Okay, I guess we're doing this
Oct. 26th, 2017 09:42 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bironic
Dear Festividder and anyone who might like to make a treat -- complete with sales pitches and pictures:
QUEEN MARGOT
Sales pitch: Gorgeous costumes! Intricate court politics! Passionate sex like only the French can do! Strife between Catholics and Protestants! A night of stunning bloodshed! Sibling-sibling and mother-son incest, if that's your thing! Isabelle Adjani, Pascal Greggory, Vincent Perez, and even baby Thomas Kretschmann! A Patrice Chereau film, based on the Alexandre Dumas novel.
Caveats: See above re: incest. Also one instance of sexual assault or attempted/implied sexual assault, depending on which version of the film you see.
Vid request: This movie has such beautiful, rich imagery that it just begs for vidding. Anything you make will make me happy, including a whirlwind portrait of the color and blood and passion and perversion and deviousness. Personal favorite parts are the massacre, the hatred-to-love story between La Mole and Coconnas, and Anjou's face. Plus, generally, all the homoerotic undercurrents.
FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE
Sales pitch: More gorgeous costumes! M/M pining! Epic love triangle where one man and one woman both want the other man, intertwined with early- to mid-20th-century Chinese history! Leslie Cheung's tormented face, usually under women's makeup! Opera and opium and voyeurism and betrayal! Not sure if it's a selling point or a warning for you that the main character is forced from a young age to think of himself as a woman. Did I mention Gong Li is in it? A Chen Kaige film, based on the Lillian Lee novel.
Caveats: Uh, basically everything terrible that can happen to a character happens to these characters. Yikes, I'd forgotten how miserable and mistreated everyone is in this movie.
Vid request: I have liked this movie a lot for a long time, and having a vid for it would be so lovely, whatever form it takes. Immersion in the aesthetics, from the opera costumes to the framing of individual shots to the relentless close-ups on anguished faces? Focus on Douzi/Dieyi's and Shitou/Xiaolou's heart-wrenching disaster of a relationship? Summary of the plot and/or how life imitates art? Non-chronological focus on symbols, repeated images and the concept of fate? Have at it.
Oh, worth mentioning that, although it's probably not desirable to skip their childhoods entirely in a vid, I'm more interested in Dieyi and Xiaolou as adults.
Aaah, why did Xiaolou have to be straight? Why can't the three of them solve their issues with polyamory?
Bonus gif:
GODS & MONSTERS
"You could be my second monster."
Sales pitch: Do you like the movies Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein? Fictionalized biopics of their director and the buff gardener he befriends decades later? Do you like dapper gentlemen in 1950s California? Flashbacks to WWI? A man whose brain starts to mix all of the above together after a stroke? Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser and Lynn Redgrave? Then this movie is for you, and your vid is for me!
Caveats: This is not a good choice if you are fed up with tragedy in queer cinema.
Vid request: I would love something that shows the intermingling of the story of Frankenstein's monster, the process of making the movie, the war, and Whale and Boone's relationship, thematically and visually, which the movie itself does well but of course in a more spread-out way. The second half of the film is the more powerful, to me: Boone baring himself, Whale confessing what he wants Boone to do, the gas mask, the dreams, the monster sketch, Boone walking like Karloff. Would be cool whether you wanted to focus on Whale's perspective or Boone's or do more of a third-person thing.
Less thrilled with Whale as a "dirty old man" or that annoying interviewer kid, but I'm sure you can make me care if it's important to the story you want to tell. If you can avoid doing a straight retelling that involves having the scene at the pool as the last shots of the vid—or if you can transform those clips somehow—that would probably be good.
THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI
Sales pitch: A woman made of clay meets a man made of fire in turn-of-the-20th-century New York. There's challah baking and desert flashbacks and sexy seduction and supernatural possession, and, just in time for Purim, evil viziers. Beautiful, comforting prose.
Vid request: I read this book last year and still can't talk about it without drawing little hearts around it. One of the things I loved about reading it was its vibrant setting, its creation of an atmosphere I wanted to wrap around myself forever. I think what I'm hoping for in a vid is a sort of mood piece, where you feel like you're in this magical 1900-ish Lower East Side or Central Park, where things are—as much as I make fun of it in movies—teal and gold like the cover of the book. (The closest movie I can think of for visual inspiration of the city is Gangs of New York, but I'm sure there's lots more out there I just haven't seen. The books Forever and Winter's Tale, which held the same sort of early-NY magic, aren't going to be much help, alas.)
And maybe you will give an impression of this large-boned Eastern European woman and this elegant Arab man (I mean, I don't expect our imaginations of Chava and Ahmad to be the same, so I look forward to whomever you choose for your fan-cast, if you fan-cast them). Maybe there will be a bakery and a metalworker's forge, or a desert and a temple, or Jewish and Syrian immigrant communities, or impressions of seduction or murder or enslavement or the clash between subservience/suppression and dominance/recklessness, or maybe there are other aspects of the story you want to highlight, or nothing so complex because it all seems very intimidating. Whatever you make, it's going to be wonderful.
I just ask that you please be sensitive if you choose to cast Schaalman or Schall. No Hollywood stereotypes of giant-eyebrowed, pointy-eared, scheming Jews. Thank you. <3
WILDLIKE
Sales pitch: Ella Purnell, who played young Maleficent! Bruce Greenwood, who played Christopher Pike in the Star Trek: Reboot movies and was in lots of other stuff! Alaskan landscapes from Juneau to Denali! A hurt/comfort story that progresses to the unlikely connection between a teenage girl and a gruff older backpacker!
Warning: Molestation of high school-aged girl by uncle; mention of spousal death from cancer.
Vid request: I would be so happy to have a vid of this movie that simply told the story, focusing on Mackenzie and René's developing relationship and taking advantage of the visual splendor of the Alaskan setting. Or whatever focus and structure appeals to you. FWIW, the emotional high point of the movie for me was René's protectiveness once he found out what really happened with Kenzie and her uncle, specifically when René bundled her back into the ferry cabin. I like to think he made good use of the bear spray when he made that stop in Juneau. :)
THE LATHE OF HEAVEN
Summary: Ursula Le Guin does Inception inside-out. George Orr learns that his dreams can change reality; his psychiatrist tries to influence them for the "greater good."
Sales pitch: Dream manipulation leading to reality manipulation! A megalomaniac oneirologist doing more damage than a meek everyman! Exploration of the nature of reality and consciousness! (Was the nuclear apocalypse real and the whole story a dream while George lay dying? Does it matter?) Alien invasion! Antiquing! AND THEN THEY EAT LUNCH AT THE ALIEN HOT DOG STAND.
Caveats: Abuse of power by a medical professional; invasion of mental privacy; nuclear apocalypse.
Watch the whole thing on YouTube!
Vid request: Anything related to the sales pitch would be awesome. I also enjoy young Bruce Davison's face and the constantly rewritten relationship with Heather. Can you find a way to tell Heather's story? Do you want to take this in the direction of the absurd? Or perhaps the creepy, focusing on Haber's unethical treatment of George? The way George is able to go with the flow as history and architecture and race and climate and status are upheaved around him? Anything you do would be swell.
The video quality of the only DVDs I know of is crappy—poor contrast, lots of ghosting, ugh—but I just adore the concept of the film and its dark humor so much that I hope someone will brave the shoestring-budget visual flaws to make a vid.
ROBOT AND FRANK
Summary: A jewel thief sliding into dementia attempts to stage a comeback by partnering with the helper robot his son buys him.
Sales pitch: Frank Langella! Susan Sarandon! Liv Tyler and James Marsden! Lots of robot screen time! Actual heart, heartbreak and humor!
Caveats: Cognitive decline of a parent.
Trailer on YouTube
Vid request: I enjoyed this little movie, and I imagine a vid for it could go in several different directions. A fun romp with the "one last heist" plot? A buddy story about the bond that grows between Frank and the robot? A poignant exploration of the onset of dementia in one's father, and/or a parallel between Frank's and the robot's memory plot arcs? A highlight reel of the absurdities that feel all too imminent, like the transformation of a library into a social meeting space that doesn't need any books? Something else entirely? Can a vid even be made of a character that has no facial expressions?? Would it look like the robot is evil? (Wouldn't that be a fun inversion?!)
Here are some notes on music preferences, if you're at a loss. I'm also open to spoken-word and other nontraditional forms of audio, but if you mix dialogue with music, please make the dialogue very clear/easily audible.
Thank you for making something for one of these long-loved sources.
\festivids/
QUEEN MARGOT
Sales pitch: Gorgeous costumes! Intricate court politics! Passionate sex like only the French can do! Strife between Catholics and Protestants! A night of stunning bloodshed! Sibling-sibling and mother-son incest, if that's your thing! Isabelle Adjani, Pascal Greggory, Vincent Perez, and even baby Thomas Kretschmann! A Patrice Chereau film, based on the Alexandre Dumas novel.
Caveats: See above re: incest. Also one instance of sexual assault or attempted/implied sexual assault, depending on which version of the film you see.
Vid request: This movie has such beautiful, rich imagery that it just begs for vidding. Anything you make will make me happy, including a whirlwind portrait of the color and blood and passion and perversion and deviousness. Personal favorite parts are the massacre, the hatred-to-love story between La Mole and Coconnas, and Anjou's face. Plus, generally, all the homoerotic undercurrents.
FAREWELL MY CONCUBINE
Sales pitch: More gorgeous costumes! M/M pining! Epic love triangle where one man and one woman both want the other man, intertwined with early- to mid-20th-century Chinese history! Leslie Cheung's tormented face, usually under women's makeup! Opera and opium and voyeurism and betrayal! Not sure if it's a selling point or a warning for you that the main character is forced from a young age to think of himself as a woman. Did I mention Gong Li is in it? A Chen Kaige film, based on the Lillian Lee novel.
Caveats: Uh, basically everything terrible that can happen to a character happens to these characters. Yikes, I'd forgotten how miserable and mistreated everyone is in this movie.
Vid request: I have liked this movie a lot for a long time, and having a vid for it would be so lovely, whatever form it takes. Immersion in the aesthetics, from the opera costumes to the framing of individual shots to the relentless close-ups on anguished faces? Focus on Douzi/Dieyi's and Shitou/Xiaolou's heart-wrenching disaster of a relationship? Summary of the plot and/or how life imitates art? Non-chronological focus on symbols, repeated images and the concept of fate? Have at it.
Oh, worth mentioning that, although it's probably not desirable to skip their childhoods entirely in a vid, I'm more interested in Dieyi and Xiaolou as adults.
Aaah, why did Xiaolou have to be straight? Why can't the three of them solve their issues with polyamory?
Bonus gif:
GODS & MONSTERS
"You could be my second monster."
Sales pitch: Do you like the movies Frankenstein and Bride of Frankenstein? Fictionalized biopics of their director and the buff gardener he befriends decades later? Do you like dapper gentlemen in 1950s California? Flashbacks to WWI? A man whose brain starts to mix all of the above together after a stroke? Ian McKellen, Brendan Fraser and Lynn Redgrave? Then this movie is for you, and your vid is for me!
Caveats: This is not a good choice if you are fed up with tragedy in queer cinema.
Vid request: I would love something that shows the intermingling of the story of Frankenstein's monster, the process of making the movie, the war, and Whale and Boone's relationship, thematically and visually, which the movie itself does well but of course in a more spread-out way. The second half of the film is the more powerful, to me: Boone baring himself, Whale confessing what he wants Boone to do, the gas mask, the dreams, the monster sketch, Boone walking like Karloff. Would be cool whether you wanted to focus on Whale's perspective or Boone's or do more of a third-person thing.
Less thrilled with Whale as a "dirty old man" or that annoying interviewer kid, but I'm sure you can make me care if it's important to the story you want to tell. If you can avoid doing a straight retelling that involves having the scene at the pool as the last shots of the vid—or if you can transform those clips somehow—that would probably be good.
THE GOLEM AND THE JINNI
Sales pitch: A woman made of clay meets a man made of fire in turn-of-the-20th-century New York. There's challah baking and desert flashbacks and sexy seduction and supernatural possession, and, just in time for Purim, evil viziers. Beautiful, comforting prose.
Vid request: I read this book last year and still can't talk about it without drawing little hearts around it. One of the things I loved about reading it was its vibrant setting, its creation of an atmosphere I wanted to wrap around myself forever. I think what I'm hoping for in a vid is a sort of mood piece, where you feel like you're in this magical 1900-ish Lower East Side or Central Park, where things are—as much as I make fun of it in movies—teal and gold like the cover of the book. (The closest movie I can think of for visual inspiration of the city is Gangs of New York, but I'm sure there's lots more out there I just haven't seen. The books Forever and Winter's Tale, which held the same sort of early-NY magic, aren't going to be much help, alas.)
And maybe you will give an impression of this large-boned Eastern European woman and this elegant Arab man (I mean, I don't expect our imaginations of Chava and Ahmad to be the same, so I look forward to whomever you choose for your fan-cast, if you fan-cast them). Maybe there will be a bakery and a metalworker's forge, or a desert and a temple, or Jewish and Syrian immigrant communities, or impressions of seduction or murder or enslavement or the clash between subservience/suppression and dominance/recklessness, or maybe there are other aspects of the story you want to highlight, or nothing so complex because it all seems very intimidating. Whatever you make, it's going to be wonderful.
I just ask that you please be sensitive if you choose to cast Schaalman or Schall. No Hollywood stereotypes of giant-eyebrowed, pointy-eared, scheming Jews. Thank you. <3
WILDLIKE
Sales pitch: Ella Purnell, who played young Maleficent! Bruce Greenwood, who played Christopher Pike in the Star Trek: Reboot movies and was in lots of other stuff! Alaskan landscapes from Juneau to Denali! A hurt/comfort story that progresses to the unlikely connection between a teenage girl and a gruff older backpacker!
Warning: Molestation of high school-aged girl by uncle; mention of spousal death from cancer.
Vid request: I would be so happy to have a vid of this movie that simply told the story, focusing on Mackenzie and René's developing relationship and taking advantage of the visual splendor of the Alaskan setting. Or whatever focus and structure appeals to you. FWIW, the emotional high point of the movie for me was René's protectiveness once he found out what really happened with Kenzie and her uncle, specifically when René bundled her back into the ferry cabin. I like to think he made good use of the bear spray when he made that stop in Juneau. :)
THE LATHE OF HEAVEN
Summary: Ursula Le Guin does Inception inside-out. George Orr learns that his dreams can change reality; his psychiatrist tries to influence them for the "greater good."
Sales pitch: Dream manipulation leading to reality manipulation! A megalomaniac oneirologist doing more damage than a meek everyman! Exploration of the nature of reality and consciousness! (Was the nuclear apocalypse real and the whole story a dream while George lay dying? Does it matter?) Alien invasion! Antiquing! AND THEN THEY EAT LUNCH AT THE ALIEN HOT DOG STAND.
Caveats: Abuse of power by a medical professional; invasion of mental privacy; nuclear apocalypse.
Watch the whole thing on YouTube!
Vid request: Anything related to the sales pitch would be awesome. I also enjoy young Bruce Davison's face and the constantly rewritten relationship with Heather. Can you find a way to tell Heather's story? Do you want to take this in the direction of the absurd? Or perhaps the creepy, focusing on Haber's unethical treatment of George? The way George is able to go with the flow as history and architecture and race and climate and status are upheaved around him? Anything you do would be swell.
The video quality of the only DVDs I know of is crappy—poor contrast, lots of ghosting, ugh—but I just adore the concept of the film and its dark humor so much that I hope someone will brave the shoestring-budget visual flaws to make a vid.
ROBOT AND FRANK
Summary: A jewel thief sliding into dementia attempts to stage a comeback by partnering with the helper robot his son buys him.
Sales pitch: Frank Langella! Susan Sarandon! Liv Tyler and James Marsden! Lots of robot screen time! Actual heart, heartbreak and humor!
Caveats: Cognitive decline of a parent.
Trailer on YouTube
Vid request: I enjoyed this little movie, and I imagine a vid for it could go in several different directions. A fun romp with the "one last heist" plot? A buddy story about the bond that grows between Frank and the robot? A poignant exploration of the onset of dementia in one's father, and/or a parallel between Frank's and the robot's memory plot arcs? A highlight reel of the absurdities that feel all too imminent, like the transformation of a library into a social meeting space that doesn't need any books? Something else entirely? Can a vid even be made of a character that has no facial expressions?? Would it look like the robot is evil? (Wouldn't that be a fun inversion?!)
Here are some notes on music preferences, if you're at a loss. I'm also open to spoken-word and other nontraditional forms of audio, but if you mix dialogue with music, please make the dialogue very clear/easily audible.
Thank you for making something for one of these long-loved sources.
\festivids/
no subject
Date: Oct. 26th, 2017 09:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Oct. 27th, 2017 05:55 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Oct. 27th, 2017 12:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Oct. 27th, 2017 05:57 am (UTC)It looks like the 2002 remake is on YT as well - too bad it wasn't as good as the original adaptation, because the visual quality is less likely to leave a vidder clutching their hair in frustration. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vbqxEtNx-VU