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Alejandro Jodorowsky

From El Topo (1970). Alejandro Jodorowsky (right). The idea of a western as something more than a good guy (white hat) / bad guy (black hat) showdown had been pioneered by John Ford as far back as Stagecoach (1939), but few if any - filmmakers can turn a genre piece into a quest for spiritual enlightenment. Infused with iconic and surreal imagery, El Topo is considered the grandaddy of midnight cult movies, and deservedly so. Jodorowsky has said his goal with regard to cinema is to re-create the experience of taking LSD, without taking the hallucinogenic. He wants to re-write the book on how humans perceive life and themselves. Highly ambitious, his films shatter every preconceived notion we have about what cinema is supposed to be.  Imagine Luis Bunuel, Quentin Tarantino, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez rolled into one and you'd probably get Alejandro Jodorowsky. He has called himself the "father of the midnight movie" and he's probably right. Throughout his c...
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In Praise of Jurassic World

Indominus Rex gets inside Jurassic World's aviary. Mouahahaah! I never thought I'd find myself telling you to see the biggest blockbuster on the planet in the summer of 2015, but - ironically - here I am telling you as much. More importantly, here is Steven Spielberg, guns a blazin'. By now the whiz kid's playbook has been co-opted, imitated, stolen, copied, and mimicked by just about everyone, but nothing beats the original. Working as executive producer, Spielberg's touch is evident throughout Jurassic World's " Wonder-kid-I'm-having-so-much-fun-Holy-crap-watch-out-for-that monster! " ride. That it's directed by someone else (whose name escapes me and I'm too lazy to look it up) is kind of secondary. This is a Steven Spielberg summer fantasia. Let's look at the evidence.  Old school Amblin' Entertainment logo indicating this is a project very close to Spielberg's heart? Check. The hero as lion tamer. Creepy opening...
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Guardians of the Galaxy, Star Wars, Raiders of the Lost Ark, and more.

Let's begin with the posters. True to space opera form, heroes (and heroines, and animals) in crisis/action poses. Robots, spaceships, good vs. evil. Standard stuff. Moving to shot comparison, the inevitable, obvious one, referencing Raiders, clearly done less as plagiarism and much more as homage. Moving back to Star Wars, Han Solo and Star Lord are mercenaries. Both are - at first - in it for the money. Indiana Jones has a higher calling/purpose - which will end with him never knowing what's inside the box/ark - just like we don't learn (until the very end) the meaning of Kane's "Rosebud" (some claim it's not about the sled but about Marion's sex). The parallels between Raider's closing shot and Citizen Kane's closing shot have been well established. Here are the two closing shots, just in case. Which brings us back to Han and Star. Heroic. Ready. Gunslingers. In another era, say fifty eight years ago, J...
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