IKURU Is an object lesson in life & is ironically about death as well. I can feel a tingle when I think about his dignified praying to the official & that haunting song he sings in the snow on the child’s swing at the end. I think it is now largely forgotten, searching for the link I placed above, it didn’t appear when I typed ‘Ikuru’ into the IMDB, I had to go to Kurasawa’s profile itself & scroll down to the 1950s to find it.
I’ve seen Ikiru a couple of times, and I’ll agree that this is a great, rarely-seen film. But, again, I’m a big Kurasawa fan. Most of his films, unfortunately, are rarely seen in the US. Seven Samurai and Rashomon are classics, and his more recent films got a lot of play – Kagemusha, Ran, Dreams. But for some reason, although it’s an acknowledged lassic, Ikiru wasn’t shown as often.
“Kanji Watanabe” is the character’s name in Ikiru. The actor is Takashi Shimura.
In looking at the visual efx crews from these two movies and Forbidden Planet, I see no common names. Nor should that be surprising given the latter was an MGM film and the two former ones came from smaller studios. The trio (Block, DeWitt and Rabin) primarily responsible for visual efx in Kronos and The Atomic Submarine did work on many a low-budget sci-fi/fantasy movie, but Forbidden Planet wasn’t one of them.
Apart from that, your choices show excellent taste, as usual.
Dropo. Correct. I scribbled both names down from IMDB & mixed the in my post - Thanks!
An Everlasting Piece (2000)
It’s set in 1980s Belfast. It’s about two barbers–one Catholic, one Protestant–in a mental institution who decide to go into the door-to-door men’s wig sales business. It’s a laugh riot. Bonus, Billy Connolly as an inmate called “The Scalper.” And a wild encounter supplying wigs to the I.R.A.
I stand by my statements. Listings give the chief people, not the whole team.
Block, who did effects for Atomic Sub (His arm was inside the one-eyed alien puppet) and Kronos wrote the story for Forbidden Planet.
Look at the effects used for the destruction of the Krel door at the climax of FP and the scenes of the destruction of Kronos – there’s a great similarity between the appearance and even the philosophy. Things didn’t just melt, they decomposed in a characteristic way.
A “team” is more than one person. Please name two or more people who worked on the visual efx team for all three movies. Note that for Kronos, you referred to “much of the same team” as FP’s visual efx crew, yet you have already ruled out all of the credited “chief people” who worked on FP’s visual efx.
Mr. Block is credited with “based on a story by” for FP. He was not part of the visual efx team for that film. Citing him does not lend credence to your claims (“…but the special effects, by much of the same team that did Forbidden Planet…”; “More effects work from the Forbidden Planet team.”)
“…scenes of the destruction of Kronos” is an ambiguous phrase meaning either the destruction Kronos causes or the destruction of Kronos itself. Scenes of destruction by Kronos use miniatures, fire and superimposition. They look nothing like anything in FP. The Krel door getting super-hot bears a passing resemblance to Kronos’ final moments, but given the specific phenomena in question is the same (metal overheating), it is a generic resemblance and it comprises a few seconds of screen time at most. Basing a claim of “great similarity” (and “even the philosophy”) on those few seconds is specious. Lastly, Kronos and the Krel door do not decompose “in a characteristic way.” The Krel door decomposes, bits and pieces falling off. Kronos does not decompose; it just gets super-hot and psychedelic.
Destruction of Kronos - https://youtu.be/e5SbKgLJDjY?t=802
Decomposition of Krel door - https://youtu.be/n0aO1sSILNw
I’ve also seen it and I really like it. When I was deciding on a userid I was contemplating Qwerty Evans as an homage to this movie (John Wayne’s character is named Quirt Evans.) Harry Carey is an absolute gem here and I have been known to bust out some of his lines from time to time. No one ever has any idea what I’m talking about.
Agreed.
My contribution is a Kenneth Branagh movie from 1995, A Midwinter’s Tale. I believe it’s called In the Bleak Midwinter in England. A group of actors puts on a production of Hamlet in an old church just before Christmas. I think this was the most I have ever laughed in a theater.
If you want to discuss this further, we can take it elsewhere, because I don’t want to derail this thread. Also, I’m insanely busy at the moment, so forgive this brief post.
But you seriously mischaracterize the effects and the way they’re done. And, yes, I mean philosophy. Don’t be dismissive.
The Krel door doesn’t simply melt. Watch the film more carefully. If you wanted to just melt it, you could make a prop door out of solder or eutectic and heat it until it flowed into liquid. That door decomposes, in layers, and that’s what makes it visually interesting to watch. As a production designer – and Block didn’t just write the screen story for Forbidden Planet, he was its uncredited Production Designer (see iMDB or any of several websites devoted to the film – Forbidden Planet (1956) - Full Cast & Crew - IMDb or https://www.fandango.com/people/irving-a-block-67297/biography
) – Block knew that yopu had to make things visually interesting and exciting. The door heats up, unevenly, with waves of red spreading over its surface. Then regions change to yellow, then to white (following the sequence J.J. Adams had outlined in dialogue). Then it doesn’t simply melt, but sort of granularizes, and starts to crumble off in bits. There’s a suggestion of layers peeling away, just as the Krel doors exist in separate layers that slide across each other friom different directions. It’s wonderfully complex and interesting to watch.
(That “Door That Consists of Different Layers That Slide In From Different Directions” is sort of a Block Hallmark. Again, it doesn’t just close – it seals up in a series of motions that is visually interesting and arresting and makes you want to watch. It also sort of makes sense with the Krel door and that finale. Block used similar doors in the alien spacecraft in Atomic Submarine. I think George Lucas saw these and liked them, and stole them for Star Wars – the doors on the Death Star in the original film close the same way. Darth Vader just misses being able to pass through one after his light saber duel with Obi-Wan Kenobi, and Luke has shot the controls to close the door. Watch how it closes. In any case, they COULD have made the door just one big sliding panel, a la Star Trek. Or even a big door on hinges, for that matter. They didn’t. Block had a philosophy of production and effects design.
Again, look at Kronos. He doesn’t just explode, or melt. In lesser hands, he would. But that doesn’t fit Block’s philosophy of design. Like the Krel door, he doesn’t simply melt – he decomposes in stages. The outer layer of that half-dome on top melts and slides off. Striations appear across the surface of Kronos’ body. Those shots looking up at the vastness of his boxy metal body, in other hands, would be boring to look at – it’s just a Big Box, after all. Block made sure it stayed interesting. In fact, as I’ve maintained elsewhere, Kronos the movie is intellectually vapid. Unlike Forbidden Planet, this is pretty rotten as Science Fiction. But it is visually a treat. Who cares about the actors or the acting? But everyone cites the slick appearance of the robot, and its whacko method of locomotion (using three pistoning feet and one rotating one — I’ve never seen anything quite like that, before or since), and its ultimate destruction are all what make this film worth watching.
Block was like Harryhausen, in a small way – the special effects guy writes the story to fit the effects he has in mind. Block wrote the stories for Forbidden Planet and for Kronos and for Atomic Submarine.
My copies of Cinefantastique are buried away right now, and I have limited time to search the internet, so I’ll have to leave it there. Block is the connecting thread between the films, and I maintain still that this unites the effects appearance and philosophy. I’d be very surprised if he didn’t have a team or associates that worked with him on the multiple productions, but who didn’t get into the credits (Harryhausen has uncredited helpers, too), but I haven’t been able to locate anything yet.
The Dish (2000)
Very interesting low-budget science flick. I missed it when it first came out, but caught it later at a science fiction convention.
Ditto. This will be my last post on this hijack in this thread.
Agreed 100%.
Kronos does not decompose. The outer layer of the dome melts and slides off - an effect that looks nothing like the Krel door - then Kronos explodes. At no time do bits and pieces of him flake off like the Krel door.
Both efx involve metal overheating, a well-known phenomena where the color changes as the temperature increases, ultimately leading to decomposition in layers. The last part does not happen in Kronos.
This part is unrelated to the discussion we are having, but I thought it interesting that there are a couple low angle shots of Kronos at the climax that look remarkably like the monolith in 2001. Pretty much anything can be made to look (more) interesting with the right angle and lighting.
FP was an MGM production. They had an in-house efx unit supervised by A. Arnold Gillespie (who served under Cedric Gibbons). I have no idea how much work Mr. Block did on the production design, but the fact he was uncredited for it suggests it may not have been much or not much of it was actually used. With the conspicuous exception of Joshua Meador - borrowed from Disney to animate the Id Monster - my recollection is that the visual efx of FP were done in-house. But I could be wrong.
There are two dialogue tracks on the DVD. Is neither the original?
Fear of a Black Hat is the superior one, but it was sadly over shadowed by the CB4 release with more mainstream black actors.
2002’s In America - The entire movie is excellent but that ending especially…gets me every time.
Ikiru is a masterpiece, but it has close to 60,000 ratings at IMDb, so the cat is definitely out of the bag. Thanks again Criterion and criterionchannel.com. You may disagree with some of the movies Criterion re-releases, but if you disagree with many, you just don’t love movies.
“lone star” is a personal favourite of mine. Top ensemble cast, Chris Cooper on top form and Kris Kristofferson plays one of the greatest baddies committed to film. Lots of lovely ambiguity as well.
It wasn’t lost on the various award boards and was well nominated but for some reason it flew under pretty much everyone else’s radar, vanishingly few people I mention it to have ever heard of it but it is absolutely worth a watch. Francis McDormand is in it…'nuff said.
The “trilogy” by Aaron Moorhead and Justin Benson, which is science fiction with a dash of horror:
Resolution (2012)
A man imprisons his estranged junkie friend in an isolated cabin in the boonies of San Diego to force him through a week of sobriety, but the events of that week are being mysteriously manipulated.
Spring (2014)
A young man in a personal tailspin flees from US to Italy, where he sparks up a romance with a woman harboring a dark, primordial secret.
The Endless (2017)
As kids, they escaped a UFO death cult. Now, two adult brothers seek answers after an old videotape surfaces and brings them back to where they began.
I’m not entirely sure Spring is related to the other two – it’s been years since I saw it – but I consider these three movies to comprise a trilogy. Resolution and The Endless are so connected that I believe there is actual footage from Resolution in The Endless. (It’s possible they re-shot the “re-used” scenes from scratch.) Ironically, Resolution is “resolved” in The Endless, and not the other way around.
Spring is my favorite of the three, and as stated it’s fully stand-alone. I wouldn’t recommend watching The Endless before Resolution because of the deep connection and callbacks between the two.
There is a 1982 movie starring Julie Andrews called “Victor Victoria”. I thought it was very charming, and I thought she did a great job with the role. She played a woman who was impersonating a man who was supposed to be a female impersonator! LOL
As far as I know, no one I know has seen this movie.
I’ve seen all three and would agree that Spring, which stands alone, is the best one.