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 Extraordinary Tales 

What grade would you give this film?
A 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
B 50%  50%  [ 1 ]
C 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
D 50%  50%  [ 1 ]
F 0%  0%  [ 0 ]
Total votes : 2

 Extraordinary Tales 
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Let's Call It A Bromance
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Joined: Tue Aug 07, 2007 7:22 pm
Posts: 12333
Post Extraordinary Tales
Extraordinary Tales

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An animated anthology of 5 stories adapted from Edgar Allan Poe.


Fri Jan 01, 2016 11:40 am
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Pure Phase
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Joined: Tue Feb 15, 2005 7:33 am
Posts: 34865
Location: Maryland
Post Re: Extraordinary Tales
This is a delightful treat which flew under my radar upon its limited release in October. A Spanish-Luxembourgish co-production, it is an animated anthology comprising five Edgar Allan Poe stories: "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Tell-Tale Heart," "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar," "The Pit and the Pendulum," and "The Masque of the Red Death." And there is a wrap-around story which finds Poe, reincarnated as a crow, debating his legacy with a female personification of Death. Voice-over is provided by a who's who of the macabre, including Sir Christopher Lee in one of his final film roles, Roger Corman, Guillermo del Toro, and Bela Lugosi 59 years after his death via a scratchy archival recording of "Tell-Tale." The film has its flaws—it plays more as a demo reel than a singular piece, and the stories are arguably a tad too abridged—but it lands squarely in my wheelhouse with its gushing, Gothic tone and clear love for the Poe canon. And there are several inspired decisions throughout, particularly the luridly colorful EC Comics-style animation utilized for "Case of M. Valdemar," a tale of an elderly man hypnotized on his deathbed and left in a type of suspended state, neither alive nor deceased.

B+

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1. The Lost City of Z - 2. A Cure for Wellness - 3. Phantom Thread - 4. T2 Trainspotting - 5. Detroit - 6. Good Time - 7. The Beguiled - 8. The Florida Project - 9. Logan and 10. Molly's Game


Fri Jan 01, 2016 4:05 pm
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The Wall
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Joined: Wed Jan 26, 2005 10:50 am
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Location: Croatia
Post Re: Extraordinary Tales
This does no good to Poe's stories at all. Visually it's quite nice and I'm glad every story got it's own visual treatment. But it seems like the movie was done by someone who barely read these stories and didn't really get what they're about at all. The framing story of Poe and Death is naively summed to "I want my works to live forever, I don't want to die". I was really left disappointed by this one.

**/***** (D)


Fri Jun 10, 2016 4:17 pm
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