Teleidoscope

Tue, Nov 21, 2006

RIP Robert Altman

Posted at 6:38 pm MST to Media

When I move into corporate housing for the duration of a contract, Gosford Park is one of the DVDs that always comes with me.

At the moment I also have A Prairie Home Companion on hand: I had missed it in the theaters and picked it up when it came out on DVD.

I think I like "Gosford Park" better (the cowboys telling bad jokes in Prairie Home Companion goes on waaay too long) but it's still very good. I may need to watch more of the extras on Prairie Home Companion to really appreciate it. I think I actually like some of the commentaries on Gosford Park as much or more than the main story track. I appreciate the mix of anthropological detail and skewering of standard literary tropes (which Prairie Home Companion also does with its noir detective theme instead of Gosford Park's Agatha Christie).

Whe I get home I will check my copies of Roger Ebert's reference books for reviews of Altman's work to figure out what else of his I might like. My DVD collection runs heavily to anime, and movies with lots of special effects and CGI, (and, to be honest, fairly high body counts) but I like richly detailed world-building as much or more than the flash, and I believe that more of Altman's work might fit my tastes.

"A Prairie Home Companion" feels like something Jimmy Stewart should have been in... which is good, though I'm not quite sure what I mean by that.

Is there a recent trend toward what might be called "cast of dozens" movies? Or is that just that I have ended up watching things with large ensemble casts instead of a tight focus on just a few characters?

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