Changeling: Can’t Decide How to Approach Itself

Rosemary's Maybe

If you were to go to a concert, full symphony orchestra, and you sit down ready if nothing else to be carried away for the next hour or two into the beauty of another world: crescendos, melodies and variations then you realize about 30 minutes in that all you’re going to hear for the next hour and a half is a single trumpet player bleeting the same note over and over again, I imagine you’d be a bit underwhelmed and frustrated. Great music, like a great movie has to have ups and downs. Even if they’re minor and subtle.

In Clint Eastwood’s new drama The Changeling everything plays at pretty much the same note from beginning to end. The movie is so detached from itself that there are no emotional ups and downs. Angelina Jolie, while suitable, hits that same reoccurring note as well, and the music lingers never adjusting to suit the events of the film. I don’t need to have my head beaten by a hammer, but it could be that Eastwood’s hands off style of directing is finally starting to show that perhaps he needs to be a little more hands on when considering the plotting of the story.

My New Favorite Websites: For the Movie Buff in You

My absence from writing blogs will soon be explained along with hopefully some more film reviews and ponderings. Until then I thought I would introduce a few websites to you that are absolutely incredible and perfect for films buffs.

The first feeds two of my fascinations, first with the art form of the movie trailer and second with what has inspired directors to make the movies they do: Trailers from Hell. It’s a website in which filmmakers like Joe Dante, Rick Baker, John Landis, Mick Garris, Edgar Wright and handful more pick the most memorable movie trailers from their past and do a commentary for them. I’m discovering movies that have been lost to the public eye for ages. Some movies I love, like Peter Brook’s Lord of the Flies, some say more about the director than they could say about themselves (check out both of Eli Roth’s picks from the grindhouse exploitation days), others just leave me dumbfounded and wanting more, like Clint Eastwood’s The Beguiled or Invasion U.S.A in which we see that the three main characters were picked specifically because they resembled Bogart, Bergman and Peter Lorre.

It’s really a fun place to kill a few hours and learn about an era of film that I only get a glimpse of when filmmakers now feel some inspiration. You can see the beginnings of films like Slither, Hostel, slasher films and Hynovista! If this website interests you check out my other article: Sam Raimi “Haunted” by his Past…

The other website contains a short film I viewed some time ago and am just getting around to writing about now. It’s a truly remarkable achievement by filmmaker Martin Scorcese. He recreates three pages of a lost Alfred Hitchcock movie as if Hitchcock himself were directing it. The Key to Reserva.

Enjoy and look for more from me soon.