Films/DVD Asylum

Ok, I just watched Ken Russell's "TOMMY"....I'm at a loss,

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I cant make up my mind wether this picture is good or bad. Some cool looking visuals as well as some extremely dated(& bad )ones.
Mixed feelings...just basically a 2 hr. music video...but can one say it is an original "work of art", since it pre-dates the whole music video concept? (..as we know it?)
Yeah I know the movie is old news, but even after all these years I just recently watched it, gotta admit that Ken Russell has some talent
with visual images.
I liked the ending : Roger Daltry(Tommy) climbing the same mountain top his father stood on before he was born against the Who's music playing to it.

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Not even Ann Margret bathing in pork'n beans did it for me . . . - albee33 17:08:06 07/16/04 (0)
It was the 70's and an excuse to go to the movie stoned.
My 2c: One of the ugliest (visually) and most depressing pieces of - tinear 15:02:42 07/16/04 (0)
tripe to be served up during the 70s. Russell, quite obviously, was on a "bad trip" from some sort of amphetamine overdose. In the vernacular of the day: a giant bummer.
Ken Russell is one of my all-time faves, and yet... - djprobed 13:21:28 07/16/04 (0)
...I was a little nonplussed by TOMMY. I am only a casual fan of The Who, so maybe that had something to do with it. I thought it was entertaining, but a little too long.
You're right on the money when you make a link between Russell's style and music videos. There is a shared visual vocabulary there. He was definitely ahead of his time in that respect.
If you're iffy about TOMMY, try to hunt down a copy of LISZTOMANIA and watch it sometime (and be prepared for an even weirder, more uneven trip!)
In my not-so-humble opinion, Mr. Russell's reputation rests primarily on his films from the late 1960s and early 1970s (WOMEN IN LOVE, THE DEVILS, THE MUSIC LOVERS and MAHLER) with the notable exception of SALOME'S LAST DANCE from the late 1980s, which I feel was his last truly great film.
He still divides critics today. Pauline Kael hated him.
If you're intrigued enough to watch some of his other films and decide that you like them, you might also enjoy the movies of Derek Jarman (who worked with Russell as a production designer) and Peter Greenaway.

djprobed

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