Hit Me With Your Best Shot: "Ladyhawke"

Time for Season 3 of Hit Me With Your Best Shot. Wednesday evenings.

from left to right: Goliath, Navarre (Rutger Hauer) and Isabeau (Michelle Pfeiffer's stunt double)

I thought we'd kick off this season with a personal favorite from the 80s. I use the word favorite emphatically because in many ways, Ladyhawke (1985) is a movie with a confusing relationship to objective quality. It's both great and bad, the score arguing that it's a feature that absolutely should not exist outside of 1985 while the mythic story fights for timelessness. The sound (Oscar-nominated) has wonderful details, maximizing the earthly details of fluttering wings, wolf howls and horse hooves while also embracing the transcendently romantic voices (Rutger Hauer and Michelle Pfeiffer) but it's marred by jarring score cues that take you out of the action and weird post-production "comedy" vocal work from extras. It feels, at least for its first half, like it's a movie with several authors and endless studio interference from people who didn't believe in a romantic fantasy epic in a time long before fairy tales were hot commodities and sword and sorcery epics were the furthest thing from bankable. So, would you laugh at me if I claimed I thought it was thisclose to being a classic? People are always reediting the Star Wars prequels to try to make them into the movies they should have been but the fantasy with the easiest fix to nudge it from punchline to greatness is Ladyhawke.

The one area where Ladyhawke can lay legitimate claim to greatness without lengthy conditional explanations is in the cinematography of three-time Oscar winner Vittorio Storaro (most famous for Apocalypse Now and various Warren Beatty epics). Many films throughout history have used sunsets and sunrises for their sheer beauty but Ladyhawke's reliance on light is more than vanity; it's storytelling.

Pfeiffer's beauty and Hauer's pain after the jump

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'Hit Me' Baby One More Time

Are you flesh or are you spirit?"

I am sorrow."

Oh cheer up, 'Chelle. "Hit Me With Your Best Shot" returns in exactly one week here at The Film Experience.

Join in on the Ladyhawke (1985) fun by selecting your favorite shot from this 80s fantasy by Wednesday March 21st at 10 PM when we post ours. The movie is filled with beautiful shots with the great cinematographer Vittorio Storaro behind the camera and Rutger Hauer & LaPfeiffer in front of it. We'll link up to all participating entries.

03/21 Ladyhawke (1985)
03/28 Bonnie & Clyde (1967)
04/04 Easter Parade (1948)
... and more to come provided y'all participate.

"Hit Me With Your Best Shot" Season 3

Ready for Season 3 of "Hit Me With Your Best Shot"? 

Newbies take note: each week we pick a movie and we all pick our favorite shots. Consider it a mini blog-a-thon. If you've seen the movie you might already have an idea of the image if you'd choose. If you've never seen it, here's a nudge to do so! Your "best shot" might be the image that most reminds you of the film, the one you think of as the most beautiful, the shot that's the most resonant in terms of the movies theme... anything really since "Best" is in the eye of the beholder. You can post yours and why you chose it on any of your web homes and let me know and we'll link up when we publish on Wednesday evenings at 10 PM. 

Films we've already covered in this series 
1920s The Circus (1928), Pandora's Box (1929); 1930s Tarzan the Ape Man (1932); 1940s The Woman in the Window (1944), Black Narcissus (1947); 1950s A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), Night of the Hunter (1955), Rebel Without a Cause (1955), A Face in the Crowd (1957); 1960s Rocco and His Brothers (1960), Psycho (1960), La Dolce Vita (1960); 1970s Eraserhead (1977); 1980s Aliens (1986), Law of Desire and Matador (1986/1987), Peggy Sue Got Married (1986); 1990s Beauty & the Beast (1991), Heavenly Creatures (1994), Se7en (1995), Showgirls (1995); 2000s Bring it On (2000), Requiem for a Dream (2000), X-Men (2000), Moulin Rouge! (2001), Memento (2001), Angels in America (2003), Mean Girls (2004).

SEASON 3 BEGINS ON MARCH 21st

March 21st Ladyhawke (1985)
It's Matthew Broderick's 50th birthday and we thought this would be a fun feature to look back on visually. And not just for all the Pfeifferisms but can you believe we've never done a Pfeiffer Pfilm here?
March 28th Bonnie & Clyde (1967) March 26th-30th is WARREN WEEK 
Warren Beatty turns 75 on the 30th. We'll celebrate one of the greatest stars in the Hollywood firmament all week. Which films should we revisit?
April 4th Easter Parade (1948)
We love a musical and this one's timed for the holidays.

MORE FILMS TBA... 

Will you join us this year? If so, spread the word.
This series thrives on several pairs of eyes. 

It's National Bird Day ~ Best Birds on Film!

It totally is! Every 5th of January as it so happens.

There's no reason to post about it other than that I actually threw on this Finding Nemo seagull t-shirt this morning "MINE MINE MINE MINE MINE" ... before I knew! [insert eery music]

It's a sign that silly list-making is required of me. 

Though this year in cinema was definitely the Year of the Dog, we did get at least one memorable bird in Lord Shen, the villain of Kung Fu Panda 2. There were also feathers flying everywhere in Rio but I can't seem to bring myself to watch the screener because it never shows up in "Best Animated Film" nominations. Not that you should trust those when Cars 2 does ferchrissakes.

Favorite Feathered Film Things!

18 Ben Foster as Angel in Let Us Not Speak of That Movie or that guy from Barbarella I forget his name.
17 Kevin in Up (2009)
16 Lord Shen in Kung Fu Panda 2 (2011)
15 Camilla from The Muppets 
14 Those ostrich costumes in Priscilla Queen of the Desert
13 The vultures from The Jungle Book

12 Maleficent's crow in Sleeping Beauty
11 The Crow (1994)
10 The mariachi owls from Rango
09 those seagulls "mine mine mine mine mine mine"
08 Natalie's final pirouette transformation in Black Swan
07 Matthew Barney's flock in Cremaster 5 (1997)

Cremaster 5

06 Björk at the Oscars
05 Babs in Chicken Run (2000). Remember her?
04 The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
03 Pixar's For the Birds
02 The Birds (1963)
01 Michelle Pfeiffer as Ladyhawke (1985)

P.S. Tweety-bird and Road Runner are assholes.

P.P. S. images that came up this morning when I searched for "Ben Foster Angel Screencaps"

Click to read more ...

John Wood (RIP) and Link Roundup

Before the link roundups I wanted to say a fond farewell to British actor John Wood who died at 81 this weekend in his sleep. I'll always remember him as the Bishop of Aquila who was driven to madness and lust by the beauty of the young Michelle Pfeiffer in Ladyhawke (1985). It happens.

Though the Tony winner spent much of his time on stage he also had several screen roles including parts in hits like War Games (1983), critical darlings like Orlando (1993) and The Purple Rose of Cairo (1995) and Oscar favorites like The Madness of King George (1994) and Chocolat (2000). His final feature film was also the final Merchant/Ivory film The White Countess (2005). RIP John Wood.

Socialite Life Harry Shum Jr (Glee) is taking voice lessons. Guess he doesn't wanna wear that "CAN'T SING" t-shirt on the show anymore.
Vulture surveys Southern accents in the movies and compares them to the real thing.
Kenneth in the (212) remembers Body Heat (1981) and bemoans the passage of time. It gets us all!
i09 Matt Damon is playing a cyborg in Neil Blomkamp's District 9 follow up Elysium. Here's some unofficial photos so proceed at your own risk.
Cinema Blend surveys the extremely crowded December release schedule... in 2012. It's already crazy. Zombie epic World War Z with Brad Pitt is the latest inductee. 

Stale Popcorn Glenn surveys the 60 (gasp) films he watched at the Melbourne Film Festival. Drive gets his number one spot and Melancholia is another favorite.

Off Cinema
The Awl shares t-shirts on view at 2011's Lollapalooza (they still have that?). This amused me for some reason. 
Tom Shone on the election of 2012 and Rachel Maddow's problematic prediction. I so agree and Shone always give good prose.