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RIP, Anne Francis and Pete Postlethwaite :( (And, apparently, Mike Doonesbury's mom.)(And on a happier note, happy eleventy-ninth birthday to JRR Tolkien.)

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Were pre-1978 copyright laws still in effect today, these titles- including the first two volumes of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy- would be entering public domain this year. (IMHO, given all the uncredited remakes, a discussion of whether or not Seven Samurai is in the public domain seems academic at best.)

Taymor/Luhrmann

Random: I had a dream last night in which I was comparing Julie Taymor's work as a director to Baz Luhrmann's, WRT Across the Universe and Moulin Rouge. In essence, I found myself saying that Julie Taymor is a brilliant conceptualist, whose film work (with the possible exceptions of Frida- whose cultural allusions I wasn't always picking up on, as I know little about Kahlo, or Rivera, or Mexican art/culture- and The Tempest, which I've not seen) tends to be a brilliant series of visual statements, which don't always add up to a unified whole. Therefore, you wind up- in Across's case- with 30 brilliant music videos in a row, with a common cast and story, but entirely different styles (and, often, guest stars), to the point that the movie simply becomes a scattergun of cinematic effects. By contrast, while Moulin Rouge is hugely overambitious and full of itself, it's still absolutely one unified directorial statement from first frame to last- elephants, dancing on clouds, and the whole often-exhausting shebang.

At any rate, this has all been a windup for the actual line I came up with in the dream, which was: "The difference in the direction between Across the Universe and Moulin Rouge is the difference between Welles's work on Mister Arkadin and his directing on Citizen Kane." (Please note that I am not making any direct comparatives as to cienmatic quality here.)