Musketeer Mania

I've got not one but two (sadly not three) pieces on Musketeer movies freshly up on the Internet. One is a discussion between myself and the lovely Allison from NerdVampire on Peter Hyams' simultaneously underrated and very appropriately rated 2001 feature, The Musketeer. Wire fu meets swashbuckling in this gratingly scripted but finely lensed POS. Check out our discussion here.

The other is on the deliciously, ludicrously scripted and gorgeously lensed Paul W.S. Anderson feature, The Three Musketeers. I gave this a positive, if somewhat backhanded, review after its theatrical release last year, but the severity with which I now treat Anderson's talents can be directly traced back to my fondness for this sailpunk take on the novel, with its beautiful, vast interiors, coherent action, and even a sly bit of satire or two. My full review can be found at Spectrum Culture.

Film Club: Limelight

I greatly enjoyed my first film club chat with Allison of Nerdvampire and was ecstatic when she picked a real blind spot in my movie watching with Charlie Chaplin's Limelight, the last of his American productions before Hoover effectively exiled him. I think I liked this conversation even more than the first, and it was a pleasure not only to see a Chaplin film I hadn't previously viewed but to discuss its charms fully with someone else. So without further ado, I present out discussion below.

Plot synopsis: A washed-up vaudevillian, Calvero (Charlie Chaplin), saves a young dancer (Claire Bloom) from committing suicide and resolves to nurse her back to health. But as Thereza recovers, Calvero only slips further into obscurity. Also features Sydney Chaplin as the charming, young, American composer Neville and Buster Keaton in a show-stopping climax with Chaplin. More somber than Chaplin's classic silents, Limelight nevertheless stands as the best transplant of the auteur's trademark sentimentality into the talkies.