beginning; Maleficent in general was my ideal of regal evil. And yes, I'd be very interested to see what you make of Angelina's version.