Jack Anthony Costagliola was born on Friday. Both he and his mom are doing very well.
Back in the 70's, Mary and I saw what I can only call a horror film: we were enrolled in a natural birth class in the local hospital and they ran this thing called "You and Your Baby" or something like that. In the movie, masked people grab this 2 minute old human, pry his eyes open, one at a time, and shine a flashlight right into his cornea. Call it excess empathy if you wish, but we were truly horrified. And then they moved on to the circumcision...
I'm detouring from my list of ways to think about movies to address some issues raised by the comments. It's easy to think about mise en scene and montage as objects in a director's movie grab bag and it would seem as though if you had total control, and big budget and a lot of time, that you would just pick a style that fits each scene. And maybe that's so, once in a while. But then you would have swallowed the Hollywood Kool-Aid: that a movie is just a string of filmed scenes. Scenes of actors who could just as well be on a stage, except there's no money in it.
If this was a book, I would rent the Departed so I could really go over that scene in the elevator that Sean referred to, before writing about it. But this is a blog, and I want to address Sean's comment right now, today.
With this scene, Scorcese has made an original visual connection to give us a little Theatre of Death. The action starts on the upper floors in the elevator, but he yanks us out and away and puts us, dead center, outside, in front of the elevator. We know the doors will open just like we know - and here's the connection - that the theatre's curtain will rise, and the show will begin. So here we are, in front of this little stage. The doors open, and we look at: mayhem. And here's the horror film connection: we cannot look away. We're trapped in the mise en scene. The actor raises the gun and we want to yell No! Stop! Cut! But still the film rolls. It's like a little horror movie inside this psychological cops and robbers thing.
If this was a book, I would rent the Departed so I could really go over that scene in the elevator that Sean referred to, before writing about it. But this is a blog, and I want to address Sean's comment right now, today.
With this scene, Scorcese has made an original visual connection to give us a little Theatre of Death. The action starts on the upper floors in the elevator, but he yanks us out and away and puts us, dead center, outside, in front of the elevator. We know the doors will open just like we know - and here's the connection - that the theatre's curtain will rise, and the show will begin. So here we are, in front of this little stage. The doors open, and we look at: mayhem. And here's the horror film connection: we cannot look away. We're trapped in the mise en scene. The actor raises the gun and we want to yell No! Stop! Cut! But still the film rolls. It's like a little horror movie inside this psychological cops and robbers thing.
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