By Bentley FordPLAY Columnist
Ever wondered why so many kids on Facebook love Shawshank Redemption? Or why Wedding Crashers is placed upon a pedestal next to excessively disparate films, such as Garden State, Fight Club and Love Actually (and often within the same profile)? These are some serious questions here. I’ve always wanted to know what these movies, along with many others that have colonized Facebook profiles – not just at Northwestern but also across the country – have to do with one and another, beyond their marks of quality, of course.
Unfortunately, I don’t actually have an answer, which is kind of a cop out, but whatev. Sure, it would have been cool to have a column that dissects the “Facebook Aesthetic,” so to speak, but perhaps another week.
(Actually, maybe all of these movies just make for some great drinking games, and it has nothing to do with taste? Take a shot for every abdominal muscle you can count on Brad Pitt? Shotgun a can of beer whenever – I don’t know – you need a tissue during Love Actually or whenever Morgan Freeman just kind of rocks? That would probably destroy you pretty quickly, actually.)
I do know, however, that these movies are beloved, and that kids love to find movies that remind them of these quintessential standards. So, like Amazon and Netflix before it, I too would like to start a recommendation system, an on-again/off-again series where I take the most common “Favorite Movies” on Facebook and recommend a movie like it, except better, more obscure and infinitely more impressive to flaunt. Let’s begin!
The poster sale has just begun, and I guarantee one of the most popular movie posters has this exclamation scrawled across it: Moulin Rouge! This fantabulous, kinetic post-modern musical has found its way into the heart of anybody who’s ever watched the Roxanne segment.
Yet almost everybody has seen it, probably more often than they would admit. The songs are amazing, but soon you’ll tire of the them, and then the poster will just collect dust, becoming a relic of high school nostalgia. The next thing you know, Ewan McGregor ain’t so cool anymore and Nicole Kidman goes crazy and marries a country western star, and – oh, the tragedy!
But worry not! In 1948, The Archers, a.k.a. Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, created the masterpiece The Red Shoes, based on the classic ballet of the same story. Like Moulin Rouge, The Red Shoes, while not a traditional musical, features dazzling dance numbers, a beautiful score, and a taut love triangle between – gasp – a beautiful performer, a boho artist and the man with the money who runs the show.
Most notably, the vivid Technicolor cinematography has had an undeniable influence not just on Moulin Rouge’s photography, but on all of Baz Luhrmann’s films as well. The glitz and glamour that infatuates Luhrmann pervades The Red Shoes, and the rich textures – the flow of silk and flash of diamonds and shimmer of sequins – that gild every Luhrmann shot could have originated in this film. In fact, Martin Scorsese (whose new film, appropriately enough, releases this weekend) hails The Red Shoes, along with Jean Renoir’s The River, as the most gorgeous film ever shot in color. A famously zealous fan of this film, Scorsese collects memorabilia that littered the films mise-en-sc
