H/t Matt Zoeller Seitz of TNR, Salon, etc.

Bonus videos and a very brief bit of hardcore cinephilia after the flip.

1968’s “Oliver!” won a bunch of Oscars, but that doesn’t stop from me saying that it’s almost objectively a pretty awful stage-to-film translation, albeit from one of England’s greatest directors. Still, if you’ve never seen it, this sequence might put the above in some context.

Although the parallels between 1973’s “Soylent Green,” directed by Richard Fleischer, and Fritz Lang’s 1927 “Metropolis” are pretty apparent, it just occurs to me now that it was “Oliver!” helmer Sir Carol Reed who committed a more or less direct lift/homage from the hugely influential science fiction film, hiding in plain sight in a Dickensian context. I’m sure film scholars must have spotted this long ago, but I haven’t.