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Hannibal's Return
Jon's review, continued: This could have been a great movie.
Ridley Scott's Hannibal has all the elements of a classic -- a creepy story, gorgeous cinematography in beautiful locales, one of the world's greatest actors, a director hot off Gladiator (nominated for 12 Oscars last week) and a truly mythic monster, the cultured but cannibalistic Dr. Hannibal Lecter.
But Hannibal isn't great. Entertaining, sure, and worth seeing, providing you've got a strong enough stomach for some truly over-the-top gore. Somehow, Ridley Scott lost his footing in the making of this much- ballyhooed sequel. The movie wanders off into too many picturesque but dawdly sub-plots. And the violence is so extreme it becomes almost cartoonish.
WARNING: No outcomes are given away, but skip this next graf if you don't want to know any of the specific blood-and-brains details. I'm including them so that you can decide if you or your loved ones want to buy a ticket:
In this movie, you'll see a man's face get ripped off and fed to a dog, a woman's face gnawed off while she screams. You'll see humans fed to wild boars, a grotesquely-disfigured Lecter victim, a man disemboweled and hung, another garroted grotesquely. Then, one guy's skull is sawed open and the frontal lobe fried and served him for dinner.
It says a lot about the laughable MPAA ratings system that a couple making love can be grounds for an NC-17 rating, while the stuff above only draws an R. The theater where I saw the movie was crammed with little kids. Friends, we live in a loopy country.
Even some of the key people involved with the superior, very chilling Silence Of The Lambs decided to take a pass on this one. The producers had all sorts of trouble getting novelist Thomas Harris to finish his controversial sequel and when he did, both director Jonathan Demme and star Jody Foster gagged and bailed. So it took a decade for Dr. Lecter to make his way back on screen. Except for the ending, Hannibal is surprisingly faithful to the spirit of the book.
Anthony Hopkins is a brilliant choice to star in a contemporary horror film. He's gleeful, charismatic, powerful and truly unnerving. His performance is filled with great touches, like his habit of cheerfully saying "okey-dokey" before he does something horrendous. The big difference between Hannibal and Silence is that the latter was a story about a brilliant and dangerous mind imprisoned behind a mask and locked in a cell; about the very intense intellectual battle of the souls between this psychopath and a dutiful, smart FBI agent. Talk about having your mind messed with. Their conflict, and grudging mutual respect, even admiration, made the story a thriller but also a cold, powerful character study.
Scott seemed to have no patience for that kind of a contest, so he made Hannibal into a straight horror film, albeit one with some genuinely frightening moments, an eerie backdrop and soundtrack and dark and beautiful locations (including, oddly enough, the Virginia estate of the fourth president of the U.S., James Madison, who is somewhere -- maybe nearby -- spinning in his grave).
The movie opens in Washington, D.C., during a botched drug raid for which our heroine in unjustly blamed, and then moves onto Florence, which Scott uses to great affect. The doctor is in hibernation, pursuing a job as a curator of a medieval library, where he gives creepy lectures about unpleasant history. A local cop figures out who he is and decides to go after him for the reward (this guy is such deadmeat from the minute he shows up in the movie, he seems to know it).
The movie then -- after too long a delay -- flirts with the idea that Hannibal and his pursuer, played this round by Julianne Moore, are or might be attracted to one another. The other twist is that Moore has been humiliated by her slimy superiors in the FBI and Justice Department, a fate that draws Hannibal even closer to her. Gary Oldman plays the horrendously maimed Lecter-victim pulling strings behind-the-scenes to get vengeance on the good doc. This too seems to go over the top.
Too much of the action is over before Lecter and Agent Clarice Starling even get near each other, which takes some of the steam out of their confrontation. Besides, there's no real pursuit or chemistry between the two, intellectual or otherwise. In Silence, Clarisse was fighting for control of her psyche. Here, she's sometimes seems to be almost robotically battling out of reflex, maybe to keep her pension, or out of blind loyalty to the FBI field manual. She never says.
Mostly, Moore plays a variation of Agent Scully pursuing a meta-psychopath. She is so humorless, resolute, ethical and unwavering she becomes one-dimensional. It's fine to see a brave woman starring in an action movie, but does she have to have nerves of titanium? The guy is truly a horror show, and Superman would be creeped out around him. Clarisse could at least wince or blink. Contrast this role with Michelle Yeoh's in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Both women are tough, but Yeoh shows enormous vulnerability and pain, which makes her seem all the braver.
Dr. Lecter is, in many ways a riot, the movie's saving grace. The monsters in many classic horror films -- Dracula, Frankenstein, kill out of some uncontrollable instinct. Lecter just seems to hate vulgarity and rudeness, punishing both with unimaginable cruelty. Hopkins plays this character with relish and joy, one perfect note after another.
Unless you're queasy about the brains and intestines and people eaten alive (those scenes are bizarre, and now always brief) the movie has its moments. You will actually feel a chill go up your spine now and again, not a small accomplishment for any movie, even one that falls somewhat short of its great potential.
Besides, Hannibal is a bona fide mega-smash, racking up one of the top opening weekend grosses in Hollywood history. This idea strikes a deep chord with moviegoers -- the next film in the franchise is reportedly already in the works. So the culinary adventures of Dr. Lecter is likely to turn into a regular cinematic event, like the Bond films, Batman or Star Wars series. If you want to get in on it, might as well start at the beginning.
timothy's take:
"Guts in, or guts out?" First of all, please note: Hannibal is not for the squeamish, probably not to watch with your parents, almost certainly not a good first-date movie (though it takes all kinds), and not a good-guys-win-in-the-nick-of-time story. It's a ghoulish, macabre, perverse and disturbing film with the detective work, plot twists and horrifascinating feel of The Silence of the Lambs. That said, please note, if you've read the book, you may find a few corners cut.
As much of the Thomas Harris novel Hannibal as Ridley Scott, Thomas Harris and David Mamet could squeeze into 2 hours and 20 minutes, they did. Though the film would be comprehensible and probably just as horrifying to a viewer unfamiliar with "Silence," it makes much more sense to see Hannibal as a second act than a story in isolation. If you are one of the three people who have not seen the first film, Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (M.D.) is a long-imprisoned serial murderer with a penchant for eating his victims; Lecter agrees to help capture another serial killer to aid new FBI ageny Clarice Starling, but when betrayed by Starling's superiors escapes and begins his culinary pursuits anew. Starling pursues Lecter, as one of the few people who in some sense understands his twisted sense of civility, and on more than one occasion finds that his victims weren't quite innocent either.
Besides that background, three converging plotlines launch the story of Hannibal. Briefly: Agent Starling becomes the scapegoat for a failed drug-raid which was supposed to be an example of interdepartmental cooperation between the FBI and D.C. police; as a result she is publicly humiliated by a jealous bureacrat named Paul Krendler (the well-chosen Ray Liotta); An Italian policeman named Pazzi, played by Giancarlo Giannini, has by luck fallen onto Hannibal's trail when he becomes suspicious of the cultured interim curator of Florence's Palazzo Vecchio, an art scholar named "Dr. Fell"; and finally, recluse millionaire Mason Verger, Lecter's first victim ("the rich one -- the only one who survived."), has devised a method of trapping and killing Lecter as gruesome if not as artful as one of the good doctor's own schemes. The special effects used to create Verger's face are truly disturbing, but apparently under that twisted visage is Gary Oldman, always good at being bad.
These threads converge more neatly than I'd feared they might; Ridley Scott does an excellent job of tying together the story elements with judicious transitions and just-enough background to make each character fall into plac. The directing and cinematography throughout, in fact, are remarkably restrained -- no scene sticks out like quite like the Pittsburgh-filmed cage scene in "Silence," or the apocalyptic Los Angeles cityscape of Bladerunner. Still, Scott knows how to do gore. It's true that there's less detail in the movie than I might like -- for instance, about how Lecter came to be in Florence, to speak Italian, or to be so learned in matters of Rennaissance history and symbolism -- but subtlety is perhaps preferably to overexplanation in this case; Lecter works in mysterious ways, and as scenes in both movies hint, is a multilingual world traveler who could probably obtain such an academic position in any city in the world.
Anyone who liked The Silence of the Lambs for Jodie Foster's portrayal of the up-from-nothing Agent Starling ("white trash made good") is in for a surprise: Julianne Moore stuns. [Note: it looks like I have a slight disagreement with Jon on this point. Oh, well -- or perhaps, "Okey Dokey." -- t.] I was perhaps set up for disappointment, but this is one of the most graceful casting transitions in film history. No one besides Foster herself could better evince a slightly more seasoned, less hesitant Agent Starling -- still dedicated to her job, still dedicated to changing Hannibal Lecter's meal plan. Right down the set of her jaw and painfully-tamed southern accent, Starling is Moore is Starling.
Anthony Hopkins as Lecter, though, probably could not have been replaced. Hopkins' cultured phrasing and limpid gaze make Lecter's sinister, maniacal calm all the spookier, twisting the viewer uncomfortably through the gates which separate civilized, humane behavior from ... well, from gutting and eating the census taker who asks a rude question, or taking an autopsy saw and -- never mind. Anthony Hopkins obliges with a performance every bit as magnetic and nerve-jarring as the Hannibal Lecter of 10 years ago. (I'm waiting for a parody sketch on Saturday Night Live to combine his roles as C.S. Lewis in Shadowlands with his two runs as Hannibal.)
There are some subtle (and unsubtle) differences between the book and the movie, mostly the exclusion of certain characters and subplots -- Clarisse's roommate is nowhere to be seen, for instance, and neither is Mason Verger's vengeful sister or her lover, nor yet the children brought to Verger for immoral purposes. (Even in a movie which ends the way this one does, there are some things you'd rather not even see on film -- I doubt many viewers will clamor for a Directors Cut DVD featuring the unseen child-abuse scenes.) The way that Verger expires in the book, and the issue of his issue, may have been too much for the studio to handle, never mind potentially nauseous theaterfulls of viewers.
Those ommissions, though, are all acceptable concessions to brevity; I wish Scott, Harris and Mamet had found room to squeeze in just a few of the cut scenes, though, like the book's flashbacks about Lecter's childhood, which provided at least some explanation for Lecter's decidely anti-social eating habits. Without them, Lecter comes off again as an anthrophagous Moriarty whose victim-eating is just an arbirary manifestation of evil, though in this movie as well as in the first his sense of propriety is remarked on and wondered about. At one point, Starling asks the sinister, aggressive Krendler whether he wonders why Lecter dines on his victims. Krendler at that point ought perhaps have screwed on his thinking cap a little tighter, because his ambition to punish Starling's hard work with humiliation triggers the ever-watchful Lecter's passion for just desserts.
Still, the machinations of surviving Lecter victim Mason Verger are perhaps the most important part of the story, as they tie together both Starling (whom Verger tries to make bait for Lecter with political manipulation) and the avaricious policeman Pazzi, who attempts to cash in on the reward that Verger has established for Lecter's live capture. Pazzi ends up cashing out rather than cashing in, in what is probably the film's second-most horrifying murder, and the only one which shows off the doctor at this thoughtful, didactic self rather than killing for mere expedience. Verger's elaborate plans to attract and capture Lecter are not so he can impress upon him the somewhat off-kilter lessons in applied Christianity he apparently picked up as a child from the religious camps his father founded; instead (to be direct), he plans to cast him before swine. Specifically, before a gang of large, specially-bred, man-eating swine from Sardinia. Verger has even prepared a special area of his vast estate just to watch the spectacle of Lecter being ripped apart from the feet up. Since the damage done to Verger -- self-inflicted, though under the hypnotic effects of the much-younger Dr. Lecter -- involved his face being eaten by dogs, there is a kind of symmetry to this plot.
Needless to say, Agent Starling, though dedicated to ending Hannibal Lecter's killing pattern, cannot countenance meeting evil with evil in the manner Verger intends, and despite being removed from the FBI while under investigation for alleged misconduct in the drug raid which opens the movie, arrives in time to influence the outcome of Verger's scheme, which is not to say the swine go hungry.
In fact, hunger is probably not the first thought of viewers shuffling out of the theater after Hannibal; the final scenes differ from the book's ending enough that speaking of them in any detail would give away more plot than I'm comfortable with. Suffice it to say that vegetarianism may just have a new posterboy, and Lecter himself prefers just about anything to being trapped in a prison cell, or even in handcuffs.
p.s. And though not listed on the Hannibal page on IMDB, isn't that Ajay Naidu (Samir from Office Space) making a quick appearance as a perfume expert?
p.p.s. Note how the ending of the movie
seems to be subliminally influenced by a vegetarian cookbook -- that can't have been accidental;)
Even Hannibal wouldn't eat Katz.
Hannibal has taste.
I will not go so far as to say that the first film wasn't commercially driven, however I will say that everyone involved has been overshadowed by what has went before. 'The Silence of the Lambs' was a great film.
It is amazing how often sequals are a dissappointment. They seem almost guarranteed to be worse than the first, but this is just the laws of averages.
--
Clarity does not require the absence of impurities,
/* And you'll never guess what the dog had */
/* in its mouth... */
--Larry Wall in stab.c from perl
First of all, I don't doubt that Katz is doing his usual exaggeration here.
But if there really was a little kid that went to see this movie, his parents should be put in jail for child abuse.
--
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
I agree with the above when it comes to the part of Clarice. Se is a Scully rip-off, but at least she's good at that. Hannibal however ist a great character, and this is conveyed to the audience every minute of the movie. Each and every thing he does seems - as twisted as it might seem first - logical and fits into his character.
One of the best things about the whole thing is the use of special effects. There are no purple blood fountains like in other thrillers/shockers, they don't try to catch Mr. Lecter with some truly-amazing-state-of-the-art FBI supersecretweapon, but instead it's all about the story that inevitably draws towards a surprising (but not totally unpredictable) end.
About the rating: here in germany (yeah, I know that I most likely didn't get half of the depth due to the "localisation-layer"), the movie is actually rated 18+ because That Guy Is Eating Human Flesh!!! Not because of some rather cruel scenes, because of which it was originally meant to be given a 16+ rating.
What I found a little disappointing is the failure of the movie to actually keep up the suspense over the whole two hours. It's definitely got its lengths during which a short nap doesn't mean you won't get the rest of it. But afterall, it's a far above average film for anyone who doesn't mind some fake blood and well-acted acts of violence.
Fight hunger. Filet a politician and send him to a 3rd world country of your choice.
In the opening credits you see security tape being fast-forwarded and then rewound, and played forward, and stuff. I think it is a clever reference to the fact that when the universe stops expanding and contracts, that, Hannibal wants Clarice to take his sister's place in the universe. That was never said in the movie, and in the book there were a lot of flashback sequences to why hannibal is like he is, and about his sister. Also, Mason Verger was much less evil in the movie. In the book he makes a child cry, by telling him lies about his foster parents, then has cordell wipe his tears away with a tissue, and mix the tears into a cocktail. Also, i don't like the fact that they didn't use the original headline from the book, they used something else instead, in the book they said DEATH ANGEL!, CLARICE STARLING. Also, they dropped her roomate out of the movie too. I like the movie, but the book is waaay better.
Cui peccare licet peccat minus. -- Ovid, Amores.
I just wanted to note, that "Hannibal" is in fact the third appearance of Dr. Lektor. The first movie is "Manhunter" (1986). "Silence" is the second part and "Hannibal" the third.
Ahh, and remember, high school sex ed often has required viewing of people screwing, and middle school sex ed shows you how babies are born. But, of course, they'd be rated NC-17 if they didn't have "EDUCATIONAL" stamped on the front. But they would never, ever be allowed to show a movie rated R for violence even to a class of 17/18+-year-old seniors.
--TheOrangeSquid Is it any wonder things seem so awry? We swim in a sea of confusion and don't have to think to survive
I, like many people, was anticipating the release of HANNIBAL for a long time. Naturally, I went and saw it the first night it came out. Later that evening, I was asked by one of my female friends "How was Hannibal?". I liken getting asked this question to being asked "Do these pants make my butt look fat?". She was really anticipating the movie, read the book, etc etc etc, so I had two choices: Lie, and say "Yeah, it was great!" too be nice, or tell the truth and scream out "NOO! The pants don't make your ass look fat, your ass IS fat!"
Hannibal was quite bad. In fact, it broke the laws of physics, proving that something can both suck AND blow at the same time.
Wait for it to come on PPV; it will only be like a month. And you won't get screwed out of $20 per person after food.
------------
CitizenC
It says a lot about the laughable MPAA ratings system that a couple making love can be grounds for an NC-17 rating, while the stuff above only draws an R. The theater where I saw the movie was crammed with little kids. Friends, we live in a loopy country.
Recently, when a fuss erupted over the US MPAA ratings board giving the British feelgood family film, Billy Elliot, an R rating, the head of the MPAA, Jack Valenti, said of his job that he gets way more letters about bad language than he gets about people getting shot in the face. Ergo, a film like Billy Elliot will be rated R because someone says the word 'fuck', while a film like Nutty Professor 2, complete with a grandmother giving implied oral sex (with teeth out) gets away with a PG-13. It's why Lost World, complete with people being ripped apart by dinosaurs for our amusement, is rated PG-13, while a film like Requiem For A Dream, with it's important message, is sent to unscreenable land when it gets an NC-17.
See, the real problem with censorship isn't that some board says 'this is bad', it's that a lot of decisions come from what that board says. A rating should be a guide, given so we don't accidentally stumble with mom into a porno film, but these days a rating dictates whether a film can be seen by the largest slice of the audience (kids, teens and by extension, families), which dictates how many screens it goes on (suburban cinemas don't want to have eight R rated films showing at once) and, in these days of video store monopolies, whether you can even rent one of these films in your local Blockbuster. It's not a question of seeing that one cut second of a guy getting a knife in the throat, it's a question of even seeing the movie.
Now filmmakers know this. And in fact, many filmmakers have to sign a contract guaranteeing that they'll deliver a cut of the film to receive a certain rating, before even a scene is shot. I know from experience, having worked on a film where scenes were changed on the day to avoid an NC-17 rating, that what is supposed to be a guide for the viewer is becoming a guide for the filmmaker.
And the worst thing is, these changes are completely arbitrary. We all know the stories of Orgazmo being hit with an NC-17 even though there was less frontal nudity than in Boogie Nights. We've heard the tales of the South Park movie being told to remove the word 'motherfucker', replacing it with 'unclefucker' and having no further problems. And then there's American Psycho, which after submitting a film full of chainsaw and sledgehammer murders was told to remove one shot from a sex scene.
It's ridiculous. And it doesn't save anyone from anything.
Censorship is bad. It doesn't work. Nobody shot up Columbine High School because Leonardo DiCaprio wore a trenchcoat once, they did it because they could drive downtown and pick up a small sack of heavy weapons for $29.95. Sure, Leo dictated their fashion choice, but he didn't load the cartridges for them.
Cui peccare licet peccat minus. -- Ovid, Amores.
"Is it any wonder our children are all growing up to be psychopaths and murderers when they are fed this daily diet of massacre?"
You're kidding, right? *sigh* Time to feed the trolls..
I think Chris Rock said it best: "Kids are killing kids and everyone's worrying about what movies they're watching, what video games they're playing, what music they're listening to. Whatever happened to CRAZY?" Not that Chris Rock is an authority in the field, but he doesn't have to be to make a point.
end communication
For those who have been to see it, how many little kids (obviously too young to be seeing this movie) were there in the theater? I didn't count very many, but I went to a late show. I'm betting that a large number of parents will take their kids to see this. (I've been seeing more and more little kids in R-rated movies over the past few years.) I'll bet these are the same parents who complain to lawmakers about the need for more restrictions on Hollywood.
Free Hans!
kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
At one time (and for all I know they are) there was a big name organization that rated websites (RASCi or something like that). I remember this was just after MS Frontpage was announced, but before it came out... IE 3.0 was still new, iirc. I was running a Rocky Horror fan website (and still am), and figured I'd rate it with the origanization.
I had assumed that I'd get the equivelent of a PG-13 rating (the movie was rated R in the mid 70s) for profanity and simulated sex (no intentional nudity). Wow was I wrong... I got the harshest, worst, absolutely abysmal rating possible. Way beyond hard core porn.
So, like any hacker, I started playing with the system... punching in different values, I could not get the really bad rating. Graphic penetration movie clips with sound of gay sexual torture was the only thing that approached the horrible rating that I got.
Then I realized it - in the movie, the alien mad scientist kills Eddie, a biker (played by Meat Loaf), and later serves dinner - which is revealed to everyone's horror to be Eddie (alien culture clash, or revenge? Motive is unclear).
A depiction of cannibalism, even in a high camp musical, instantly garnered the worst possible rating with no mitigating factors allowed. A movie that is viewed in the theater weekly by tens of thousands of people (and that the MPAA has admitted would not get a R if released today) is judged to be far too obscene for the internet. Interesting, eh? That's the kind of thinking of the people that want to control the content of the internet - don't forget it. I won't.
--
Evan
"$30 for the One True Ring. $10 each additional ring!" -- JRR "Bob" Tolkien
"Hannibal" was entertaining, but not a masterpiece like "The Silence of the Lambs". Poor Julianne Moore, I just couldn't ever see her as Clarice. She seemed to be overacting and trying too hard.
Anyhow, what I really want to talk about is product placement. What are these directors thinking nowadays? It seems like ever since 1994 or so, that product placement has become so blatant that it actually distracts you from the movie.
Did anyone notice the computer screen near the beginning of "Hannibal" that said "NetZERO" on it in like 4 different places? I mean, what the fuck? Is Ridley Scott not making enough money, that he has to take payments from NetZERO to slap their logo all over a computer screen??? That was so distracting.
And to a lesser extent, the mention of GUCCI everywhere. That is so ridiculous.
This is almost as bad as the films that incorporate current pop culture. Like using slogans or catch phrases, or making fun of current advertisements (I see this a lot)... don't they realize that not only is this distracting, but it also immediately dates the film? What happens 5 years from now when everyone forgets why some black guy saying "Whazzzuuuuuuup!" is so funny?
Another thing I have noticed is now they are running advertisements at the beginning of movies. Before Hannibal there were commercials for antacids and soft drinks. (I haven't been to the movies in probably 8 months so I don't know when this started).
WHAT?!?!??!???
Let's see... product placements in movies that are already going to make millions (do they really need the extra money to put in blatant product placements? PLEASE!). And ads before movies, while ticket prices still go up? I mean, I wouldn't mind sitting through a Sprite commercial, if it meant my ticket was only $5, but if I'm paying $8 why do I need to sit through commercials?
Movie going used to be such a pleasurable experience. Now I realize, once again, why I only go once every several months. Hey movie studios, I'm not your fucking advertisement consumer bitch, so stop trying to make me bend over!
Ben
Jesus. Don't let your obvious seething hatred of Jon Katz put words into his mouth. Where did he "push" for a "stronger rating system?" He is simply pointing out a glaring inconsistency in the MPAA's logic: unbelievable violence is okey-dokey, but nudity is evil and must be banned and those who participate in it and enjoy it will earn an eternity of unimaginable torture because of it. You will agree that this is a preposterous double standard; if you do not, you are insane.
My advice to you is to let go of your Katz hatred. Take some deep breaths. Maybe go out and get some exercise. Do some work around the house. Being bitter and consumed by hate is no way to go through life.
We're going down, in a spiral to the ground
Nice explanations... but the truth is that USA is the country of christian biggotry. While christian are perfectly fine with violence (the very symbol of their religion is a guy nailed alive to a piece of wood !!!), they are sex-phobics.
:)
As for "American dying for the good of the world", you are forgetting that all US military intervention involves sending so called "smart bombs", having all the boys safe in a bunker or high away in a stealth plane. Of course the smart bombs are not smart at all and kill soldiers, women and kids with the same efficacity... all these deads only serve to keep oil prices low and the average American familly (2 kids and a big polluting SUV) happy with cheap gas. Seing how the last elections went, this won't be really necessary anymore as the Man doesn't even need American's votes anymore to put his puppet in the White House.
Ask yourself this, how would Hitler have been stopped in WWII if the only opposition he had was a demand for greater sex ed and free condoms for German youth?
If Hitler had had a steady and healthy sexual life in his life, maybe he would have been less frustrated and had spend his time in the bedroom instead of engaging in this terrible political career we know... a guy that fucks twice a day is as non-violent as you can be
You sound like one of those bozos who only goes to see one film a year. The truth is far more complex than you imagine. The "Hollywood" you blithely tar produces many films, some repulsive, some uplifting. Sadly, uplifting films that enoble the human spirit, films that ask important questions, films that frighten without appealing to visceral...do shit at the box office. Did you go see "You Can Count On Me", "The Iron Giant", "In The Company of Men"?
Clod. Read some history, ok? These are actually some of the least violent times in human history. We don't currently have public executions. That was considered a family outing a couple of hundred years ago. Perhaps you would prefer the soft of family values embodied by the folks in Salem MA and burn people alive?
Crawl back under your bridge, Troll.
Read Nadine Strossen's "Defending Pornography".
It's not Hollywood's values. Hollywood offers a wide range of film embodying every sort of moral viewpoint. Look at the movie listings. There are all sorts of films playing, and only ONE features canibalism.
Let's see:
From that list from IMDB, only two are "horror" films, and only one features cannibalism (to my knowledge. Who told you that you had to see "Hanibal" anyway? See "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" instead. Or "Traffic". Or "Cast Away". Or "O Brother, Where Art Thou?". Or just piss off.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
I read the book. I didn't like the movie.
:)
As mentioned by another poster, there were many elements of the book that were left out of the movie that I feel were essential to fleshing out (if you'll pardon the expression) the plot and character motivations. Most greivous was the omission of Lecter's childhood experiences with his sister. In the book, this helped me to understand Lecter's twisted motives.
Sure, there was gore, but other than the brain scene, it was all more low-key and less graphic than many other movies I have seen. The gore wasn't even particularly well done in most scenes. Maybe I'm jaded by having read the book first and letting my imagination work away. There was more close up, gut-spilling action in Starship Troopers, for example. BTW, Starship troopers sucked the big green donkey dong in my opinion.
In the book, Mason Verger was confined to his bed, his body "wasted away" and his face far more deformed than Gary Oldman's makeup indicated. And where was that funky eye cup/lens that kept his one remaining eye lubricated? Verger's mobility also bothered me. In the book, he had far more motivation for his hatred for Lecter.
Verger's sister and her circumstances were a really interesting plot element. I understand the necessity for keeping the whole thing within the two hour time-frame, but I would much rather have seen her story and a little less of the stuff in Italy.
When I read the book, I was shocked at the ending, but the more I thought about how it had been accomplished, it fit right into Lecter's motivation and skill set, and made a good statement about the pliability of the human mind (if you'll pardon the Ray Liotta pun); especially if one (Clarice) already had the love/hate-attractiveness/repulsion thing going for Lecter (which was not developed clearly, if at all in the movie.)
Changing the ending so drastically from the book just soured my totally on the movie. It appears that this was a blatant ploy to leave things open for the easy sequel or two or three. Once again, commercialism won out over staying true to the author's story.
On the whole, I wouldn't reccommend seeing it, especially if you read the book first and liked it. My experience might have been better had I seen the movie first and then read the book.
I really liked this review at Salon, except for Charles Taylor's (reviewer) criticism of Harris.
If you haven't already seen it, do rent and see "Manhunter". This was based on Harris' first book Red Dragon. I liked Manhunter much better than Hannibal. I also liked the Lecter character better in Manhunter.
Just my completely unsolicited opinion.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
I wish Scott, Harris and Mamet had found room to squeeze in just a few of the cut scenes, though, like the book's flashbacks about Lecter's childhood ... Lecter comes off again as an anthrophagous Moriarty whose victim-eating is just an arbirary manifestation of evil.
No! It's a good thing they left that out. I was very happy Lecter's poor-little-me childhood did not make it to the screen. It would have destroyed his character!
I still can't believe Harris ever wrote that in the first place. What the hell was he thinking? He did a complete 180 from his previous characterizations of Hannibal. In the first two books (Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs), he emphasized the idea that Lecter simply was evil, not because somebody mistreated him as a child. He even has Lecter tell someone at one point that "our personalities are handed to us" along with our height, hair color, etc. He also tells Clarice that he "happened" -- that he wasn't made, he simply is. Harris ruined everything by trying to pass Lecter's behavior off on some childhood trauma in typical pop-psychology fashion. The only explanation I can come up with is that Harris decided to write the third Lecter book wildly out of character, just to see if anyone would care. After reading "Hannibal", my first thought was, "I have been trolled -- at hardcover prices, too!"
Free Hans!
A lot of people seem to think that "Hannibal" is the second movie in the series started by "Silence of the Lambs." This is not true.
The first movie in the series was "Manhunter" starring William Petersen (late of "C.S.I." on CBS) with Brian Cox playing Dr. Hannibal Lecter
Just a minor point that I thought needed to be brought up.
I want all of the power and none of the responsibility.
Actually, to me he looked like a slimlined version of Morn from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. Whatever you think he looked like, it certainly paled in comparison to the mental images the book conjured.. iirc on paper Verger was almost completely bedridden (no hooning around on that wheelchair), had a face that resembled a rare steak and had something set up to constantly drip, to keep his eyes moist.
Just remember what Kyle's Mom, Sheila Broflovski said:
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
And a good idea too. Ebert is a total clod about technology, opposing digital projection trying to push the idea of a larger, even more problematic film format. Talk about unclear on the concept.
By the way, never believe him if he says a film has a confusing plot. I've seen him at showings here in Chicago, and he usually waits until the film has started to visit the snack bar, so he can miss important plot points.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
Why did it take Harris 10 years to write a sequel to Lambs, do you suppose? Let me take a guess: He doesn't like to be predictable or do the same thing twice. He writes dark, twisted, malevolent morality plays, and he likes to surprise and horrify you while he makes you think of things that strike you as new.
Red Dragon (from whence the movie Manhunter) was about becoming what you hunt. Silence was about finding what you hunt is already within you. Where to go from there? Hannibal is about being seduced by what you hunt.
In the book, the final triumph of Lecter is his seduction of Starling and her active participation in the brain-eating ritual (with a more appropriate victim, too, the boss whose boot had been atop her head since the ending of Silence). The movie was ruined because it makes no sense without this final twist, the revelation that Lecter and Starling are literally the only human and likeable characters in the story.
We also lost some of my favorite lines (oddly, the movie takes lines uttered by different people in different scenes and throws them together in a kind of hodge podge). Starling: "Ask me if I sound like Oliver Twist when I ask for MORE !" Lecter: "Listen to the sound of this stringed instrument. Its sound is the sound of your freedom..." The instrument being the crossbow which administers the coup de grace to Starling's brain-depleted boss. Starling, in reply: "Yes, the D below middle C, isn't it?"
The movie was pretty good, a faithful rendition of the story with forgivable nips and tucks to the plot (though I missed Verger's sister, who kills him in the book), right up to the final pulled punch. Starling was seduced by Hannibal, because only Hannibal was straight with her, only Hannibal could be trusted, and every force in her life pushed her into Hannibal's arms. Hannibal himself had believable reasons in the book (nipped from the movie) for taking her under his wing rather than making her into dinner. This could have been a great movie, but instead it sold out to squeamishness.
Brackets contain world's first nanosig, highly magnified:[.]
Perhaps I'm desensitized, but I just never even got squeamish. I liked the brain scene though, because it was just so cool. It was like, "how will they EVER top THAT one?!!!"
But most of the movie was boring. It was like you just kept waiting for Hannibal to do something, and he just kept keeping his cool. Every so often, he'd say something soaked in irony and the audience would give an appreciative laugh because hey, when Hannibal Lechter says "I'd love to have you over for dinner", heh heh heh, he doesn't mean what most people mean!!! Get it? Have you over for dinner? Ha Ha! He's a cannibal! You'd be the dinner!! Get it? Boy, that guy is creepy!
This movie had almost none of what made Silence of the Lambs so good - the phychological component. In that, Hannibal was scary because he seemed to gain an advantage over people even when he was locked in a straightjacket in a maximum security cell. He'd take small cues from people and sense their weakness with an alarming swiftness and move in to exploit it.
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Once Hannibal's character was removed from the confines of prison, he really isn't interesting. The thing that made this character alluring in Manhunter and SOTL was that he was controlling everything and everyone while being locked away, which in itself is frightening - you cannot control this man by confining him.
Once Hannibal's cahracter is on the loose, who cares? He is not physically threatening, and none of his frightening attributes are enhanced by having him move around freely.
This movie had zilch suspense - ZILCH. Not once was I really on the edge of my seat wondering what would happen next - you always knew what where the movie would be in five minutes.
Sure, Gary Oldman played a neat freak, but once you've seen him once, its not that shocking. This movie is just a polished slasher film - thats it, nothing more, nothing less. None of the talents involved in this production could save a script based on a book that should have never been written.
The number of product shots in this movie is astounding and shameful for Scott.
Yes, I've seen virtually every digital projector on the market, from the first time TI debuted DLP at CES and NAB to the most recent versions. No way in hell does it look like a pixel is "a foot across". I've seen JVC/Hughes' 12000 projector at a special showing at NAB and was closer to the screen than anyone else, and while I could spot the 3 burned on red pixels, the 1 burned on green pixel and the 2 burned off blue pixels (this was a prototype), I was not able to see any distinction between the pixels in the course of the reguler film. This was an HD showing of "Shakespere In Love" on a 40' wide screen, and I was less than 15' from the actual screen. I could see details on the lace being worn by Gweneth Paltrow. I attended the HD Film Festival, I do IT work for the Chicago International Film Festival and I dearly love movies. And I wait anxiously for the demise of every single 35mm film projector, with their weave and flicker, scratches, dust, breaks and all the rest of the crap that goes along with a 100 year old technology.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb
i really enjoyed it, to the last bite.
it is, after all, a love story.
will clarice be tempted by the flesh in hannibal III? after the FBI truly humiliates her?
we can all hope.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
when you're the leader of the free world your cultural standards are little bit different than if your some past-your-prime fiefdom in an aging continent.
Yes...a troll. A pretty good one. So my counter troll is: "When you are the enlightened birthplace of democracy and leader of the free world (since we don't let corporations screw our citizens), our cultural standards are a little bit different than if we were some past-their-prime colony populated by the descendants of religious fanatics." ;-)
And BTW, the continents are *exactly* the same age. And at the moment I think the culture of Europe is looking more younger and dynamic. We don't need no stinking old declaration of independence to bog us down...
The world looks to America for leadership and sacrifice (no, not the whole world, but most of it).
I know you like to believe that.
Whenever dirty work needs to be done, vital fluids protected, American troops are the first to respond and the first to die.
That is such utter bullshit. Ever since the catastrophic incidents in Somalia, the American governement have become utter cowards when it comes to putting their soldier's life on the line. It may now be once of the first armies that refuses to put its soldiers in any danger. For instance, the US vetoed all its NATO allies plan to use ground troops in Yugoslavia and went ahead and bombed the whole country from a safe distance. Fine, I can understand that they are afraid to have the media getting hold of images of dead soldiers, and America is fearful of repeating the mistakes of the Vietnam War. But what really gets my blood boiling is when American conservatives act like we should be grateful for this since "America paid for the war". We in Europe have had to deal with hundreds of thousands of refugees, and the cost of rebuilding the infrastructure of a country that got bombed back to the middle ages.
Witness one of Dubya's first acts as President, placing American airmen at risk to destroy dangerous Iraqi air defences.
Wag the Dog
Stanley Motss: "The President will be a hero. He brought peace."
Conrad 'Connie' Brean: "But there was never a war."
Stanley Motss: "All the greater accomplishment."
Now, it's all well and good for certain European countries to adopt an opposite philosophy of pleasure seeking; sex is good, promiscuity is good, guns and violence are bad.
Well, yes, that is my basic philosophy. Especially if you take responsibility for your procreation by using condoms. My life has been much better since I discovered promiscuity. And I am scared about the American attitudes Katz point out in his review.
But don't push them on America, we need to be violent to save the world.
But who will save us from America? That's what I want to know. Any takers?
************************************************ ** *
Being bitter is drinking poison and hoping someone else will die
Manhunter is the story of Will Graham, a retired FBI behavioral-science expert. (What caused him to retire? Well, he was the only man both sane and crazy enough to be able to crawl inside Hannibal Lecter's mind. He almost didn't come out again.) After a new serial killer murders two families, Jack Crawford (played by Dennis Farina here) pulls Will out of retirement. But lo and behold, this new serial killer is patterning himself after Lecter.
If you can forgive the mid-80s fashions and soundtrack, this is my personal favorite of all the three films.
Sir Anthony Hopkins takes over the role of Hannibal Lecter from Scottish actor Brian Cox. Hopkins and Cox take totally different approaches to The Bad Doctor; I prefer Cox, but Hopkins' performance is far from slouching.
... If you haven't seen Manhunter yet, give it a try. It's a "nobody's-ever-seen-it" film, and provided you can understand that in the mid-80s people actually dressed that way and listened to that sort of music, there's a heck of a lot to appreciate in it.
Isn't it funny that the same organization which can determine whether or not a movie is shown in theaters -- by means of the rating system -- is also the one that can determine whether and when it can be seen on your DVD player -- by means of Region Codes? Isn't it interesting how this organization has managed to get so much power that merely by assigning a letter or two ('R' or 'PG') or a number (region '1' or '3') they alone can make entertainment decisions for literally millions of people?
Doesn't anyone see anything just a little bit wrong with that?
quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur -- that which is said in Latin sounds profound
i went and saw the movie opening night with a friend. i told her i'd be pleasantly surprised if the movie didn't suck.
in short, i wasn't surprised. well, that's not complerely true; i wasn't surprised that it sucked, but the ways that it sucked were quite surprising.
for example, how they didn't explain how the x-rays that starling got from verger were related to lecter at all. i'd imagine that the audience would be pretty confused if they didn't read the book.
the most interesting thing was the boom and lighting gear that was in several of the shots. towards the end, when starling and lecter are in paul's kitchen, the boom with the microphone on the end was clearly visible. so were some of their lights, and a big piece of tinfoil to diffuse the light.
sounds strange, but i swear it's true. the theater gave everyone who saw it refunds.
the manager said it was their fault. and i'm sure that if something like that got in the final release of the movie, it would have been mentioned in the review, so i guess it was just me.
can someone with more of a clue than the manager explain just what went wrong with that?
--
A book that Thomas Harris didn't want to write. A movie that Jodie Foster flat-out refused to participate in. A sluggish plot more reminiscent of a costume drama. I almost wet myself with fear.
can you hear the cash, Clarise?
70mm is a perfectly fine thing, except that they haven't actually shot a film in it, other than the VistaVision effects shots, in decades. 70mm prints are optical blow-ups from 35mm.
Yes, Mr. Coward, I seek out 70mm prints. The local Imax (Chicago's Navy Pier) will soon be showing a 70mm roadshow print of "2001", and yeah, I'll be right there the first night.
Bite me. I'm 40 years old and have been observing technology for years. I've see 70mm roadshow prints in their original release.
The only space available was right down at front, which was fine by me as I specifically was there to see how well the image held up very close to the screen. And it did. The original film grain of the 35mm negative was visible. How the hell was I supposed to judge it? From the SMPTE approved distance? You were the clod who suggested that the pixels were "a foot across". I suspect that you have never actually see this technology and are just arguing.
You weren't. No theater, other than special test showings at Kodak's test theaters and maybe at the Museum of the Moving Image, uses wet-gate projection. That is exclusively for telecine - for instance the telecine done while making an HDTV transfer.
The sad fact is that theater chains do not employ trained film professionals. They employ 16 year olds. And those 16 year olds are less likely to screw up putting in a pair of DVDs than to properly assemble a bunch of reels in the right order without making a hash of it. I can't imagine how much worse the situation would be if they were to try to handle a wet-gate as well.
The guy who never actually built anything? Yeah, I'm composing this on a giant, clattering difference engine, brass wheels spinning...
Babbage's "basic design" wasn't built until a few years ago.
The day of chemical photography has passed. I do not mourn it.
Forget the "Walkman", here we have the "Strawman".
I sign my name, which puts me at least half a hill ahead of you.
No need. The fast is that you've seen films that have been transferred to HDTV and re-output to film for effects work and haven't even noticed it. "Pleasantville" was done in that way. Actual filmmakers do not object to the HDTV standard. Besides, most of them are actually using 1080p/24 (a mistake, in my opinion 24 fps should go they way of the dinosaur) instead of 1080i/30.
By playing 25mm film at 48fps, it doubles the number of film cans shipped to theaters, doubles the number of splices needed to be performed, doubles the number of opportunities for things to go wrong. Yes, it reduces the film grain and the visibility of scratches, but only by making all the other hassles and headaches of film projection worse. Besides, if this was the solution, why didn't theater owners start demanding the 60-fps projection of Doug Trumball's ShowScan system from years ago? (Yes, I've seen ShowScan, at the theater at Niagra Falls). Because ShowScan would have tripled the amount of film that would have to be handled.
BTW, Maxivision.com is an eye care specialist. Perhaps you should have a talk with them.
"How perfectly Goddamn delightful it all is, to be sure" Charles Crumb