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Thread: Hugo (Martin Scorsese 2011)

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  1. #1
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    Hugo (Martin Scorsese 2011)

    Last night on Jon Stewart, Martin Scorsese could not speak, not because he couldn't, because the audience would not let him. To cheers, rather, roars of approval, New York City's favorite film director entered for the interview to thunderous applause. The response nearly overwhelmed Scorsese when the audience leapt to its feet and Stewart had to stop the taping. In the broadcast, there is a sudden "jump cut" to when the interview starts.

    When the crowd finally settled down, Scorsese went into a long diatribe on why he made the film "Hugo" as an homage to one of the original filmmakers, George Melies. Based on the 2007 novel by Brian Selznick (yes, he is related to David O. Selznick) entitled, "The invention of Hugo Cabret" was inspired by the real life of George Melies. Having practically invented the art of cinema in France, long before it became popular in America, Melies company lost money until he was forced into bankruptcy. His company and its possessions were sold off to cover his debts. The French army purchased thousands of film reels to melt down the celluloid into boots. Melies, impoverished and practically homeless, ended up selling toys in a French railway station until some members of a French film society spotted him and offered him a place to live. Nearly all of Melies works are lost. Only a handful of his 500 films survive to the present day.

    "Hugo" makes it premiere on the day before Thanksgiving, November 23, 2011 and will be presented in 3D because, because according to Marty, "my daughter asked me to." Cinematography by Robert Richardson (Shutter Island , The Aviator, Casino, and others) and score by Howard Shore (Lord of the Rings).

    Review to follow after next Wednesday's viewing. Have a great week end. Will revisit this site soon.
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  2. #2
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    Hugo – a film by Martin Scorsese


    What may become one of the greatest homage to the art of cinema, the auteur Martin Scorsese has crafted a magical world filled with soulful expressions and precise intricacies. This is a film for the ages.

    We hear a young girl’s voice. She tells us of a boy who lives in the clockworks of rail station. She narrates the piece until her voice is dwarfed by the enormity of the visuals thrown up onto the screen like gauntlets before our eyes: sweeping impossible camera moves, huge moving brass gears, dark steamy pipes, and anonymous feet attached to hundreds of black baggy loose trousers that are constantly on the move. These are the perspectives of a child, looking out and up at a world that towers over it. So a young boy, brought here by a terrible chance of fate, finds that his life has become entwined with a series of old steam-driven mechanical clocks inside an enormous train station in the heart of Paris, France.

    The Great War has just ended. Its scars still cling to the landscape under repair. Europe rushes to fix what is broken – with its buildings, with its people – and wants to move on. Yet some aspects of society never seem to change: the baker, the flower girl, the gens d’armes walking their beat, the bookseller, and the toy maker. We watch their aging faces through the large looming faces of the stations great clocks. For these are the supportive characters that work in the station’s shops as seen through the eyes of Hugo Cabret (Asa Butterfield). Having lost his father in a museum fire, his only relative, an alcoholic uncle, forces the boy to maintain the clocks inside the huge train station. However, the even his uncle disappears. So the boy carries on alone in silence, oiling, winding springs, fixing the clocks to keep them running while he steals food to stay alive.

    The only thing the eight-year-old possesses of his father’s is a mechanical man, a device called an automaton, shaped like a mannequin whose guts of gears make it move and pen in hand with an unknown mysterious purpose. Yet it is missing an integral part, a key shaped like a heart that will give the mechanism life. The boy’s one desire is to make the mechanical man complete, for he believes that once it begins to write, it will spell out a message from his father. He pursues the white-haired toymaker (Ben Kingsley), for the old man possesses many gears of the type used in the device.

    I will not reveal what happens next. I believe it is best not to know. If you read other reviews that go further into the plot, stop, do not read them. They will spoil a great surprise that Scorsese counts on to make his emotional arrow strike home at the heart of the viewer, us. A review should not reveal the key elements of a plot that is meant to unfold and amaze. There are many “ah ha!” moments in this film. I want you to have those.

    Based on actual events that took place in France at this time, the original story ties together real events in this fanciful tale spun with vivid imagination, a special salute to the true focus of this film – a filmmaker par excellence. This is Scorsese’s beautiful tribute to the art of cinema, and as I stated at the start, will probably become one of the greatest films of all time in that regard, for it speaks to the purpose of film, what it can illuminate in our imagination and what its potential has always been – a way to express magic and make believe. Scorsese speaks to the child in all of us, and begs the question; do you suspend your belief?

    Presented in 3D, I highly recommend this film and will be glad to discuss the plot further once our illustrious members have seen it. No spoilers here.
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  3. #3
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    Thanks for the posts cinemabon. This looks Marvelous.
    I read a review here in canada that said Scorsese got bitten by the film bug as a young kid and this film is his way of paying tribute to that.
    Melies and Scorsese.
    It's like "bread and butter', "rum and coke", "salt and pepper", "gin and tonic", "coffee and cigarettes".

    This is one that film buffs can deliciously smell, miles & miles away...
    Can't wait to check it out.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

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    If this film is not nominated for Best Picture of the Year, then you may remove "art" from The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, for I can think of no effort this year that does not utterly symbolize the very essence of cinema art than this film.
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  5. #5
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    Then you haven't seen The Tree of Life.

    It should win Best Picture in my opinion.
    "Set the controls for the heart of the Sun" - Pink Floyd

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    I'm not sure the Academy will agree. "The Tree of Life" is a great acting film, but parts of it are very difficult to watch. That may not sit well with some of the voters. While it might be nominated, to me the film in the running is "Hugo."
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