{"id":2251,"date":"2011-11-23T23:52:04","date_gmt":"2011-11-23T23:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=2251"},"modified":"2011-11-23T23:52:04","modified_gmt":"2011-11-23T23:52:04","slug":"my_next_must-see_the_artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/2011\/11\/23\/my_next_must-see_the_artist\/","title":{"rendered":"My Next Must-See: The Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I spotted the <a href=\"http:\/\/images.hollywood.com\/site\/theartistposter.jpg\">one-sheet<\/a> for a new film called <i>The Artist<\/i> a couple weeks ago, but while I thought it was striking and classy &#8212; a wonderfully refreshing change from the Photoshopped headshot montages that comprise the vast majority of movie posters these days &#8212; it gave me absolutely no idea what the movie was actually <i>about<\/i>. Now I know&#8230; and I love it, at least as a concept. <i>The Artist<\/i> is a silent movie. Yes, a silent&#8230; as in &#8220;no audible dialogue&#8221; and only occasional intertitles instead of subtitles. Just like the ones made up until 1927 or thereabouts. And it was even shot in black and white. Here&#8217;s the trailer:<\/p>\n<p align=\"center\"><iframe src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/O8K9AZcSQJE\" height=\"284\" width=\"500\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Looks good, doesn&#8217;t it? Beautiful cinematography and mood. The music is anachronistic, of course &#8212; Louis Prima didn&#8217;t record the first version of &#8220;Sing Sing Sing&#8221; until 1936, almost ten years after <i>The Jazz Singer<\/i> effectively ended the silent period &#8212; but otherwise this thing looks about as authentic as you can get, short of throwing in a little simulated <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Film_preservation#Film_decay\">nitrate decomposition<\/a>. The dog even resembles Asta, the canine costar of the <i>Thin Man<\/i> series from the &#8217;30s and &#8217;40s. But it&#8217;s not just the retro gimmick that&#8217;s grabbed my attention; the story intrigues me as well. The movie is about a silent film star whose career and life is about to dissolve due to that new innovation, talking pictures. Simultaneously, the pretty extra he helped discover is becoming a Big Deal. Yes, it&#8217;s the same premise as <i>A Star Is Born<\/i>, but that&#8217;s okay.<\/p>\n<p>Although <i>The Artist<\/i> was shot in Los Angeles using many locations authentic to the silent age, and using several American actors &#8212; you may have noticed John Goodman, James Cromwell, and Penelope Ann Miller in the trailer &#8212; this is technically a French movie, the brainchild of a gutsy man named Michel Hazanavicius. And you know, that doesn&#8217;t really surprise me, considering how utterly risk-averse Hollywood has become in the last 20 years. No American film studio would take a chance on an insane project like a modern-day silent; they prefer sure-things like remakes and sequels. Ever since my college days, I&#8217;ve been defending Hollywood movies to the film-snob, subtitle-loving, popularity-hating people I occasionally run across in my social circles, but just lately&#8230; Well, it says something interesting that the coming-soon attractions that have most excited me the past couple years <i>&#8212; <\/i>this, <i><a title=\"Adele Blanc-Sec: I Need to See This Movie!\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=1967\">The Extraordinary Adventures of Adele Blanc-Sec<\/a><\/i>, and <i><a title=\"A Live-Action Star Blazers?!\" href=\"http:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/?p=2030\">Space Battleship Yamato<\/a><\/i> &#8212; have all been foreign films. But then the movies I really love tend to be made by people who love <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">movies<\/span>, and, as far as I can tell, Hollywood is run these days by people who love <span style=\"font-style: italic;\">brands<\/span>&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I spotted the one-sheet for a new film called The Artist a couple weeks ago, but while I thought it was striking and classy &#8212; a wonderfully refreshing change from the Photoshopped headshot montages that comprise the vast majority of movie posters these days &#8212; it gave me absolutely no idea what the movie was [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2251","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-film-studies"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2251"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2251\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2251"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2251"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jasonbennion.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2251"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}