Stream it now Fiddler on the Roof Reset Status Want to Watch Already Watched Don't Want to Watch

oh I like these things

This movie has slowly worked its way into my top spot. There are many things to love about the Fiddler, not the least of which is the symbolism. A picture steeped in tradition and truth, it also is indicative of today's plague of anti-semitism. A must see for all real cinema lovers.

Fiddler on the Roof -

This movie makes me extremely proud to be Jewish. And I'm not even Jewish!

But seriously, this movie is really quite incredible, even if it lacks in the casting of a couple of characters. After all, no one can really live up to Zero Mostel, although Topol comes as close as is humanly possible. In fact he almost succeeds in crafting out his own vision of the character.

And the film takes a huge misstep when the woman who plays Fruma Sarah plays her as some sort of demented wicked witch of the west rather than as a normal woman totally obsessed with the living, which is actually far scarier and creepier. In fact, the whole graveyard sequence is a mixed-bag, which is really too bad considering the fact that it is the best song.

I don't really have anything to add other than that it's quite a piece of work.

Bubba Ho-Tep -

Decades ago, William S. Burroughs wrote that the tremendous and horrible power of the atomic bomb was its power to exterminate souls. A soul killer. The idea seems ludicrous, but at the same time, if we accept the idea of the soul, can we not also accept the idea of a soul dying?

This is perhaps the ultimate terror, and the director of B H-T makes his film work by understanding this horror, and working with it. The film isn't particularly scary on a horror-level, but we understand that the loss of soul is quite horrible, and it makes it tremendously easy to sympathize with our heroes.

The ending is a tad-bit underwhelming, but good. On the whole, this film is very good, and extremely admirable for its bold audacity and guts.

Comments pending.

Jews New Year
So today is the jewish new year. Its a holiday called Rosh Hashanah! Your supposed to go to temple and have this big long service. I went last night, cause today I had classes. There was no way I could miss college classes. On this day your not supposed to work or go to school. Its a day of rest. So I rated Fiddler On The Roof cause its a classic jewish movie.

School
Oky moving on, the other day I gave my speech finally!! I am pretty sure I did a great job! I get my evaluation tomorrow. So school is going good. Nothing too exciting to report. I will be doing essays and speeches till December every week. My other two classes I will struggle like hell. Oy Vey.

Boys
Anyways ummmmm I am sort of over my last entry. I just want to live my life and focus on myself. Which is always a perk lol! just kidding. I am not that jappy.

Dream Last Night
I had a dream last night about a crush that I had for a very long time in middle school. It was a setting in a futuristic looking college. With alot of stairs and glass windows. Very airy place. Anyways I was walking with friends, or friend lol, and I saw him from a distance. He looked so much older and cuter. We locked eyes, and then all of sudden he walked passed by me and had a shock look on his face like he couldnt believe it was me. Then I said shly, how are you?Then I lost him and I was on a elevator made of glass trying to get to the floor he was on. Then I woke up with a huge smile on my face.:D

My dreams are always vivid and in great detail. I think its because I love to write and detail is very important. I liked this guy through out middle school. He knew too but nothing was ever done. It was one of those big starring games. lol.

Ok that is all for now, I have been having wierd dreams latley. I have been making out in my dreams (heck ya) and well lets just leave it at that haha.(evil grin)

Ok my dear friends good night! xoxoxo

Brazil (Terry Gilliam, 1985)
My goal is to write this review without invoking the "d" word. You know, the one that rhymes with "bystopian." Fortunately, I've got another "d" word handy and it's even thematically relevant and stuff: ducts.

More Kafka meets Conrad than Orwell, Brazil is a rage against the bureaucratic machine. There are no beginnings or ends, just middles. Ducts are pervasive: the film opens on a television advertisement for ducts that is interrupted by an explosion of an endless bombing campaign, which may be real or may be the monolithic Central Planning's device for keeping the masses in line (does Gilliam nod knowingly to himself when visiting New York at the appearance of signs asking subway passengers to be on the lookout for suspicious packages?); ducts sprawl through scenes like inorganic webbing, sustaining life, perhaps, but reducing it to a prisonlike existence.

Trapped therein is midlevel bureaucrat Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), who copes with the monotonous insanity by refusing to move from his comfortable if dull position as a technically gifted drone in the Ministry of Information. Lowry is haunted by fantasy dreams of a beautiful woman endangered, and he is her knight in shining armor. When he sees the woman in real life (Kim Greist), he is drawn further into a bureaucratic nightmare, where typos become death sentences. (Luckily not the case here on Rotten Tomatoes.)

Leaving the safety of the ducts is exhilarating for Lowry, but fraught with danger. Even his brief successes in fighting the machine redound on him to his greater peril. An off-the-books repair job culminates in the destruction of his home, replete with broken, steaming ducts. His efforts at his new job (accepted only to find his fantasy woman) to stop an endless stream of message delivered through tubes by fashioning his own makeshift duct has a predictably disastrous result.

Terry Gilliam directs as if building a collage, which, given his beginning as bizzaro animator for Monty Python, is not terribly suprising; the result is a frenetic, sometimes jumbled look that nevertheless coalesces into a despairing but penetrating examination of institutionalized mediocrity, and its danger to the dreamer.


Fiddler on the Roof (Norman Jewison, 1971)
And who knows despair better than Jews? Although next to Brazil, this film is practically blowing sunshine up your ass. Based on the stories of Sholom Aleichem, Fiddler on the Roof is the story of a Jewish village in late 19th-century Russia under the Tsar. Specifically, it is about Tevye (Topol), a farmer with five daughters, three of whom are at the marrying age.

Through a series of bracing (and by now well-known) musical numbers, Tevye grapples with the conflicts that arise between the traditions of his people and a changing world, the encroachment of an outside that is often hostile to Jews and his insular, often bickering village, and the desire for his daughters' happiness set against his disapproval of many of their choices.

The movie gains traction on the character of Tevye, one of the more complex and well-rounded figures to be found in film. His arc runs through the everyday questions of familial relationship to the menace of anti-Semitism, but never do Tevye's bouts of self-questioning feel like artifice. When he asks his wife the simple question of "Do you love me?" one feels not the weight of two hours but of the years of marriage-we want to know, too.

Fiddler does founder a bit in the second half. It is perhaps too easy to know where a film about Jews under the Tsars is going, and the songs become (perhaps naturally, but to the detriment of pace) less lively, more droning. Even so, there is a wellspring of hope in the movie that redeems the darkest moments-there is a comfort in knowing that wherever the characters end up, their answer to the question "Do you love me?" will always remain the same.

In Taiwan, today is the last day of year 2004! I'll be older one year in 2005/February!
See some movies in theaters or renting DVD or go to MTV house, and also purchsing! But sadly is, I didn't make a record or journal to note what day I see or what film made me sleep in theater.
The only thing I know my forgetfulness seems worsened, always forgot some trivial thing to do or take. Yeah I registered Rottentomato and force myself to write in English.
I also met my 2 university classmates, we didn't meet since graduation and it 10 years passed. I could have met the third one for she so resemble my best classmates Nancy, but I was in upfloor and she just in downfloor. Because just a flash, I called her but she didn't hear and the floor was so soon to head down!
When I was a university student, I didn't think time would go so fast, like "Fiddler On The Roof", "Sunrise, Sunset"
Is this a little girl I carried, is this a little boy at play?
I don't remember growing older, when did they?
When did she get to be a beauty, when did he get to be so tall?
Wasn't it yesterday when they were small?
Sunrise, sunset, sunrise, sunset
Swiftly fly the years
One season following another
Laden with happiness and tears
.....

My feeling just like the song!

Good musical even though the lead guy's dancing was a little goofy.

Director: Norman Jewison
Starring: Topol, Norma Crane, Leonard Frey, Molly Picon, Paul Mann

4 stars out of 4

So because Rotten Tomatoes decided to suck, and 24 hours later my review for this still hasn't posted, I will write it once again (yes, I am crabby). It went something like this:

It may come as a shock to many that this is my first viewing of this "classic" film. So over Spring Break, I finally got around to it. (wow this is irratating...) I simply love musicals! Through heavy exposure to those nasty little Disney films when I was young, I have developed a tolerance, and love, for spontaneous bursts of song and dance. Disney is preparing people for a greater art (and I argue this is the only thing they have done well).

Fiddler on the Roof is a masterpiece of the musical genre. Not only is it rampant with catchy musical numbers, it also combines an interesting and compelling story with political and social commentary. It deviates from the archetypical musical conclusion, leaving the audience humming and disturbed, rather than uplifted in whimsical meaninglessness.

Disclaimer: If my previous Fiddler on the Roof review ever decides to post, I apologize for the redundancy.

Good movie! Should've seen it years ago. I have that 'If I Were A Rich Man' song stuck in my head. I was singing it all day!