From the Renaissance to the Federation: movies across time

As TYG is an art history minor, our date night movie was an Art Center (Durham has several) showing of CARAVAGGIO (1986), Derek Janham’s unconventional biopic of the violent Renaissance artist. This was well executed but more arty than entertaining, though TYG, recognizing several scenes modeled on the artist’s paintings, got much more out of it. Plus she found a frequently semi-naked Sean Bean as the artists lover more of a plus than me (go figure). The cast also includes Robbie Coltrane and Michael Gough as church officials and some woman named Tilda Swinton as Bean’s lover. Below, the artist’s Inspiration of St. Matthew. “I did it for you.”

Moving to the 1960s, STOLEN KISSES (1968) has Truffaut’s self-insert Antoine Donel (Jean-Pierre Léaud), last seen in Antoine and Collette, struggling to adult and frequently failing. After getting discharged from the military he loses his job as a hotel desk clerk when he lets a private detective into the wrong room. He then goes to work for the detective agency but proves equally inept, finally falling hard for a married woman (Delphine Seyrig) involved in his investigation. I expected everything to come crashing down but Antoine ends up in reasonably good shape; the movie is much better than reasonably good. “You wrote to me yesterday and the answer is … me.”

Moving to the 21st century we have BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (2012). Annoyingly this is billed as fantasy but only in the I Kill Giants sense that the young protagonist — a black girl living with her dad in a low-lying area near New Orleans — frequently uses fantasies of giant beasts to deal with her problems, variously including death, tropical storms and floods. Well done, regardless, so I’m not that annoyed. “They’s got to live in the woods and eat grass and steal underpants.”

Going boldly where no-one has gone before — STAR TREK: Of Gods and Men (2008) was a fan film that boasts Nichelle Nichols as Uhura, Walter Koenig as Chekhov, Tim Russ as Tuvok, Alan Ruck as Captain Harriman, Grace Lee Jones as Rand and Cirroc Lofton, Arlene Martel (T’Pring) and Garrett Wang in supporting roles. The plot has Charlie X, finally free of his alien keepers, using the Guardian of Forever to erase Kirk from reality.

Next thing you know, the universe looks a lot like the evil Mirror, Mirror universe with Uhura and Chekhov in different ways fighting back. Charlie shows up, now repenting what he’s done, but is it too late to undo it? This was a real treat, though it reportedly disturbed Paramount enough that they started cracking down on fan films from that point on. Worth seeing on YouTube. “Who decides the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few — and who gave them the right to decide that in the first place?”

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