Top roles of Ewa Smolińska

The name of Ewa Smolińska is not known in the mainstream, and she's primarily a television and stage actress. Her dubbing credits are few. Even when she gets major roles, there are times when she's not the best directed. But when she's good, she's really good.

3. Old Woman (Shrek)

Smolińska has wonderful comic timing in her final role before her brief retirement. Her role is basically a comic character, even though she was the donkey's abuser, but her distinctive voice makes her stand out a great deal.

2. Olczakowa (M jak Miłosc)

Smolińska brings a vivacity to Olczakowa, Barbara's chatty neighbor. Even in a minor role, she plays a character you like and care about.

1. Lampy (The Brave Little Toaster)

To get it out of the way, yes, he was a guy, and his gender was changed to female for language difference reasons.

Smolińska, bringing her strong, melodic voice to Lampy, is completely in her element, giving a performance that's refined but also very relaxed and casual. Her Lampy has an elegant, ladylike voice, but has a defiant streak as well, and can be blunt and confrontational. She's very personable in the role and gives her a surprising amount of depth. She's funny as well, and her line delivery is very unique and memorable.

How The West Was Won is another cinematic guilty pleasure

 This 1962 epic is tub-thumping, jingoistic Manifest Destiny propaganda but I like it.

The film as it's screened today looks like you're watching it through a fish-eye lens, but compared to movies made today, I love how it takes advantage of its vast aspect ratio and immerses you in the scene. You have characters standing apart from each other or at different distances. Sometimes you have one character standing in the center but it's made to add to the immersion.

It looks like a silly museum piece but there's a charm about that aesthetic. It's also why I like Si Versailles m'Ètait Conté, although that one is a comedy and doesn't take itself too seriously.

I generally love Westerns because there's an earthiness about them. Having them shot in high-quality Technicolor always helps.

As a fan of Eli Wallach, I got it because it was one of his seven Western movies, though he only appeared in the last half hour. I think he was one of the best actors in the film. I've also realized that his Charlie Gant and Henry Fonda's Jethro Stuart are two sides of the same coin: both are characters fighting a changing world and fighting to preserve their ways of life, though while Charlie is a psychotic outlaw whose reasoning, while understandable, is incredibly entitled, Jethro is a peace-loving mountain man who co-exists with the people incrementally being forced out.

Eli Wallach as Charlie Gant

Henry Fonda as Jethro Stuart

As a film that was made for roadshow screenings, it had a very grand, theatrical prologue and intermission, illustrated with a painting you'd probably find in a Midwestern library or steakhouse. At the intermission the image is accompanied by a medley, arranged by Alfred Newman, of traditional American songs, along with something written to the tune of 'Greensleeves'. The whole thing is very kitschy and it's one of my favorite parts of the movie.

The film indulges in buzzwords like "progress", conveniently glossing over the fact that the West was more stolen than won, and at the end crows about "legends of courage and pride" and brags about how cities were built "to rank among the great ones of the world". 

The ending song, playing over a prototype of Soarin' Over California, also utilizes lyrics like "Here came dreamers with Bible, fist and gun" and "They tamed the savage prairie land" to justify the violence of the white invaders (who displaced Spanish Californians and Mexican Americans as well as countless Indigenous tribes) to morally set them apart from the alleged "savages". 

All this is why 'How The West was Won' is one of my top guilty pleasure films. It's up its own backside, it embodies the worst aspects of mid- 20th Century Westerns but I enjoy it a lot.

Being a Lupin III fangirl for five years

 Five years ago I became a proper Lupin III fangirl and it has inspired me in so many ways. I have traveled, examined artefacts at museums and read old books and manuscripts. I've been motivated to learn in a way I haven't been before. I've been a tourist in my own city and discovered hidden corners. I've even found the grave marker of one of the original Arsène Lupin's actors, Gerald du Maurier.

Not to mention the ways I've been inspired in my art. My film 'I Boarded The Wrong Plane' uses heavy color inspiration from Part 2.

Even this closeup from 'Sweet Nothings' was inspired by 'The Mystery of Mamo'.

A statement about Aliya Rahman

 In April 2018, the day after my 25th birthday, I was forcibly removed from the BFI screening of 'The Good, the Bad and the Ugly'. It was traumatizing for me, being punished while enjoying my favorite film.

However, the unfair treatment of me came from a place of misunderstanding. It is nothing compared to Aliya Rahman, an autistic woman like myself, being deliberately and cruelly manhandled by Republicans and their enforcers twice in a short space of time, first when she was dragged from her car, and then when she was forcibly escorted from an exclusive political event that Representative Omar invited her to. I am not expressing outrage, because cruelty from the Republicans is of no surprise to me. But I would like Ms. Rahman to know that she is not alone.