IdleRich
IdleRich
I don't know what it is but I love it when films are set in and around the lots of Hollywood in 30s or 40s or 50s etc. I'm being deliberately vague with the title there, go as wide as you want in how you define it.
I've no idea if it will be any good or really what it's about but I thought of this thread when I happened to see a trailer for a film called Babylon
I suppose that from reading the precis of Babylon which says it's set during the transition to talkies I guess I should also mention Singing in the Rain.
One of the perfect examples is Hail, Caesar! the Coen Brothers thing. You could hardly claim it's a great movie and it's so slight that it feels unfinished, but I just loved the setting, particularly the real life characters and the nods to real life characters played by Tilda Swinton. I really wished that it went on longer cos I was so enjoying being in that world even though nothing really happened.
Gore Vidal's book Myra Breckinridge goes into a lot of stuff about Hollywood and although the film adaptation is incredibly schlocky and kitschy in comparison, I guess it still counts as it has a load of clips from classic films. Possibly the sex-change storyline might not go down so well these days, in fact I guess it didn't go down so well at the time "The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness (including acts like female-on-male rape), but it, unlike the novel, received little to no critical praise and has been cited as one of the worst films ever made."
en.wikipedia.org
Woody Allen's Cafe Society is another slight and silly one that I enjoyed purely cos of the way it looks if I'm honest.
I've read the book of Day of the Locust but never seen the film, does anyone know if it's any good? I always wonder if it's just a coincidence that one of the main characters is called Homer Simpson, or was Matt Groening a fan?
LA Confidential just about tenuously comes in here cos of the plotline where there are prostitutes who look just like the starlets - and also cos I'm particularly interested in the dark side of the period, or I guess the contrast between the glamour on the surface and all the dodgy stuff that went on behind the scenes unhindered by prying eyes with cellphone cameras. The sort of stuff in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon or which was touched on in that blog about Laurel Canyone which I know a few of us read.
Similarly I suppose that we could call Sunset Boulevalrd a film about Hollywood, but I'm really interested in stuff with studio fixers interacting with gangsters and stuff, I think Ellroy may have written other books that touch on that but I really want to see it on screen, I love the way the sun always seems to shine on those magical backlots and the colours seem so much bolder and brighter than they do in real life.
If anyone can suggest a film which marries the look of that with a genuinely dark storyline of sleaze, gangsters and addiction to prescription drugs I will be eternally grateful.
I've no idea if it will be any good or really what it's about but I thought of this thread when I happened to see a trailer for a film called Babylon
I suppose that from reading the precis of Babylon which says it's set during the transition to talkies I guess I should also mention Singing in the Rain.
One of the perfect examples is Hail, Caesar! the Coen Brothers thing. You could hardly claim it's a great movie and it's so slight that it feels unfinished, but I just loved the setting, particularly the real life characters and the nods to real life characters played by Tilda Swinton. I really wished that it went on longer cos I was so enjoying being in that world even though nothing really happened.
Gore Vidal's book Myra Breckinridge goes into a lot of stuff about Hollywood and although the film adaptation is incredibly schlocky and kitschy in comparison, I guess it still counts as it has a load of clips from classic films. Possibly the sex-change storyline might not go down so well these days, in fact I guess it didn't go down so well at the time "The picture was controversial for its sexual explicitness (including acts like female-on-male rape), but it, unlike the novel, received little to no critical praise and has been cited as one of the worst films ever made."
Myra Breckinridge - Wikipedia
Woody Allen's Cafe Society is another slight and silly one that I enjoyed purely cos of the way it looks if I'm honest.
I've read the book of Day of the Locust but never seen the film, does anyone know if it's any good? I always wonder if it's just a coincidence that one of the main characters is called Homer Simpson, or was Matt Groening a fan?
LA Confidential just about tenuously comes in here cos of the plotline where there are prostitutes who look just like the starlets - and also cos I'm particularly interested in the dark side of the period, or I guess the contrast between the glamour on the surface and all the dodgy stuff that went on behind the scenes unhindered by prying eyes with cellphone cameras. The sort of stuff in Kenneth Anger's Hollywood Babylon or which was touched on in that blog about Laurel Canyone which I know a few of us read.
Similarly I suppose that we could call Sunset Boulevalrd a film about Hollywood, but I'm really interested in stuff with studio fixers interacting with gangsters and stuff, I think Ellroy may have written other books that touch on that but I really want to see it on screen, I love the way the sun always seems to shine on those magical backlots and the colours seem so much bolder and brighter than they do in real life.
If anyone can suggest a film which marries the look of that with a genuinely dark storyline of sleaze, gangsters and addiction to prescription drugs I will be eternally grateful.
