nakay208wz
Dołączył: 16 Mar 2011
Posty: 52
Przeczytał: 0 tematów
Ostrzeżeń: 0/5
Skąd: England
|
 Wysłany: Czw 4:06, 07 Kwi 2011 Temat postu: Nike Shox Deliver The Lair of the White Worm Ken R |
 |
|
Amanda Donohoe a Rev
The other Russell hallmark of course is sensory overload - especially in his symbol-laden dreamscapes. Stylistically, it is also worth noting Russell is not a director to waste time messing around with complex tracking shocks, especially when a wobbly zoom is just as effective in expressing the intent of a scene.
It was somewhere near the commencement of this swift slide down that Russell wrote and directed The Lair of the White Worm (1988) [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], based loosely on Bram Stoker’s second most successful book after Dracula. The film, set in the English countryside, revolves around the antics of an evil snake queen played by Amanda Donohoe, who plans to sacrifice hapless virgin Catherine Oxenberg to a giant carnivorous hole-dwelling worm god. As less-than-dashing Hugh Grant bunglingly fails to salvage the situation, nerdish bagpipe-playing archaeology student Peter Capaldi comes to her rescue. The plot certainly lacks common sense, which is only to be expected. It is after all a Ken Russell film based on a Bram Stoker story, neither of whom is renowned for their commitment to coherent logic.
Based on Bram Stoker Book
Then again why not? After all, an auteur is a director whose films reflect a personal vision, and Russell is nothing if not a filmmaker with a vision. His ouvre literally oozes religious and sexual imagery laced with wanton violence. In fact [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], the director has repeatedly been accused of an unhealthy obsession with sex and the church, the Russell universe being one where nuns seem in constant danger of being raped or tortured – usually at the hands of men of the cloth.
Believe it or not [link widoczny dla zalogowanych], there was a time when Ken Russell was considered an auteur. This era was known as the 70s, and is probably the only era such a curious phenomenon could have occurred; a time when the mere fact a film was a Russell was enough to draw audiences into a cinema.
But his dream run came to an end and Russell soon found himself persona non grata in Hollywood. Ironically, the ‘Orson Welles of England’ as he was once described, also found himself spending the remnants of his career independently seeking ever-diminishing levels of financing outside the studio system.
In spite of, or perhaps because of such quirks, Russell enjoyed a controversial string of hit movies throughout the decade taste forgot. It kicked off with the Oscar winning Women in Love (1969), peaked with his highly successful cinematic adaptation of the Who’s rock opera Tommy (1975), and culminated with the mind-altering Altered States (1980).
Indeed, Russell throws himself into the absurdities of the story with gusto, the end result being a something akin to a tripped-out student film with a decent papier-mache budget. The special effects on the worm monster are particularly execrable. But who cares? When the worm finally rears its ugly head we are more fixated on what is happening atop the altar above its lair: a topless Donohoe preparing to impale Oxenberg with an enormous, ornately carved sacrificial strap-on. This is one of the more outrageous scenes in a consistently outrageous film. But it isn’t the first time Russell has portrayed a sex toy as an implement of death. That honour goes to Crimes of Passion (1984), in which psycho priest Anthony Perkins’ weapon of choice is a sharpened metallic vibrator. Such disturbingly phallocentric symbolism is so prevalent in Russell’s films one biography of the director was fittingly titled Phallus Frenzy.
Read on
Women in Cages
The Vampire Renaissance
Movie Review - Bram Stoker's Dracula
Sex Toy as Murder Weapon
Post został pochwalony 0 razy
|
|
