Orchestral Maneuvers

Fantasia celebrates its 70th anniversary this year and still remains a hot mess of a movie. Back in 1940, there was no “animation”; there were just cartoons, so as a testament to Walt Disney’s ambition in merging cartoons with high culture, it still gets plenty of appreciation in this corner. And some of the pieces remain quite striking, particularly Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” and Ponchielli’s deadpan ballet parody “Dance of the Hours”. This latter piece shows that Walt didn’t take the enterprise too seriously—that he could create images that were playful as well as nightmarish, with Mickey's Dukas number being an effective hybrid of both.

But the rest is a mixed bag. “Ave Maria” is lovely and reverent, but changes the original Schubert to the point of distraction. "The Nutcracker" is fun but slight, while the exercise in abstraction for the Bach remains rudimentary. And the bad remains bad, with the garishness of Beethoven’s "Pastorale" sequence trivializing the epic beauty of the symphony itself.

Probably the most daring piece is the most recent classical selection, too: "The Rite of Spring". This is the most interpretive of the pieces, taking the chaotic vigor of the Stravinsky and translating it to prehistoric times. It’s an inspired choice, and while it necessarily neuters the raw sexuality implicit in the number, it still works great as drama and animation. However, the primeval world only reminds me of an ever more audacious dinosaur dance—"Bolero" in Allegro non Troppo (Bozzetto, 1976), a largely farcical Italian spoof of Fantasia using the same conceit of an animated orchestral program. But while Disney's dinosaurs are faithful to a certain realism, Bozzetto’s version is a highly stylized fable, showing how an alien coke bottle ignites the spark of Life that, like the Ravel, builds and builds and builds into a grand march of evolution and survival of the fittest that is clever, funny, and haunting all at once. I’d easily take it over Fantasia in its entirety.


We’ve seen the 5 Mickey releases before (including a "Sorcerer's Apprentice" stamp itself) with the matching First Day of Issue postmarks. And the American Filmmaking series should be very familiar by now, too (Fantasia did indeed win 2 special Academy Awards at the time). The challenge was to find as many related stamps as possible and incorporate them into the body of the card. In chronological order, the seven additional stamps listed are

Walt Disney (Scott #1355)
The Age of Reptiles (Scott #1390)
Music Instruments (Scott #1614 & 1813)
Igor Stravinsky (Scott #1845)
Leopold Stokowski (Scott #3158)
Ballet (Scott #3237)

With 6 separate postmarks (all in sequential years) and 13 stamps total, this remains the most complicated single postcard within my collection.

The Heart of Our World

I mentioned in a previous post that I rarely find postcards at stamp conventions or philatelic dealers like the ones I create: film posters with a stamp and First Day of Issue postmark that has a related subject or theme.  But this card holds as an unusual exception is the oldest variation of that type in my entire collection.

I haven't seen this Griffith film from 1918, though it has some of his regular players, including Lillian Gish and her sister Dorothy, Adolph Lestina, Robert Harron, Kate Bruce and even Erich von Stroheim (they made 10 films together).   He is the first film director to get a US postage stamp (if you don't count Walt Disney, who was far better known as producer and entertainment mogul) and justly seen as the grandfather of American cinema, with The Birth of a Nation (1915) one of the most influential and infamous movies ever made.

But now, his legacy is split into two branches that intertwine like a caduceus--that of artist and propagandist, capable of sweeping narratives and delicate emotions that reveal universal truths in the human condition, but sometimes at the service of the most hateful (and sadly effective) historical revisionism and worldviews.  Some of his films are relatively neutral politically, and often reveal him to be an epic sentimentalist as well as an expert storyteller.  But he is also the antecedent of the Soviet revolution propaganda movies--which were far more sophisticated in technique--and of the films of Leni Riefenstahl, which were far more insidious in their agenda.

I am named after my father, who in turn was named after his grandfather Sterling Smith, a private in the 26th regiment, 3rd East Tennessee Volunteer Infantry in the Confederate army.  We are fairly young as a nation, but still rich with memory.  Our history informs each of us, but what we choose to do with our lives and our sense of purpose or expression is up to us alone.  So Griffith inspired many, persuaded many, and his creative gifts are still with us to bear witness to, as is the terrible shadow that looms over that body of work. 

The Griffith stamp is Scott #1555 and was released on the 100th anniversary of his birth in 1875.  Although I don't do it for contemporary issues, for cinema-related stamps released before I started the hobby, I usually do collect a cache like the one pictured.

Point Ache

Congrats to Kathryn Bigelow for being the first woman to win the Best Director Oscar. Though highly-praised in some circles, I find Point Break, which she made back in 1991, is a joyless absurdity, with laughable performances across the board. I think Swayze and Reeves get a bad rap sometimes, but here they’re hopeless, fighting tooth and nail to see who can be less convincing—a renegade FBI agent or a craptastic hippie surfing guru. Bigelow has chops and has managed to create some flawed but engaging films from questionable material (Near Dark, Strange Days). But Point Break is epic loads of d-u-m-b. Here’s hoping, post-Hurt Locker (an undeniably terrific film) that she isn’t relegated to grade-B material anymore, even if she notches a failure or two on her belt (like many Oscar-winning male counterparts have).

Point Break doesn’t take place in Hawaii, but I used the statehood stamp because of the surfing motif.

2009 Yearly Wrap

Gary Cooper, Scott # 4421

Bob Hope, Scott # 4406

Classic Television sheet, including The Lone Ranger, Scott # 4414m

Wedding rings, Scott # 4397

The Simpsons, including Bart, Scott # 4401

50th Anniversary of Hawaii, Scott # 4415

Love stamps, including King of Hearts, Scott # 4404

Having a Ball

Of all the contrivances and far-fetched situations in Pretty Woman, the one that brought me most out of the movie was when Vivian (Julia Roberts) sits down to watch I Love Lucy and claims to have never seen the episode airing (“Lucy’s Italian Movie”, with the wine-stomping sequence). How in the world could someone from my generation make it to their mid-20’s and not have seen that? Growing up, Lucy was ubiquitous, airing constantly in endless rerun loops, a touchstone (along with The Twilight Zone) to television’s past that everyone seemed to have in common.

Of course, before Ricky & Ethel & co., Ball was a movie actress, though I’ve only seen a handful of her pics (most notably the entertaining Stage Door and Dance, Girl, Dance), though that’s still probably more than most. And she's terrific. She also had some turns on the musical stage, but it’s in that New York apartment that she’s best remembered, for it’s hard to imagine any movie showcasing her brilliant comedic timing & physicality as well as all those Lucy episodes. Being a child of an interracial couple, her marriage to Arnaz (and the inherent culture clashes involved) seemed perfectly normal to me, so I failed to see how ahead-of-its-time it was (as was her pregnancy on the show). It’s also interesting that the first time I ever encountered the name of Karl Freund, the extraordinary cinematographer of Metropolis, Dracula, and Camille, was on her show, where he helped pioneer multi-camera sitcom shooting. So in the movies, she was an able ensemble player, while on TV, she was nothing short of an hilarious revolutionary.

Ball is one of only three women in US Postal Service history to be on at least 3 different stamps (the others are Queen Isabella and Eleanor Roosevelt). The first, from the Celebrate the Century series (Scott #3187l),matches the postcard I had very nicely. The other two are from the Legends of Hollywood series (Scott #3523) and Early TV Memories (Scott # 4414b)

My Oscar Ballot

Picture: The Hurt Locker

Actor: Jeff Bridges, Crazy Heart

Actress: Meryl Streep, Julie & Julia

Supporting Actor: Christoph Waltz, Inglourious Basterds

Supporting Actress: Anna Kendrick, Up in the Air

Director: Kathryn Bigelow, The Hurt Locker

Original Screenplay: A Serious Man

Adapted Screenplay: In the Loop

Cinematography: The White Ribbon

Art Direction: The Imaginarium of Doctor Parnassus

Editing: The Hurt Locker

Costume Design: Bright Star

Score: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Song: “The Weary Kind”, Crazy Heart

Sound Mixing: The Hurt Locker

Sound Editing: The Hurt Locker

Visual Effects: District 9

Make-Up: The Young Victoria

Foreign Language Film: The White Ribbon

Animated Feature: Fantastic Mr. Fox

Animated Short: Logorama

Live Action Short: The New Tenants

Color Me Bor3d

Well, Avatar is now the phenomenon of the season and 3D has found yet another foothold in the public’s consciousness, once again hoping to be more than a flavor-of-the-month attraction. As the postcard reminds us, 3D made its first serious cinematic splash in the 1950s, with the classic anaglyph image (faithfully reproduced on the stamp) that required the red/blue cardboard glasses. The stamp is from the Celebrate the Century series (Scott #3187o) and represents one of the middle-of-the-road novelty attractions in movies at the time—not as important as widescreen or stereophonic sound, but not as brazenly goofy as those used by William Castle (“Emergo”, “Percepto”, etc.)

But while the technical components of 3D have improved dramatically since then, I’m still not convinced that the Emperor is sporting more than a Navi loincloth. Think back to the introduction of sound or 3-strip Technicolor to the movies: within just a couple of years, film directors were already going beyond the gimmicky phase of those technologies and creating beautiful, provocative pieces with those new tools in their kit.

But 3D has been around for over 50 years, and the number of genuinely innovative, artistic, non-gimmicky uses of the device can still be counted on the fingers of one hand. Henry Selick's recent Coraline was so unusual, and satisfying, because it effectively used the technology to enhance the theme and tone of the film, exploiting the multiple visual planes to create an increased sense of disorientation between Coraline's real world and the creepy mirror world she visits. The feeling was an immersive one, not just for its own sake, but to put ourselves in her state-of-mind, going beyond a Cinema of Sensation and really mining emotional territory from the effect.

But that has not happened in any of the other examples I've seen recently (including Pixar's Up, which used the device so unobtrusively that there was hardly a point to the 3D in the first place). For something to have existed this long and to have made so few genuinely creative inroads into the medium after all this time, I still have to consider it a gimmick—just one with more bells & whistles (and studio money behind it) now.

Predictably, every game in town is revamping their production slates to shoehorn as much additional 3D as possible into their choice tentpole flicks this year—even after-the-fact if necessary. I’m skeptical. We’ll see what the tipping point is before a public backlash occurs. For while people will pay premium pricing for Cameron’s magnum opus (as tedious, predictable, and visually superficial as I personally thought it was), are they going to be willing to shell out those bucks for every 3D film that comes down the pipe? I think we’ll have a much better idea by the end of the year.