Man Of A Thousand Faces (1957)

"On August 27, 1930, the entire motion picture industry suspended work to pay tribute to the memory of one of its great actors. This is his story."

A day before the world truly lost one of its finest artists. Lon Chaney (best known for portraying The Hunchback of Notre Dame and Phantom of the Opera) was not only an actor but one of the first true make-up artists. And because of his amazing make-up skills he got the nickname "man with the thousand faces." He created the most horrifying movie monsters of all time but always gave them personality and vulnerability. He understood what it was to be different.

I'm a huge fan of biopics and this is one of the best. At first I was apprehensive about it because it was made so long ago. Mostly because you didn't have many sources to find out things about somebody. And apparently Chaney made it difficult for the audience to know the real person under all those characters, even saying that "between pictures, there is no Lon Chaney."

The film makers did take some creative license in the movie which is fine, for example Amadeus was a great movie and it had almost nothing to do with the real events. Although I think at least one thing should have been left like it was in real life. I didn't like how they portrayed Chaneys first wife. Or rather her reaction to Chaneys deaf-mute parents. In the movie Chaney didn't tell his wife about his parents before they were married, she freaks out and can't accept them. She even starts suspecting that their unborn baby might be deaf and starts doubting if she wants to have him. In real life his wife did know about the parents and had met them several times before they were married. The accuracy of the baby thing I don't know, like I said earlier, Chaneys personal life was vague at best. In any case, the baby wasn't deaf and Lon jr. became as famous as his father portraying, what else, movie monsters.

James Cagney (most known for his gangster roles in the 30's and 40's) was truly wonderful portraying Chaney. He really got the vulnerability of him. Every actor, I think, was great.

The movie ends with Chaney bedridden and his family around him. He tells his son to get his make-up kit (which he carried around all the time) and writes "jr." to the bag which carries his name. He says his goodbyes and dies.

Chaney died August 26, 1930, of complications of lung cancer. He was 47.

We should remember Chaney because with his grotesque but sweet characters he taught us understanding and acceptance. And what is more important than accepting people for who they are?

Man Of A Thousand Faces on IMDb

Twilight Saga

I only watched the Twilight crap-o-rama.. Uh.. I mean Saga.. because I wanted to understand what was the big deal. There has been vampire movies since the beginning (a whole lot better ones might I add) but these movies for some reason made a huge impact on the younger generation. I'm 25 so I'm not into the movies just because there's boys without their shirts on. I also need great characters, an interesting story and all that crap.

So, there's this girl without the burden of personality who bitches and moans about everything she encounters. Then she just spontaneously falls in love with this pale, sparkly dude with even less personality than her. Then there's this other shirtless dude who she doesn't like but she likes to give an impression that she does.

You see, it's idiotic.

My biggest problem with the movies is the lack of motivation of the characters. If Bella smells so good to vampires why didn't Edward just eat her, that's what vampires do! But oooh no, the vampires are "vegetarians" and eat just animals. And sparkle... Okay, okay, it was surprisingly downplayed the whole sparkling thing. I think it was only in one of the movies (as of now when Breaking dawn part 1 is the newest movie). I also don't like the reason why the dogs and the vampires hate each other. So one of the vampires killed one of the werewolves eons ago. Again, that's what they're supposed to do, kinda. Why do they even compete about the territories? They don't eat the same food so there's no reason why they couldn't live in the same space.

My next problem is the characters. The two leads are the most boring characters in all of the movies. Especially Bella is as boring as a wallpaper and I'm really having difficulties understanding why there is almost a war because of her. I don't understand why the writer (be that Stephenie Meyer or the movies writers) made the secondary characters outshine the leads. The other Cullen family members are much more interesting than the emo couple. They have good back stories (so does Edward but it wasn't that interesting or complicated) and I was actually wishing that the movies were only about them. No Bella, no doggies, just the family with their stories.. Wait.. There is a movie like that. Interview with the vampire. Yeah, that's what it should have been like, that was a great movie.

On the technical note... I'm a practical effect kinda gal so I usually hate the CGI effects and prefer hand made make-up effects or really subtle CGI if there's no way of doing it practically. The werewolf CGI was horrible. HEY ASSHOLES!!! WHEN PEOPLE CAN SEE IT'S CGI THEN YOU'RE NOT DOING YOUR JOB RIGHT! Less than ten years ago we we're in a place where CGI was so subtle that you didn't always notice it. What the fuck happened? If I wanna watch some stupid CGI vomit I turn to Pixar.

And the editing... Apparently all the movie editors have ADD nowadays. They don't stay with the same shot more than 2 seconds. Really, you're seriously trying to give me a seizure with your flash editing?

The cliffhangers piss me off. It's okay for a TV-series to have cliffhangers like this because the next episode is only a week away, not a fucking year. And everybody with a brain cell knows what's gonna happen anyway so STOP IT! I'm guessing (because I don't know and it's happened before) that Breaking dawn was supposed to be one movie but they couldn't stop rambling about stupid shit and they split it in two.

One more thing.. The religious paralleling. It's so obvious but ms. Meyer apparently said she didn't notice the Mormon teachings slipping into her works. I call bullshit on that. I don't understand what a Mormon is doing writing books about vampires anyway.

I can't nitpick every single annoying detail or I would sit here the rest of my life. Better leave these movies alone and let them disappear from the growing minds like so many other teen phenomenons.