I've just met a girl named Keira,
And suddenly that name
Will never be the same to me.
Keira
Say it loud and there's music playing,
Say it soft and it's almost like praying.
(Sincere apologies to Stephen Sondheim and any West Side Story fans)
Perhaps the above is going just a bit too far, but since the release of Pirates of the Caribbean, Keira Knightly has definitely been the subject of many discussions. One of the interesting things I’ve noted is that there seem to be quite a number of comparisons being made as to who she resembles. Even more notably, they don’t always jibe with each other even if they might have validity taken on their own.
I’ll start with what I feel are the most obvious comparisons.
George Lucas saw Knightley’s resemblance to Natalie Portman well before American movie goers were even aware of her when he cast her as the double for Queen Amidala in Episode I. She also has a lot of commonalities with Winona Ryder in facial appearance, particularly around the eyes.
She could also be a younger, prettier Liz Hurley, with the comparison even stretching as far as the way the two actresses speak and carry themselves. The whole being English as opposed to yet another American thing-in-common-theme.
One of the Box Office Prophets has noted that Knightley looks just like Morgan Webb, pre-breast augmentation. For those wondering, “looks like who?”, Webb does X-Play, a video game show on TechTV.
Of course, the same person also threw in the crack that he thought she looked like David Bowie in her role in Bend It Like Beckham.
Finally, there was the mention that she looked liked Jennifer Garner, which I had trouble buying until I saw a review that used the comparison of Winona Ryder’s face on Jennifer Garner’s body.
Ok, now for this week’s real column, since the above is really just a showy but ultimately hollow stunt. Since this week brings us the release of Spy Kids 3: Game Over, a movie that has 3D segments, this week’s topic is movie gimmicks.
Highlights (or lowlights?) of his promotions include:
Macabre
One of his first films, Castle shamelessly marketed it with a $1000 Lloyds of London insurance policy if any filmgoer should die of fright.
House on Haunted Hill
This film utilized Emergo, which sounds much cooler than the actual experience of having inflated skeletons traverse the theater on wires at the correct point in the plot.
The Tingler
Percepto meant that if you were in the right seat, you received an electrical shock, since the Tingler was this bizarre slug-like thing that zapped the spinal cord of its victims.
13 Ghosts
People attending 13 Ghosts were given special glasses so that they could participate in IllusO. The story in the plot involved the fact that characters needed such glasses to see the ghosts.
Mr. Sardonicus
Mr. Sardonicus offered what was marketed as the first interactive movie. Moviegoers received a large thumb so that they could vote thumbs up or thumbs down to the movie’s villain getting punished again and again and eventually killed. Of course, with the plot line having the villain being completely without redeeming qualities, Castle only filmed the thumbs down version of every choice. That didn’t stop him from being shown in all the choice sequences, peering out over the crowd and counting votes.
The movie Matinee starring John Goodman is a solidly entertaining film that honors William Castle and his marketing spirit.
Looking into the mailbox, we find a couple of suggestions for last week’s Anti-Drug list. First, though, I’d like to observe that when I write a relatively straight up, informative column on music video directors, I hear nary a peep. On the other hand, I do a list on drugs or cars wrecking, and the comments start to flow. My type of crowd…
Andrew offers: How, oh how, could you forget The Boost? 1988, James Woods, good lord, if you still look at white lines the same way after that, you are one stone crab...
I’m guessing that being a stone crab refers to short memory or being unaffected or something like that. I didn’t forget The Boost, but rather, I didn’t see it. However, I have seen plenty of movies with Jimmy Woods being over-the-top, so I can imagine the final product.
Zima wrote in: I would also add to the list Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction. Uma Thurman and the syringe to the heart kinda makes you NOT do drugs. People vs. Larry Flynt and Go also raise the issue somewhat. Plus, of course, the little-known Kazakh film Needle has to be one of the most effective anti-drug propagandas.
Actually, I think I had the whole Uma sequence in mind when I was forming the idea for the list. However, it fell by the wayside due to the impact involving that single scene. That one scene is certainly impacting, though.
I’d actually disagree on Go as I think it seems take to a teasing approach to drug use. (“Oh, so he’s the good drug dealer.”) Sure, it shows the problems with the sale and distribution and the legal consequences, but if the worst that’s gonna happen is that you end up spending the night behind trash cans in exchange for being fascinated by a scanner…it’s just not quite the same as one bucket for feces, one bucket for vomitous, in my book.
I’ll have to take your word on Needle as again the audience proves more than up to task of referencing films I haven’t seen or as Zima correctly points out, didn’t even know about.