HMXDuderella’s Profile

Welcome to the first in a series of meaningless ramblings about the films I catch bits of before I come to work here and spend the rest of the day Epically Rocking Out as my Harmonix contract dictates.

This morning, in conjunction with Turner Classic Movies' 389 Days of Oscar Appreciation (TM) I watched about ninety minutes of The Three Musketeers, starring Gene Kelly and some other people.


[NOTE: This was as close as I could get to a production still. Don't let the fact that it's from another movie bother you. Be bothered that it's Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly playing HARPS.]

The one thing that I carried away from this was the bizarre tone that veered from hearty, knee-slapping hijinks involving beefy, wayward tavern owners and barrels of ale tumbling over people in comical ways to ominous shots of blood-soaked wife-killers. It was as if the screenwriter took the studio's directive to have HUMOR! ADVENTURE! DRAMA! TRAGEDY! waaaay too seriously, meticulously breaking up the DRAMA! and the HUMOR! into clear-cut scenes that appear to have been filmed for separate movies. The last time I watched something that jarred me out of my usual morning Cocoa-Puff complacency due to random mashups of slapstick and grief was Jackie Chan's 'Police Story' back in the mid-nineties, when Hong Kong cinema featured things like TOTALLY AWESOME goofy fights involving exploding produce carts followed by scenes where Jackie's partner gets butchered and Jackie has to seek justice because his partner's coffin gets stolen and suspended from a crane which means his soul is doomed forever because his body never gets buried. I think.

Where was I? Summing up, The Three Musketeers has really well-crafted action scenes, really hilarious tragedy and really forced humor. Gene Kelly comes across as what he is, a 1940's American playing at being an 1840's Frenchman for a 1940's American audience. At one point, a Cardinal calls out "Don't shoot! We're FRENCHMEN!" in perfect American diction, and The Musketeers turn to each other and say:

"That's not an Englishman speaking! He must be French!"

He must be. INDEED.



So that's it. Next time on 'Early-Bird Offerings': more Oscar Appreciation (TM). Only 388 days to go!

Thursday, February 7, 2008