tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-36385253472650118152024-03-13T13:54:02.735-04:00In the Realm of CinemaJoseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.comBlogger57125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-61840413122427016522014-02-14T13:10:00.001-05:002014-05-23T08:50:25.764-04:00Manderlay (2005)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eZFFDVf8fPM/Uv5b8RBZuII/AAAAAAAAAK4/q6-5iCYidow/s1600/Manderlay_movie_poster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-eZFFDVf8fPM/Uv5b8RBZuII/AAAAAAAAAK4/q6-5iCYidow/s1600/Manderlay_movie_poster.jpg" height="320" width="243" /></a></div>
<i>Manderlay</i> is a
difficult film to understand - what is it trying to say, and more appropriately
how do I interpret it? The thing is I
don’t know. I can describe my impressions
as I was watching the film, but because the film has such a unique premise,
here’s a bit about it:<br />
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Grace, Lars von Trier’s lead character from <i>Dogville</i>, stumbles onto the Manderlay
plantation. Here, in 1933, slavery still
exists. Grace is shocked. With the help of her father’s gangsters, she frees
the slaves. The Madame of the estate,
played by the great Lauren Bacall, dies, and Wilhelm, the eldest slave, does
not know what the slaves will do with their new freedom. Grace decides to stay on at Manderlay and
teach the former slaves self-worth and atone for the sins of white Americans.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Von Trier’s premises are always fascinating, if not a bit
extreme and slanted.<o:p></o:p></div>
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At first von Trier seems kind of silly or at least simple
minded. Grace is a do-gooder liberal
socialite, the slaves dimwitted and ready to follow orders. The film, or at least Grace and the proudest
of the freed slaves, Timothy, hammers home the fact that <i>America</i> had slavery, and that white Americans are to be held
responsible. While this is undeniably
true, it seems that von Trier forgot that slavery originated in Europe. It was the Europeans who took men and women
from Africa and enslaved them. And before
that the Egyptians enslaved the Jews. Slavery
is not an American invention.<o:p></o:p></div>
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So at the start of the film I felt it lacked weight. It seemed untidy and outrageously simple, perhaps
because after Nicole Kidman’s brilliant performance as Grace in <i>Dogville,</i> it was difficult to adjust to
Bryce Dallas Howard’s interpretation of the character. But as Grace settles into her role as god of
Manderlay and we get to discover the personalities of the former slaves, the
film starts to pick up.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Grace, believing some order needs to motivate the bewildered
slaves, introduces them to the idea of democracy, the system of America that,
as Americans, they should already be well aware of. She creates a system of voting where each
person on the plantation can cast one vote.
That sounds like America, and for me the film became less about slavery
and more a microcosm of American life using this extreme premise to prove its
points. The slaves collectively vote on
who owns the rake, literally on what time of day it is, and when it is
appropriate for people to laugh, late at night being most inconsiderate of
others who sleep. The film became
interesting when it was asking serious questions: is democracy feasible? I don’t think so. America may be the longest surviving democracy,
as a nation we’ve managed it better than other entities before us, but we are
not a democracy. We are a republic,
where the majority of the vote passes.
People—some people—do not have individual freedoms. Well, yes we do, but in our country certain
people have less rights or different rights than the majority. In a democracy this would not be an issue,
but because individual rights are voted on by the majority these rights are
subject.<o:p></o:p></div>
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This is not a political rant, but von Trier, an outsider,
someone who has confessed his mistrust of the American government and
American’s perceived (sometimes undeniable) prejudice against minorities is
asking serious questions we in this country don’t often ask. We prefer to see isolated cases or the big
picture, saying that slowly things are getting better and we turn a blind eye
to the difficult realities of those who have to fight for their freedom. America is not at war with itself; there
should be no causalities. No one should
not suffer in a democracy.<o:p></o:p></div>
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Von Trier should know better, though, that every nation has
similar problems. Perhaps it is America’s
ideals that set us apart. If we aspire
to be better, no forgiveness is allotted to our failures, failures we have in
abundance as the director points out in a horrifying and oddly beautiful photographic
montage of American racism using actual photos.<o:p></o:p></div>
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A film might have the right side of an argument, or argue
its misguided case well, but propaganda means nothing if the material is not
engaging. So how effective is <i>Manderlay</i> as a film?<o:p></o:p></div>
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One thing that puzzled me is Grace, her motivations and her
ultimate failure (failure in ways that are unpredictable so I hope this
sentence wasn’t too much of a spoiler).
As a liberal, I can’t help but be offended when generally liberal ideas
are scrutinized, but I have to say in the context of the film the scrutiny is
accurate. Grace is simplistically
idealistic and really doesn’t know how the world functions. She puts too much faith in the concept of
freedom and never asks if she should. I
won’t say anymore regarding the ending but I will ask the question: are black
people offended by it? If I were black I
think it would raise my eyebrow. Regardless,
I found it fascinating, offensive, but still fascinating.<o:p></o:p></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
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<i>Manderlay</i> is not
100% successful, but von Trier’s films are always rough around the edges. The film succeeds in its own convictions. The acting is exceptional, the casting,
too. Danny Glover has his best role in
recent years. I forgot just how powerful
and commanding an actor he is. He is
very impressive, and seeing him together with Lauren Bacall was strange and
wonderful. Bacall is a legend,
obviously, and such a claim does a disservice to just how powerful she is, but
here her role is very small. She
appeared in <i>Dogville</i> as a different
character but in both of her films with Lars von Trier she has not been given
anything significant to do. But her
cache is enough.</div>
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<o:p></o:p></div>
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Bryce Dallas Howard is not Nicole Kidman. Kidman gave her best performance as Grace in <i>Dogville</i>; she was natural and frail and
eager. Howard’s performance feels like a
period piece. She seems out of it. She’s trying too hard. Her delivery is stagy and unconvincing, but
as the film went on I accepted her. She
does, like all of von Trier’s leading ladies, some very brave things on
screen. Unlike, Björk or Kidman however,
Howard’s raw presence isn’t too impressive.
She’s not bad but not on the level of a Lars von Trier film. And I’d hate to blame an actor for the unevenness
of a film but when the material is this outrageous, the right performance can
cement the outrageous in a grounded world.
It doesn’t so much happen in <i>Manderlay.<o:p></o:p></i></div>
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<i><br /></i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
Manderlay (2005)</div>
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Writer / Director: Lars von Trier</div>
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Stars: Bryce Dallas Howard, Isaach De Bankole, Danny Glover, Lauren Bacall</div>
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Denmark</div>
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In English</div>
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139 minutes</div>
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<br /></div>
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IMDb link:</div>
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<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342735">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0342735</a><br />
<br /></div>
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0019RUU30" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000P1KTHI" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm-na.amazon-adsystem.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0002DB52M" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-4962546973384273312012-03-15T16:28:00.000-04:002012-03-15T16:28:08.374-04:00Night of the Living Dead (1968)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xMFZXIeX30o/T2JO26FBQFI/AAAAAAAAAIA/DboXB58QZt8/s1600/poster_14067_night_of_the_living_dead_box_art_2d.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-xMFZXIeX30o/T2JO26FBQFI/AAAAAAAAAIA/DboXB58QZt8/s320/poster_14067_night_of_the_living_dead_box_art_2d.jpg" width="223" /></a></div><i>Night of the Living Dead</i> is an intense film. It starts out bleak, turns horrific when the zombies attack, and becomes hopeless when man turns against humanity. The formula might now be unoriginal but the power this 50 year old film retains is stronger than any horror film made since. The fact is <i>Night of the Living Dead</i> is the most important horror film ever made.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Zombies attack; that is the basic plot for most undead survival horror pictures, but George Romero’s original 1968 film uses zombies more like a Hitchcock MacGuffin. Barbara and her brother Johnny travel hours outside of Pittsburg to leave flowers in a cemetery. Johnny jokes about her being afraid. A man attacks. Johnny fights him and Barbara runs away. The man pursues and chases Barbara to an abandoned house in an isolated rural area. This is the set up. Ben arrives and takes refuge in the house. By now Barbara is hysterical and incoherent and paralyzed. Ben boards up the house as zombies group outside. Down in the basement another group of survivors led by Mr. Cooper. They don’t come to until they are certain danger is absent. Cooper and Ben disagree with their course of action. Cooper wants to barricade in the cellar. Ben feels they stand a fighting chance upstairs where there is food and radio, and where they can observe their surroundings and maybe get away if need be. The tension develops between who is right.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The first glimpse I ever had of <i>Night of the Living Dead</i> was in a horror tribute special hosted by Vincent Price in the 1980s. It was called “Creepy Classics”. Price provided campy commentary in between movie clips, and the first sequence shown was the cemetery scene. I was scared by the film and did not see it complete for another 10 or so years. I always thought Barbara was the star of the piece. The last image I had of the film was her running into the lonely house—a shelter from the undead—and never imagined that the film could shift focus from the zombies to the horror that the human characters create.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The film sets up immediately an uneasy relationship to death: the cemetery sign has bullet holes shot into it, a foreshadowing of just how easy and dismissive death will become in this tale. We also are uncertain of who Barbara and her brother are leaving flowers for. Is it their father or grandfather? We know through their conversation that the deceased is close to their mother who is too old to make the trip, but Johnny claims he cannot remember the person. He surely could remember his own father. That both show, in their own ways, such a distance from the dead man led me to believe it was a grandfather buried in the cemetery, especially when Johnny reminds his sister that his grandfather said he would be damned to hell for scaring Barbara in the very same cemetery when they were kids. The set up is misleading, and must have been in 1968 when such a film was new and unbearably terrorizing—there is no way to expect that in the very first scene, led into with an impersonation of horror icon Vincent Price (“They’re coming to get you, Barbara”) that a zombie will attack the defenseless people.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Night of the Living Dead</i> began what was, up until 2005, a trilogy known as “Undead”. George Romero wrote and directed a series of films about human behavior in the face of catastrophe. <i>Night</i> seems less a satire than the following films. It fact there are no laughs in the picture. It’s pretty grim. But one bit of commentary, which leads to a death we hate to witness, looks ahead to <i>Dawn of the Dead</i>. As the human race outside the isolated house discovers how to kill the zombies, their behavior becomes very monotonous. They roam the field killings zombies dead. They become so robotic, hypnotized by their repetitive ritual that they never check if those they’re shooting are the undead or civilians. I will say no more, but at the destitute mood at the end of the picture I thought to myself that with a little more care something more positive might have happened.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Back to my initial impressions as a kid—I was disappointed to see that Barbara is killed by the very man whose death made her catatonic. The finale, which I will not spoil, now, after I don’t know how many viewings, is still chilling. Forget any idea of the film being a metaphor for racism—it is chilling to think that if everybody in that house listened to Mr. Cooper and hid in the cellar, they would have gotten out alive...well, maybe. That the most despicable and cowardly man in the cast turned out to be right all along, and to a lesser extent what happens to Duane, make us doubt everything we know about the world.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I will say after my latest viewing, I was still shrunken in my chair. I don’t think I had moved for the final 15 minutes—I am still stunned by this picture; it was not safe to move. I felt safer contorted in my seat.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Night of the Living Dead (1968)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: George A. Romero</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writers: John A. Russo & George A. Romero</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Duane Jones, Judith O'Dea, and Karl Hardman</div><div class="MsoNormal">USA</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 96 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0063350/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0013D8LAE" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001BSBBDA" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B002KAIW4E" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00005Y6Y2" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00000JXVO" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000UR9QIK" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000UR9QGC" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001CW7ZVC" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-71676866776613275142012-02-21T06:11:00.001-05:002012-02-21T06:11:58.949-05:00Shadow of a Doubt (1943)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_0lPd8bkvx0/T0N5ZuPCdTI/AAAAAAAAAH4/Lecqgk37nWE/s1600/shadow+of+a+doubt.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_0lPd8bkvx0/T0N5ZuPCdTI/AAAAAAAAAH4/Lecqgk37nWE/s320/shadow+of+a+doubt.jpg" width="229" /></a></div>As a contemporary viewer familiar with war-time films of the forties, <i>Shadow of a Doubt</i> is a disturbing and relentlessly modern look at the corruption of small town American life. In an era when the movies all but had to portray only positive images of this country, Alfred Hitchcock was testing the limits of decency and morality as defined by Hollywood’s Production Code. Hitchcock takes the all-American family and introduces malice so true it consumes.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The horror is, of course, Uncle Charlie. He visits his sister and her family in Santa Rosa, California, and develops a strange relationship with his niece, Charlotte, affectionately referred to as Charlie in honor of her uncle. She soon suspects her Uncle Charlie of being the Merry Widow murderer and is plunged into turmoil over her family obligations and the vulgarity of his acts.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The director’s previous American films had had a distinctly English feel: gothic, elegant, mild-mannered, even <i>Saboteur</i>, the American remake of <i>The 39 Steps</i>. Hitchcock was keen on capturing the America he’d been seeing, and Thornton Wilder was hired to script the original story that was, by Hitchcock’s own admission, his first <i>American</i> film.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Hitchcock would often advise his actors on a technique he called negative acting, where an actor would be smiling at the beginning of a scene and then lose the smile after a dramatic blow, capturing the extremes of human emotion. He was working in archetypes, presenting clearly made movies to mainstream audiences. The structure of <i>Shadow of a Doubt</i> unfolds similarly. When we’re first introduced to the Newton family, it’s a kind of clichéd look at bucolic family life. Everybody is nice and genteel and pleasant to an almost cartoonish degree, or at least to a laughable one. This might appear dated when we, less as Americans and more as human begins, know that this isn’t the reality of daily life. But the light atmosphere Hitchcock cultivates in the film’s early scenes heightens the dark aspects of the story to follow, dark like the column of smoke snaking behind Uncle Charlie’s train.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps the most glaring detail of the film is the Young Charlie’s relationship with her uncle. Throughout, Hitchcock connects the two Charlies with similar visuals, setting up the recurring Hitchcockian theme of doubles. Young Charlie is always saying how alike they are... like twins! There is even a disturbing scene where Uncle Charlie gives to his niece a ring from one of his victims. While the thought is innocent enough I guess, the Uncle slips the ring onto her finger not unlike in a marriage ceremony. In the end, Young Charlie is forced into becoming like her Uncle because of her Uncle. I was always struck by Young Charlie’s line, “Don’t touch me, Uncle Charlie,” after she confronts him with her beliefs. This is the moment when Charlie has lost her innocence. She later threatens to kill her uncle if he doesn’t leave the family.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Originally it seems their relationship was to take an even edgier turn. In Hitchcock’s own story outline, dated May 11, 1942, he writes, “...her (Young Charlie) being attracted to him (Uncle Charlie) is going to possibly upset the humorous state of affairs between the Uncle and the family.” Is Hitchcock detailing their relationship as it exists in the finished film, or is this a direction the director would have liked to travel with his unconventional family drama? It reads to me like the latter, and while it is clear that Young Charlie has very confused feeling towards her Uncle, the family never is bothered by their friendship. Of course the extreme relations would never have been allowed to continue into a second draft of the screenplay back in 1942, but this idea gives us excellent insight into Hitchcock’s lifelong obsession with unusual sexual behavior.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">(The outline for <i>Shadow of a Doubt </i>is published in Dan Auiler’s invaluable book, <u>Hitchcock’s Notebooks</u>, which gives a full understanding of Hitchcock’s working methods from conception to release. The book is a patchwork made up of materials covering Hitchcock’s entire career.)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The performances in the film are among the best in all of Hitchcock’s work. In a marked detour from his usual mother figures, Emma Newton (Young Charlie’s mother) is not just the sweet and doting martyr expected of the era. One gets the feeling she’s on the verge of a breakdown, and Patricia Collinge gives a complex and heartbreaking performance that perhaps went beyond the call of the script. Teresa Wright is perfect as Charlie. She expels the structure of the story exactly; acting naive by way of Shirley Temple in the beginning, then tortured and conflicted at the end. Though it is the showiest part, it should not be overlooked: Joseph Cotton as Uncle Charlie, for a 1940s movie killer, is unique. When I first saw the film and even now, I was surprised by how much Anthony Hopkins’ performance of Hannibal Lector mirrored Uncle Charlie, especially when Cotton gives the speech at the dinner table about “those silly wives.” His voice is emotionless and monotone, as if he’s slipping into his compulsion. It’s a remarkable portrayal not only for its time but now. It elicits a response from today’s audiences that maybe they were not expecting from such an <i>old</i> film.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">An unsuccessful element of the picture is the recurring image of the dancers’ waltz. It is shown after moments of great tension, almost the euphoric release of a satiated killer. The image can be seen as Hitchcock’s visual attempt at Uncle Charlie’s unstable mind, but I’m afraid the technique is just bewildering. It is not a dated element of the film; I can’t see it working in the 1940s either, but we’ve seen the director use this technique in his silent days. It feels like the weak cousin of the famous shot in <i>The Lodger</i> of the fade-away glass ceiling. Since Hitchcock could not dramatize the footsteps from the floor above in sound, he simply showed us the suspected villain walking over the heads of the innocent family below. The similar theme in <i>Shadow of a Doubt</i> never works as the director intended, and in fact feels like a copout. Instead of showing us the emotional resolution to very intense scenes (the finale on the train, for example) this shot quickly fades up, accompanied by the tune of the Merry Widow’s Waltz.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The Waltz was infused into the dramatic score by frequent Hitchcock composer Dimitri Tiomkin. The score itself is melodramatic and evasive, and indeed Hitchcock’s scores were the typical European sound the Golden Age is remembered for. It is an unsettling sound for this picture, one that distracts too much from the action onscreen without support. It wasn’t until the director teamed with Bernard Herrmann in the mid-fifties that the Hitchcock film found its music. Herrmann’s music would take on narrative dimensions that would have served well a film like <i>Shadow of a Doubt</i>, but taken on its own Tiomkin’s score is very good. He himself is an underappreciated composer from the era, and his score for Hitchcock’s <i>I Confess</i> is actually very good.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Ultimately, <i>Shadow of a Doubt</i> remains one of Hitchcock’s best movies because it is a clear example of the director’s sense of the world. From out of the censored studio era, it’s refreshing that an artist could commit to celluloid a personal, cynical voice. Nothing, it seems, is as it should be in a Hitchcock film, and I’m not talking about genre. While his films are certainly nail biters, I believe the reason Hitchcock was so great was because he understood the human condition and its flaws. <i>Psycho</i> is not a horror film. It’s a complex study of trapped souls. Nor is <i>Shadow of a Doubt</i> simply a suspense film. It’s a story of morality and of people trapped within themselves, almost certainly a parallel of the repressed social conditions. To call Alfred Hitchcock’s films shallow is to ignore the complexity that is bubbling beneath the surface of his facades.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Shadow of a Doubt (1943)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Alfred Hitchcock<br />
Writer: Thornton Wilder<br />
Stars: Joseph Cotton, Teresa Wright, Patricia Collinge</div><div class="MsoNormal">USA</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 108 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036342/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0036342/</a> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000CCW2SY" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B002RXZF3U" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001NIKAI0" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000055Y14" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
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<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0783236352" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000A1INJE" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0380799456" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0195119061" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-57319051051011824002012-01-01T04:19:00.002-05:002012-01-01T04:24:09.976-05:00Great Dictator, The (1940)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pJPvP9stIvM/TwAmLvVgITI/AAAAAAAAAHw/HnJSZJfk3YY/s1600/great+dictator.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pJPvP9stIvM/TwAmLvVgITI/AAAAAAAAAHw/HnJSZJfk3YY/s320/great+dictator.jpg" width="256" /></a></div><i>The Great Dictator</i> begins with a note telling us that any resemblance between Hynkel the Dictator and the Jewish Barber is purely coincidental. Is this supposed to be a joke, or is it Charlie Chaplin’s way of separating his comic persona from Adolf Hitler? Chaplin, a world recognized celebrity since the nineteen-teens, was arguably the most popular man in the world when Hitler took power in Germany in 1933. It is said the dictator crafted his mustache after Chapin’s Little Tramp to feed off of the comedian’s popularity. Was it also a coincidence that Chaplin retired his Tramp persona in 1936’s <i>Modern Times</i>?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Charlie Chaplin’s most daring film takes place in a fictionalized version of Germany called Tomainia. In a prologue set in 1918, years before Adenoid Hynkel takes power, a bewildered Jewish Barber is thrown into WWI and suffers a severe injury that keeps him in hospital until WWII. Chaplin plays the Barber and, of course, the dictator, giving credence to the fact that the opening note may be a lighthearted wink to the audience who, in 1940, would recognize Chaplin anywhere. But <i>The Great Dictator</i> is an unusual comedy, something more sinister for it satirizes one of the darkest memories of world history. The Barber escapes, eager to return to his beloved shop just as the Tomainian storm troopers begin severe persecution of the ghettos. The Barber meets Hannah, a Jewish girl, who assists in fending off the storm troopers. This is one of the many scenes that are laugh out funny but exist with an undercurrent of dread, panic, and sickness because the true events, 70 years later, fueled further by modern examples of bigotry, are no less painful. Perhaps because WWII exists so vividly in motion images the horrors will never fade.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>The Great Dictator</i> contrasts the experiences of Hynkel and the Barber during changing times; for the dictator, changes towards perfection; for the Barber, a disintegration of everything he understands.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The film’s most famous scenes give us a stark contrast to both of Chaplin’s characters, and stand as perhaps the greatest examples of Chaplin’s dedication to rehearsal and perfectionism—in short, to his craft. The first is the chilling, beautiful and bizarre dance Hynkel performs with a feather-light globe of the world. His Ministry of the Interior, Garbitsch, informs him that with their new plans Hynkel will become Emperor of the World, a thought that sends the ruthless dictator up the wall, literally. He dances to the music of Wagner, incidentally Hitler’s favorite composer. It is the opening to his Lohengrin, a light, airy but pretentious piece of music. Chaplin’s moves are narcissistic and bold, graceful but futile. In trying to juggle the world, cradle it, domineer it, Hynkel pops his globe and is left with a deflated, impotent piece of rubber. The Jewish Barber then shaves a man to Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5. Here Chaplin’s Barber is a cousin to his famous Tramp. The Barber lathers the man’s face, takes his blade, sharpens it, and with perfectly precise motions hits every note of Brahms’ innocent, frenetic music.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is interesting that with all of Hynkel’s ambition, his contribution to the world ends with a deflated balloon—a waste for someone who, like Hitler, had the brilliance to muster the masses for a common goal. The simple Barber, with the mere shaving of a man, enriches the world with his craft. The choice of music, too, shows Chaplin as a Renaissance Man and as someone who, despite preferring silent films, was keen on using every element of sound to make his point: Hynkel is marked with heavy, pretentious music, the Barber with humane culture.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Chaplin’s craft belongs to an era of silent film comedy. In both sequences, silent except for the music, we can witness the skill and precision of Chaplin’s art. He was not improvisational as many might hope; someone who could simply step in front of a camera and command it. He rehearsed. The choreography, the timing to the music, is such that we know that music was prerecorded, and that Chaplin would go from beginning to end mastering every gesture, would perfect difficult tasks like spinning a ball on his fingertip, scaling a tabletop with grace, and memorizing not only the music, but the particular performance of the music so that his impact is striking. This is not something that can be achieved in post production. Like Fred Astaire, Chaplin is seen often in medium or long shot, and the camera simply stays on him and we see his performance with minimal cuts, and in the case of the shaving sequence, arguably more awe-inspiring, one continuous shot. Among other things it allows us to lament the loss of great talent when we view our contemporary movie comedians. Chaplin understood that moviemaking was not spontaneous but the result of dedication, obsession, and doing and doing again.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is difficult to look at the realities of the Nazi’s activities, but Hitler himself, someone who was so serious and seemed to lack humility, is prone to satire. It is one of the purposes of art to critique the world, and the powerful who control it, and to create for the public a better world. Chaplin does all this, and that he managed to create his epic in 1940, in Hollywood, after a war and great depression, with political tensions high and politicians eager to prosecute anyone who would contradict their ideology, is a testament to his popularity and socio-political awareness. He often resembles Hitler perfectly, no more so than when wearing the double-cross trench coat, and his inflections and diction when speaking his Tomainian gibberish remind me of Hitler’s great speeches in Leni Riefenstahl’s <i>Triumph of the Will</i>. That Chaplin is a great comedian only helps him further, but the scenes with the Jewish Barber in the Ghettos were not so funny. Yes they were, but I felt sick watching them. We know what went on there, what would happen if the Nazis arrested anyone for any reason, where they’d end up. I don’t think it was inappropriate for Chaplin to make this film. The subject should not be off limits. My great admiration from the director stems from the fact that his films are often sad. They’re filled with pathos and meaning and have relevance to our society. In <i>The Great Dictator</i>, there are numerous scenes of the people hiding in the Ghettos, afraid and angry. I could imagine the real life scenarios like this, and unlike in Chaplin’s film things would not turn out so well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Much has been made of the film’s controversial ending. It was Chaplin’s Jewish Barber’s speech to the soldiers of Tomainia that got him a file at the FBI; the Barber, mistaken for Hinkel, is to make a speech about the recent invasion of Osterlich. While facing the podium, unlike Hinkel whose words were so brutish that they’d bend the microphones, the Barber pleads for peace, preaches against greed and intolerance, and offers all those listening an opportunity for change. This speech, some 6 minutes long, is a stark difference to the rest of the picture. I think it’s a great ending, something that caps Chaplin’s political satire and offers hope where in real life at that time there seemed very little.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I will say no more to add to these discussions. I’d rather examine the film’s beginning. I don’t think it works. It’s not funny and feels like a separate piece to the rest of the film. We see the Barber fighting in WWI, how he becomes injured. In fact this prologue serves the narrative later as here he befriends a soldier who will become prominent in Hinkel’s Tomainia, but the sequence feels more like a one-reeler Chaplin might have made early in his career. And indeed did make in the 1920s. The comedy is broad and general, the effects small and unprofessional, and it throws off the structure of the film. It also seems remarkably unprofessional, as if it was an afterthought thrown in after the rest of the picture was cut together. We don’t see Hinkel’s rise to power, and seeing the Barber’s, I feel, gets the film off to a slow start.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There is a reason Chaplin is considered the greatest screen comedian of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century. His films stood for something more than broad physical comedy. They have touching stories, and his images often contained gaiety and gravitas. With <i>The Great Dictator</i>, a boldly political work, he risked offending the dictators of the world when instead he could have made a film about Napoleon. At the time, many of Hitler’s “great” military accomplishments were still ahead of him, and the US had not officially entered the war, and Chaplin, sensing as much of the world probably did, what was about to happen, decided to do something about it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Great Dictator, The (1940)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Charlie Chaplin</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writer: Charlie Chaplin</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Charlie Chaplin, Paulette Goddard, and Jack Oakie</div><div class="MsoNormal">USA</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 124 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:<br />
<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032553/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0032553/</a> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B004NWPXZS" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B004NWPY7A" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00018YCFU" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00004S89I" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=630256185X" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000096IB8" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000096IBS" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1566636825" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-82294603646530714402011-09-11T15:24:00.001-04:002011-09-11T15:24:15.966-04:00Kissing on the Mouth (2005)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ZnAx-I3Us0/Tm0JjtYifBI/AAAAAAAAAHc/A39qQK8J6GA/s1600/kissing+on+the+mouth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-5ZnAx-I3Us0/Tm0JjtYifBI/AAAAAAAAAHc/A39qQK8J6GA/s320/kissing+on+the+mouth.jpg" width="228" /></a></div><i>Kissing on the Mouth</i> is a most appropriate title for a movie in which all four—four—of its characters are whiny children playacting as adults. The most profound words out of their mouths are, “Just, like...,” “Seriously!” and the popular, “What?” They have no insights into themselves, don’t understand what it’s like to be an adult let alone alive in 2003 (the movie’s release year), and they look around like zombies at each other, smirking because they don’t understand what their friends are saying and they are uncomfortable. I hate to say this because it is not a worthless picture, but it was a depressing experience to sit through this movie.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Ellen is recently out of college, still dependent on her parents for a job on the weekends, and spends her free time having sex with her ex-boyfriend, Chris. Ellen’s roommate, Patrick, is working on an audio project, recording interviews with people as they tell of their breakup stories, their dreams from when they were young, their parents, and every other illusion that is shattered once you become an adult. Patrick and Ellen do not have a sexual relationship, but I think Patrick has a crush on her. In one scene I think he imagines making out with her in the shower. I say I think because I wasn’t sure if the woman was Ellen or her best friend, Laura. Looking on IMDb, the actress playing Laura seems to be related to writer / director / actor (producer / editor/ photographer, etc) Joe Swanberg, who plays Patrick, so they’re probably brother and sister so he wasn’t making out with her. It’s sad when a movie is sloppy you can’t tell the characters apart. When Patrick learns that his roommate is still seeing her ex, he gets passive-aggressive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The movie is filled with improvised dialogue and conversations; the characters stutter, spout out one word phrases and stop to think, hum and ho while trying to think of what’s next. Swanberg is one of the more prolific Mumblecore directors and this is a trademark of the movement, but a talent like Aaron Katz knows the right tempo for his characters’ mumblings, and knows enough to create powerful visuals without, for example, showing an untold number of close-ups of hands or bare feet. At first, the shots of the characters’ feet go along with the title and the images it congers, ideas of childhood wonder and naiveté, but after the tenth such image I began to realize that if Swanberg couldn’t rely on these images he just might have to find the truth and honesty in his scenarios. Such as it is, he dodges every honest moment for convention, with dialogue that is not funny, profound, or insightful. The best piece of dialogue made me laugh out loud, though: Ellen and Chris have just had sex, he wants to talk. He thinks he’s going nowhere. Ellen says, “No one is. Have you heard Patrick’s project?” It’s a funny line, one that was probably written down in some sort of script. The underlying story, a woman in need of sex with a familiar partner though unwilling to emotionally commit, is interesting, but inexperienced filmmakers need to know that looking at a character’s face, or hands or feet, or random out of focus shots, does not a profundity make. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In general the film looks amateurish. We can’t really fault the filmmakers, though. Mumblecore is an underground movement, one that offers true originality among an increasingly homogenized American independent market, but this is poorly lit digital filmmaking, the sort made with an untrained eye. Swanberg does not know how to mount the camera to a tripod. This is probably intentional, but a shaky camera is a superficial way to add drama or tension in a scene. That should have occurred in the writing stage.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One plus for the film is its explicitness, and beyond that the bodies the movie uncovers. Swanberg, actress Kate Winterich (Ellen) and actor Kevin Pittman are all naked in <i>Kissing on the Mouth</i>. None of them are conventional beauties, though Winterich has moments of elegance. There’s an awkwardly framed shot on Pittman putting on a condom, and Chris and Ellen’s lovemaking scenes are as honest a sexual coupling I’ve ever seen on the screen: folds in their skin, blemishes, realistic sexual positions, the quite. It made me recall the sounds of lovemaking as I’ve experienced them, and it’s always soft breathing and something like pressure or tension filling the background. Patrick masturbates in the shower, and Swanberg, in what must be a ballsy move for a director, actually shows himself ejaculating. He shows off his round, pale belly, and this explicitness was exciting and refreshing.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But this is not a very good movie. At only 78 minutes it was an endurance test. Nothing much happened, and I generally love when movies don’t tell a story. At least we’re compensated with atmosphere and character. <i>Kissing on the Mouth</i> is the work of a young filmmaker who may or may not have something interesting to say. Joe Swanberg should try to think about what it’s like living as a 20-something, trying to make it for yourself, and hoping to enjoy as much of it as you can. He probably has great insights just as a human being, but he can’t render them onscreen quite yet. Years have passed since this one, so maybe he has.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Kissing on the Mouth (2005)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Joe Swanberg</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writers: Joe Swanberg and cast</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Kate Winterich, Joe Swanberg, and Kevin Pittman</div><div class="MsoNormal">USA</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 78 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446725/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0446725/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000GI3KRQ" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-32550382574995631652011-08-14T21:09:00.000-04:002011-08-14T21:09:03.754-04:00Times of Harvey Milk, The (1984)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HpoL_Sb_GR8/Tkhv0PsRl9I/AAAAAAAAAHY/tpSk1SMxQJw/s1600/times+of+harvey+milk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HpoL_Sb_GR8/Tkhv0PsRl9I/AAAAAAAAAHY/tpSk1SMxQJw/s320/times+of+harvey+milk.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>I had never heard of Harvey Milk before seeing the documentary made by Robert Epstein. Milk took up a cause similar to other socio-political leaders who dared to challenge so-called moral convention by introducing to a wide audience a different way of life. People like Martin Luther King. Both Milk and King have had effects on the course of American history and indeed have inspired millions of people around the world. Why then did I not hear of the name Harvey Milk until I was 22?<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Milk was America’s first openly gay elected official. San Francisco mayor George Moscone had divided up the city into districts allowing for neighbors at large to vote for more personal representatives, people the people could feel would do more for them. Milk was elected as City Councilman for District 5, the Castro area where an ever growing gay population was finally winning recognition and civil rights. But with the election of a gay man to public office taking the issue of homosexuality out of hushed whispers and screaming it loud inside newspapers, conservatives began proposing legislation to deny and in some cases strip Americans of their rights. While there was reason to celebrate Milk’s victory and the victory of gay people across the nation, communities in America were passing laws against gay people. The Briggs Initiative was proposed as Prop 6, a law that would fire all gay teachers from public schools in California. The reasoning behind this was that gays who want to live openly could more easily prey upon children.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>The Times of Harvey Milk</i>, created out of masterfully used archival footage and straight-forward, honest talking heads, shows a segment of a debate between Milk and Senator Briggs, cultivator of the initiative. Milk correctly points out that most pedophiles are straight males, and Briggs, apparently unfamiliar with this info gathered by several sources including the FBI, offers his reasoning for removing gays, in his estimation 5% of the population: if gay teachers were fired, than there is a 5% less chance that children would be sexually assaulted. This reasoning gets a laugh out of Harvey. Why not go ahead and remove the 95% of heterosexual teachers to totally protect the children? The thinking is ludicrous, and Prop 6 lost by a wide margin.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I think the documentary genre is suffering now more than ever. Most would disagree, and statistics would show me up: documentaries show in major art-house theaters, and in rare but evident cases they play in multiplexes across the nation. They make money, and the genre is quite popular with young film buffs... to an extent. I think it’s still a specialized genre or form of filmmaking, but when I say that documentaries are suffering I’m talking about the art of the medium. This is why <i>The Times of Harvey Milk</i> works so well. Most modern documentaries feel, look and sound like reality shows. They have a central character, often the filmmaker, taking up a task and accomplishing it with a camera in tow. They usually provide narration explaining what’s happening on screen. Often the interview segments are cut together so that the subjects form complete but superficial thoughts through the splicing together of many sound bites, and wall-to-wall music is laid in to I guess keep the audience awake, and this music is poorly chosen and repetitive.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>The Times of Harvey Milk</i> is relatively quiet, eloquently photographed, and it features subjects with insights and personalities, and the filmmaker brings them out fully formed characters. And director / editor Epstein lets these people speak. Some of them break down when talking of Harvey’s death and San Francisco’s reaction. Epstein isn’t a cheat; he doesn’t go for extreme close-ups of their eyes or their hands fiddling with a handkerchief, or even worse out of focus shots of completely uninvolving objects around the room. He lets us watch their faces, see the rage and pain of Harvey’s death, the joys that accompanied his many accomplishments, and their fondness for the man. And again they all speak so brilliantly. A labor union leader who admits to before having known Harvey having somewhat anti-gay tendencies goes through a complete story arc. He reveals that because of his association with Harvey through their like-minded political views he is in favor of gay rights.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I hate to be personal beyond my opinion, but with documentaries like <i>The Times of Harvey Milk</i> it seems impossible to disassociate myself from the story I have seen. I came out around the time I first saw the documentary in a college class... maybe a year earlier. It’s been so long I can’t remember now. When I was watching the film I couldn’t believe that this man, Harvey Milk, who accomplished a lot in a short career, has, since his death, been ignored by the mainstream media. He is certainly not forgotten; not in San Francisco where he was assassinated by a colleague: a statue has been erected of him. And indeed Milk’s name is not buried under the rubble of history. The problem is people have to search for him, unlike other leaders or influential persons who’ve charged their constituencies and extended themselves beyond them—history and the American population have exalted these men as exemplary, have named days after them, and their life’s work is taught in history books. But not Harvey Milk’s. Why?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The documentary is asking this question but in a larger context: if Milk were straight, would his murderer have served only 5 ½ years in prison? Would or should he have not instead been serving life?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone were killed by Dan White, elected to office at the same time as Milk, and he is made the antagonist of the film. White is an interesting character: an idealist whose spirit is crushed by an ever-changing and degrading society, at least this was the defense’s position. White sunk into the City Hall with a loaded gun and extra bullets after resigning his position and then later wanting to recant his resignation. It is against the law for White to regain his job, and when Moscone supposedly told White he would not be reinstated White shot him, and then shot him again. He did the same to Harvey Milk: shot him to the ground, shot him three more times in the head, and then delivering one final execution shot at point blank range. It is clear who the murderer was, but the jury, supposedly a jury of straight white conservatives, a true group of Dan White’s peers, found him guilty of manslaughter, a crime that sentenced him to 8 years in prison. He was paroled after 5 ½.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The aftermath of Harvey’s death is quite spectacular: thousands took to the streets for a candlelight vigil beginning on Castro Street, where Harvey Milk lived, and it spread several blocks to City Hall. The aftermath of the jury verdict was quite different. A mob stormed City Hall, fought with police and set cars. One image I found striking was a protestor holding a sign, “Avenge Harvey Milk”. I was angry that Milk’s death meant nothing to those jurors and the millions they represent then and now in the United States, but despite it all I was depressed that this was the reaction. This violence was not what Harvey Milk campaigned for. A close friend of his says this in the documentary. And it depressed me because ultimately, at least in the short term, Harvey Milk had lost. His death inspired violence, and I was further discouraged to learn that Dan White committed suicide in 1985, a year after the documentary was released. When I first saw this film in class, many of the students felt that justice was finally served. Not I; the final chapter in this story was simply another death. What a waste. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I began this essay by referring to Harvey Milk in a more formal way by calling him “Milk”. When revising it, I noticed that half-way through I began calling him Harvey. I promise that this was unintentional. The film, I think, breaks down barriers between you or me and its subject. We get to know who Harvey Milk was, his kindnesses and tenacity, both terrific qualities in friends and public officials. We grow to love this guy through archival footage, and more importantly by how he had shaped the lives of everyone the filmmakers chose to speak with.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Why then is Harvey Milk still a relatively unknown figure? Why don’t we have a national Harvey Milk Day? Are there no politicians, gay or straight, with the balls to support such an honor? Would committing political suicide not be worth honoring the life of one man who died for making the world better for others?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Times of Harvey Milk, The (1984)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Rob Epstein</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writers: Judith Coburn, Rob Epstein & Carter Wilson</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Harvey Fierstein (Narrator)</div><div class="MsoNormal">USA</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 90 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088275/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0088275/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B004GFGUDG" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B004GFGUDQ" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0001Y4LDW" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0006Z151C" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B002VPE70G" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0982565054" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0972589880" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1599351293" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-73505591075328368362011-08-07T11:50:00.001-04:002011-08-07T11:50:14.355-04:00Inspector Bellamy (2009, Bellamy)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LxFTskr_Y6I/Tj6yMtTueSI/AAAAAAAAAHU/9Ul20NLjyM8/s1600/inspector+bellamy.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-LxFTskr_Y6I/Tj6yMtTueSI/AAAAAAAAAHU/9Ul20NLjyM8/s320/inspector+bellamy.jpg" width="222" /></a></div>There’s a lot going on in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inspector Bellamy</i>. What could have been a simple mystery instead layers multiple story threads, each working separately the way real life does, and in unison, creating a psychological portrait not just of its lead character but of the world he inhabits.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Inspector Bellamy is curious; about the machinations of life, the reasons why. He is on vacation with his beautiful, youthful wife Françoise, but cannot get away from what we assume is his passion: crime. A mysterious man shows up with a confession—he has killed someone. We know from the opening credits that a car has crashed off a cliff, killing—deforming—the driver. Television reports tell us the deceased man was not who everyone thought it would be. Instead of the insurance salesman who owned the car, the victim is an unknown, and the insurance salesman has attempted to defraud his company and is now in hiding. The man who visits Bellamy is in fact the missing man, at first under the thin alias of Noël Gentil but really Emile Leullet. Who is the dead man then, and why does Inspector Bellamy indulge Leullet in his late night confessions? Does he want to single-handedly solve a popular mystery for fame? For justice? His own curiosity? The answer comes after the climax which is less anti-climatic when viewing the film as a straight-forward mystery, but the reason for Bellamy’s indulgence allows us to understand his entire career as an inspector.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The story threads of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inspector Bellamy</i> are slow in revealing themselves, but the film is more rewarding for it. In comes Bellamy’s brother, Jacques, handsome, young, a loser and a drunk. Bellamy and Jacques have a tense relationship, and Françoise is the mediator between them. But the more The Inspector discovers about the Leullet case the more he is convinced his life mirrors it, that his wife is having an affair.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I admit at first I was lost. That is to say so many small things were happening in short bursts that I did not know what the true story was. For example, characters are introduced who seemingly have no narrative purpose (they will not advance the mystery—this includes the brother character); there are too many convenient personal connections between unlikely characters, etc. It is lucky the film was directed by the seasoned professional Claude Chabrol and stars Gérard Depardieu. Depardieu especially leads an extraordinary cast through a series of twisting scenes with (at first) no purpose and succeeds in making them interesting, so even when I was lost I was not frustrated. Tensions are hinted at, maybe only suggested, by Chabrol, and little by little these present themselves as more menacing and complicated to the extreme.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Chabrol is known mostly as the French Master of Suspense, a moniker that does as much a disservice to him as it did to Hitchcock. Both filmmakers used a popular genre to convey personal interests and demons. Here Chabrol is concerned with being old and overweight, married to a beauty and feeling insecure. There is more, some of which I’m sure exist in my own reading of the film, but anything beyond a superficial telling of the plot is harmful. Things are more fun to discover on your own. But understand the thriller plot is merely the starting point for a personal film filled with character and insight and commentary. The final scene in court where Leullet’s lawyer defends him with a song is a kind of mocking sting at the absurdity of the judicial system which often feels as if it’s working for those who know how to circumvent it rather than for justice.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The film gives me renewed interest in Chabrol’s past films. I’ll admit to not being a fan. I’ve enjoyed his recent work and think <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inspector Bellamy</i> is his best effort since 2000, but his past masterpieces, laid during the infancy of the French New Wave, have always bored me. He seemed to me a pale imitator of Hitchcock’s, someone whose work felt more like cheap but brisk 70s American television. I noticed with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inspector Bellamy</i> how this film, more than his other recent works, mirrors his earlier output, particularly <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Les biches</i>. The machinations of the plot seem to service the dysfunction underneath, and with this renewed interest I may pick up again on Chabrol’s early career.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There isn’t much more for me to say. The film is entertaining and surprisingly subtle. I don’t want to talk about how the various subplots merge into the ultimate story being told, and beyond that the film can stand on its own. Being Chabrol’s final film and first collaboration with Depardieu, this is a film that doesn’t need my recommendation to endorse it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Inspector Bellamy (2009)</div><div class="MsoNormal">(a.k.a. Bellamy)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Claude Chabrol</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writers: Claude Chabrol and Odile Barski</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Gerard Depardieu, Clovis Cornillac and Jacques Gamblin</div><div class="MsoNormal">France</div><div class="MsoNormal">In French</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 110 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1188983/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1188983/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0048LPRDW" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00432SNIW" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0719052726" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=2207246329" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=2866420500" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0052C1D70" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00007G1XG" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00007G1XU" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-14490156841897491522011-08-04T01:53:00.000-04:002011-08-04T01:53:14.183-04:00Revanche (2008)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZGLP8oAA6S0/TjoxznTaK6I/AAAAAAAAAHQ/0NRREF7uURc/s1600/revanche.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZGLP8oAA6S0/TjoxznTaK6I/AAAAAAAAAHQ/0NRREF7uURc/s320/revanche.jpg" width="263" /></a></div><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Revanche</i> is a film about biding time. The English translation is “revenge”, a rather abrasive title, but here is a film with a bank robbery, a murder and spying, where no one takes revenge. It is a story of intelligent people, not movie characters, and certainly not characters we’ve seen in typical genre pieces.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The inciting incident, that moment in storytelling that sets the plot in motion, takes place maybe 30 minutes into the film. This is the bank robbery and accidental death of the robber’s girlfriend. Before this, we’re introduced to five characters whose simple and jarring lives are fascinating as character studies, and who involve us immediately once the tragedy occurs. Alex is an ex-con working at a strip club. His Ukrainian girlfriend, Tamara, is a stripper and street hooker, and her boss has ambitions of using her to service high-class cliental in an exclusive apartment complex. This happens in Vienna, Austria, and outside in the country a quite police officer, Robert, and his loving wife mean no one any harm. Susanne and Robert suffered a miscarriage, and she frequently visits the house of Hausner, an elderly man looking after his farm. The film is guided by chance, and it is that Hausner is Alex’s grandfather. In an ordinary movie this would be contrived, but in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Revanche</i>, where time passes slowly and is filled with detail and the beauty of detail, this character that joins together two families that would otherwise never meet, is part of the meditation on the passing of time.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To save his love from a hellish life, Alex decides he will rob a bank. Tamara insists on staying in the car, even though she cannot drive and will have no part in the robbery. Also, Alex’s gun isn’t loaded. That’s important because Alex isn’t a bad guy. He was in prison for stealing, a crime no doubt but one that violates property and not human life. It is another robbery that leads to Tamara’s death: Alex’s easy getaway is interrupted by Robert, who is held at gunpoint until the cat gets away, and takes two shots at the tires. Tamara is accidentally killed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The film is well made. That is an understatement. Director Götz Spielmann understands that his daring narrative depends on fleshing out the lives, the personalities, and the habits of his characters. When Alex takes refuge at his Grandfather’s farm, unaware that his too friendly neighbor is married to the man who killed his girlfriend, he chops wood for the old man. We all know either through experience or stories how wood is chopped. But through the course of Alex’s time in the country, hiding out and later planning on killing the cop once he discovers the connection, we examine through the action of the story how firewood is cut. First logs of wood are wheel-barrowed into the large farm with the giant saw. The saw is electrically powered; the logs are placed on a large cot connected to the side of the saw, and all Alex has to do is guide the cot up, and the saw slices the log. Two or three cuts get an entire log.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Then comes the manual labor. Alex chops the small logs into fours, into the firewood that will heat his Grandfather’s house in the winter.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course in a movie wood chopping isn’t in itself interesting. The act serves many functions: through Alex’s determination and exertion we know that he’s constantly thinking about Tamara. He watches every time Susanne comes to the farm looking for Grandfather Hausner. When Susanne happens upon Alex, their cold talk suggests a lot about their personalities. That director Spielmann uses the action of wood chopping not exactly as “business” but to express emotion, impotence, and as a visual representation of Alex’s methodical waiting is the mark of a fastidious filmmaker and an acute human observer.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Of course the characters surprise us in ways that are so rewarding. I don’t want to go into detail because the little revelations and nuances build to a rewarding experience and, as a viewer, not knowing how movie characters will react to their circumstances, being unable to predict things even after seeing hundreds of by-the-numbers thrillers, is very rare and so special. I’ll instead focus on the actors. There are great, natural performances from all five leads. Johannes Krisch as Alex and Ursula Strauss as Susanne are especially fascinating, or at least their characters’ relationship was very moving, unexpected, and kind of shitty, but in an understandable way. Krisch isn’t Brad Pitt or George Clooney, possible leads for an American version of this story; Krisch is handsome but ordinary. He has love handles and is losing his hair, and Strauss is attractive but not a debutant. These are real people who could pass unnoticed on the streets. As movie stars there’s nothing remarkable about them, but that is why they’re so effective. Johannes Thanheiser as the Grandfather is also brilliant, stubborn and old and unwilling to leave his farm for his own health. He plays his accordion, serenades a shrine to his dead wife, and goes to church every Sunday. This character is so moving in his tradition, and the film uses him as an anchor for its ideas and atmosphere. He waits, he observes, and so does the film.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The cop character, Robert, is also fascinating. He faces what might be considered a Kieslowskian dilemma: by chance, his being there after the robbery, aiming for a tire and shooting a woman, his remorse and psychological breakdown as a result of his actions, speak volumes about the mentality, fears, and humility of police officers. How do they feel when they shoot someone? Even if it’s a criminal, as human beings it must be ugly to kill a person. Most movie killers don’t care. Guns are fired and it’s as normal as stepping on chewing gum. I don’t want to constantly compare <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Revanche</i> to other, lesser movies because it’s great on its own, but intelligent movies are so hard to come by these days.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The opening shot, indicative of disturbance—calm water shattered by something being thrown in—is mysterious and almost forgettable as a standard elliptical opening scene until it is answered late in the picture. What is thrown in is a gun, and the reason why is beautiful, so expressive of human understanding, relations, and forgiveness, and in a movie with no music, no shouting, no hysteria, it creates the perfect atmosphere for a film that leaves us with so much to think about.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Revanche (2008)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Gotz Spielmann</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writer: Gotz Spielmann</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Johannes Krisch, Ursula Strauss and Johannes Thanheiser</div><div class="MsoNormal">Austria</div><div class="MsoNormal">In German and Russian</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 121 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1173745/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1173745/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B002XUL6P8" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B002XUL6MG" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B002PTMOY4" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0041KXB9C" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0007TZHWA" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00329J2T6" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-81037066388905698412011-07-30T17:29:00.003-04:002012-01-01T04:30:25.378-05:0023rd Psalm Branch: Parts I & II (1967 & 1978)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H9cIi0BW69I/TjR1MtpHp_I/AAAAAAAAAHM/8KizmQhwi5Q/s1600/by+brakhage.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-H9cIi0BW69I/TjR1MtpHp_I/AAAAAAAAAHM/8KizmQhwi5Q/s320/by+brakhage.jpg" width="253" /></a></div>Experimental cinema is a niche not many of us venture into. Some more or less narrative films have been experimental in their handling of story sequence or the audacity of their imagery. We have numerous examples of this type of experimental film, but the genre as it has been parodied by and large finds its roots in filmmakers like Maya Deren and of course Stan Brakhage. His <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">23<sup>rd</sup> Psalm Branch</i> is, as cinema, anti-cinematic, and as experimental work, a perfect example. Perhaps my difficulty in trying to understand <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">23<sup>rd</sup> Psalm Branch</i> comes from my tradition with narrative films. I was looking for a story, and in fact was trying to create one in the images I saw, but this film works against convention, and this is refreshing and paradoxically makes the film difficult.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">The film is in two parts, made at different times (1967 and 1978), and is completely silent. The director’s approach to his craft, wildly original and chemically and physically complicated, was partly created by distorting the actual film stock he used, in this case 8mm, by scratching, burning, or painting on it, creating visuals without photographic light. This is a style that, for many, will have its limits, and indeed I find it to be self-indulgent and defiantly confusing, but in the case of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">23<sup>rd</sup> Psalm Branch,</i> Brakhage takes old war footage and fuses it with his technique. The first part is an artistic rendering of WWII, and psychological terrain that leads to the horrors of the Holocaust and the atomic bomb. In some cases it seemed I was looking in on the membrane of society; some shots look like microscopic footage of blood flowing through veins, some looked like the surface of the brain, and the ever flickering, ever changing kaleidoscopic vision was a perfect manifestation of a world using destruction to solve its problems. The second part tires in Brakhage’s mind to recreate Vienna, Austria, the birth country of Adolf Hitler, but I found this shorted part of the film more erratic and less representative of any motivation. It seemed to me, in both parts, Brakhage might have been comparing the horror and violence of war outside the United States to the relative tranquility that, up until September 2001, defined American civilian living. Both parts have moments of peace, of quiet, and seem to represent the American dream, but we are given allusions to the Nazis, their great architecture, the philosopher Nietzsche, who Hitler admired. The films, apparently part of a 31 piece project spanning several years, were made during and after the Vietnam War, and I think Brakhage is arguing for humility and common sense over the nature of war, and warning his audience, those who are manipulated and indifferent to it, that we support war by being silent.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The film’s title is taken from Psalm 23 of the King James Bible, and is quoted here: </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me. Thou prepares a table before me in the presence of mine enemies: thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.”</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In this passage, quoted exactly but not in the poem-structure it is generally seen in, God is said to be our shepherd, leading us down a path of goodness and mercy where we will dwell in heaven along with our enemies, who will be seated beside us. Is the film a search by its director to find God or at least meaning in war? Or is it a warning against using religion as an excuse to execute war?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is obvious Brakhage borrows the title from the Bible, but the film’s full title, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">23<sup>rd</sup> Psalm Branch</i>, recalls in equal measure a typical war movie from Hollywood’s silver age. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">23<sup>rd</sup> Psalm Branch </i>could have been a B-grade Ronald Regan picture or a Sam Fuller effort, and indeed the film shows us images of war; some startling, some familiar, including the familiar and often revisited visage of Adolf Hitler. But Brakhage crafts less a history of WWII but lays down visually the mentality of war on human beings. In quoting this Bible passage, is Brakhage forgiving his enemies, putting his faith in God that the life we lead is merely His will, or is he being less direct with his spiritual curiosity and asking why in war we go so far? Or is he saying nothing, offering us a jolt to our senses in an effort to get us asking these questions ourselves? I’m not familiar with Brakhage having only seen a handful of his work, but if I would to danger a guess, I’d say the latter. Truth be told, I found very little meaning in the film. It worked as an experiment but it did not engage me. But I think I am being too traditional and cannot fault the film for what it is.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In my self-conscious attempt to view the movie, one that went off relatively well (I was wide awake for the whole picture despite silent one hour running time), I was trying hard to link images together with ideas, trying always to stay ahead of the picture. I stayed with it, and often was impressed by the beauty of Brakhage’s colors and rhythms, but I am a very literal person. I find my patience for extremely non-narrative films to be low, but again this is my fault and not the film’s. I need to better acquaint myself with the director’s work, and thanks to Criterion’s 56-film primer, I can get but a taste of the director’s vast 350 picture career. I will say I am eager to see more, and have, but a vast project like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">23<sup>rd</sup> Psalm Branch </i>is a more difficult challenge than a 2 minute piece on Chinese characters, the director’s last work, made in 2003. I guess in a way my problem with these kinds of films is that they require less effort from the viewer; we only need to sit back and look, let the images pass over our retinas, and then afterwards, when the lights come up, should we think about what we’ve seen. This is why I think the film is anti-cinematic. The images come so fast and contorted that they’re more like sensations, and their impressions, if felt at all, are realized when every single image has been received. But maybe in saying anti-cinematic I really mean defiantly non-linear, devoid of plot or character, basically going against everything I’ve ever thought a film could be.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In a sense Brakhage continually tried to redefine what cinema is. His enthusiasm is overwhelming but I can’t say he succeeded in making excellent movies. He made experiments, fascinating, original experiments, but average viewers will not care. I consider myself well cultured in film but I cannot rank any of Brakhage’s work among the great works of documentary and fiction film. That is not to say he wasn’t a great artist, or that my opinion will not change over time, but to be completely honest a great deal of his work feels like an endurance test. To pass the test doesn’t make you a greater cineophile, but someone who enjoys experimental films. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Two recommendations about Brakhage’s movies: most are silent, and I know most people when watching silent movies often add their own soundtracks via iPods or MP3s. I am begging people to view his work without any sounds. All I had playing was the hum of my Blu-ray player and that was enough. Music tends to dictate the pace of the images, and while I can’t promise myself this, I hope to view every silent movie from now on without a score, unless the score was devised or approved by the director. My second, and maybe more important recommendation, is to view his films on the biggest screen you can find. IMAX might be perfect. Because they are so visual and impressionable nothing else should invade our eyes, including the vast black of the dark theater, or the black bars on widescreen televisions.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Brakhage does not need to be recommended or warned against. Chances are if you’ve heard the name, buried somewhere under film history, you know what you’re looking for.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">23rd Psalm Branch: Parts I & II (1967 & 1978)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Stan Brakhage</div><div class="MsoNormal">USA</div><div class="MsoNormal">Silent</div><div class="MsoNormal">Part I runtime: 48 minutes (18 fps)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Part II runtime: 30 minutes (18 fps)</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>The total running time for both parts, on Criterion's Blu-ray and DVD, is 63 minutes.</i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB links:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Part I:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278885/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278885/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Part II:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278886/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0278886/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00393SFPM" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000087EYF" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00393SFPW" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000PY3XE6" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=092970164X" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0929701690" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1592132723" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=092970116X" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-51821144296189778632011-07-25T02:33:00.004-04:002012-01-03T17:52:28.696-05:00Tree of Life, The (2011)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4AQJKtUbqeQ/Ti0K1tzOtII/AAAAAAAAAHI/alGjmoIXOdU/s1600/tree_of_life.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-4AQJKtUbqeQ/Ti0K1tzOtII/AAAAAAAAAHI/alGjmoIXOdU/s320/tree_of_life.jpg" width="217" /></a></div>I looked and saw the creation of the universe and of the planet Earth. I looked and saw an American family. The entirety of it was life itself as it has evolved through millions of years of impressions and booms. Terrence Malick’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tree of Life</i> is about these equally enormous forces. It is as ambitious a film as I have ever seen, certainly one of the most visionary works of cinema in recent decades.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">It is difficult to narrow in on what the film is about. It is not a traditional narrative. In fact the film in form and style is entirely experimental, and the scope of the story is vast. We begin with light, the basic building block of the universe, and we see a woman, Mrs. O’Brien, receiving a letter. She obviously belongs to the 1950s. It is a death notice; her son has died at war. We follow her eldest child, Jack, as an adult in present day New York. He is trying, as his mother did, to make sense of his brother’s death, and in these early scenes time does not exist. Terrence Malick cuts back and forth, to the mother as a child, Mr. and Mrs. O’Brien, Jack’s parents, as newlyweds and after their son’s funeral, where Mrs. O’Brien asks God what has led to her son being killed. Malick then shows the most startling and insane sequence: the creation of life. Light, explosions, lava, earth, water, the elements; single-celled organisms and then land creatures, dinosaurs, and always, always, trees. Though the film opens with a quote from The Book of Job, Malick does not show us the bible’s creation of man. There is no Adam and Eve, only the building blocks that were laid to waste for our arrival. Among other things the film is about spirituality, about metaphysics, more than religion.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But can anyone answer truthfully why God would take this woman’s son? Mrs. O’Brien offers to her children two ways through life: the way of Nature and the way of Grace. Are these opposing forces? Do they represent the different philosophies of mother and father, their own ways of raising their children? Mr. O’Brien believes in toughening them up, preparing them for a viscous, dog-eat-dog adulthood, whereas Mrs. O’Brien wants them to love every flower, every leaf, uniquely. Whether Nature and Grace stand for the feuding parents is really irrelevant when considering if Nature and Grace can co-exist. This is one of the many questions Malick seems to be asking. Are we our own creation, led to this point by a history of its own making, or has God shaped us to be like Him? But then wouldn’t God, Nature, and Grace be the same entity? Is the film arguing that religion is a convention of morality, that a “civilized” society cannot function without an institution to hold its shame in place, and that what some call God does not exist? I’m sure many would disagree but in this film, like in any great work of art, we are not given answers. Any interpretation is valid.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The special effects work as they seldom do in modern movies: they are a part of a philosophical search for meaning. By juxtaposing an American family with the creation of the universe, Malick is suggesting some big questions. The reel-long sequence is stunning, and Malick pulls it off. The first time I saw the picture, not expecting anything like what I was about to see, I was stunned. My jaw dropped and it felt as if I did not breathe for the entire sequence. When I saw the film again I surprisingly was not as awed. The visual effects are still great, beyond brilliant, utterly convincing (except for the dinosaurs—they lack realistic texture). I hate to admit it but the sequence comes off more as pretentious and lacking in the same drama that will follow. The sequence is still powerful but the existence of a family, the true meat of the film, is far more fascinating.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Terrence Malick has created an impression of family life like I’ve experienced only once in my life: while living my youth. I am only 25 years old. I did not grow up in the 1950s but my father did. And he raised me in a similar fashion as Mr. O’Brien did his kids. And my mom was always more lenient and affectionate and playful. As I looked at the screen I felt I was watching fractions of my own childhood. There’s a sequence mid-way through the film where Mr. O’Brien goes away on a business trip, and Jack and his brothers are excited and playful. This was my mood when my dad was at work or away for long periods of time. There was a weight lifted off of the house, but looking back now I realize that a great deal of the hostility was imagined, and that my insecurities around my father manifested themselves as anger and repression. But I was stunned to see this in a movie. To hear Jack whisper the things he’d like to say to his father while he is being disciplined is something I can easily relate to. At one moment he asks God to kill his father, and sadly this too is something I can relate to. There are also depicted in the film moments of beauty, such as the scene when Jack kisses his younger brother’s arm twice. It brought tears to my eyes because I could remember similar moments of peace with my own brother. Maybe my experiences do not parallel the film so much as Malick has touched upon what it is like to be in a family, the joys and pains and every emotion in between, but however artfully I can describe Malick’s work, the simple fact is that it touched me deeply.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jack seems to be having a crisis of faith. He notices in his young age a lack of action on God’s part, and this silence is so frightening to him that he acts out. He says to himself and to God after witnessing a kid his age drown in a pool, ‘There’s no reason to be good. You just do what you want to.’ I don’t know the denomination of the O’Brien’s church but I was raised Catholic, and many of the same practices and hostilities existed in my church and in my younger relationship to God. I have since lost any notion of divinity, but that’s not important. To Jack, God seems linked to his father. They have the same will, the same authority. Both seem to preach, ‘Do as I say, not as I do.’ This causes Jack more pain, and at one point he thinks something about his father that I truly fell: “You wrestle inside me.” This is an issue that a repressed, 1950s Christian society probably felt a lot, and through the simple action of shushing, like when Jack’s mom stops him from asking embarrassing questions in public, people were raised to keep these thoughts or emotions inside. That’s what men do, civilized people. And it is maddening.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The way Malick directs the moments in this family’s life is astounding. The camera never once functions as we think it should. It moves like an eye: free-wielding, focusing on something and then quickly turning to something else, always curious about what’s next. The film is more a memory. Malick creates impressions of what it’s like to be a kid at any age, but he does a particularly great job in recreating a realistic 1940s / 50s. Jessica Chastain’s hair is never perfectly quaffed like in traditional period pieces, the lawns are not even, green fields of grass; they have weeds and dead spots. The streets are laid with browning petals and potholes, and the clothes are of their time, not a recreation. Malick’s camera moves through the space of the 1950s in a most anachronistic fashion. In my mind at least, when films are set in 1950s America their cameras usually recreate the cinematic style of the era: careful, expressionally-lit compositions mounted on tripods. Camera angles lining up to the characters’ points of view, absolutely no hand-held work. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tree of Life</i> uses rather liberally the Steadicam, and the effect is dreamlike and haunting, and it recreates the mood of life back then, at least as I’ve imagined it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I hope come Oscar time the Academy remembers this film. I know—who cares about the Oscars? But it looks like the best picture of the year is an American effort, and if the Academy Awards truly reward the best in American cinema then <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tree of Life</i> should be nominated in several categories. Best picture, director, screenplay, editing, special effects, costumes, make-up, and acting. The acting category is going to be tricky. This is Terrence Malick’s film. His performers merely dramatize his vision, but there are several stand-out performances in a film filled with perfection: Brad Pitt and Hunter McCracken. Pitt plays Mr. O’Brien, and he deserves to be rewarded for this performance. He is not a cruel man; he is someone of his time, raising his children as he was probably raised himself. Pitt gives off every facet of this character and a best supporting actor nomination should come his way. McCracken plays the young Jack, and this character is the true lead of the film, though the film is intentionally plot-less. I did not like Jack. His father’s bullying is already manifesting itself in his violent thoughts, his repression, his lashing out at his brother in one scene and at the environment in many others. He defies his loving, lenient mother in a heartbreaking display of rebellion, but that McCracken is so hypnotic that he can carry an unlikeable, subdued role is impressive. In all likelihood the Motion Picture Academy will not nominate him at all and give Brad Pitt the nomination for lead actor. Such is the history of the Oscars.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jessica Chastain needs to be mentioned as well. Her performance is magical—I am again surprised that a film dominated by its director can contain within some of the great performances of the 21<sup>st</sup> Century. Some critics have said her character of the mother exists outside of the bitterness and stern qualities of the world and of her husband, but Mrs. O’Brien is another archetype of old-fashioned American parenting. We see she does not like her husband’s approach, and as it would in real life (and undoubtedly has nationwide at every point in time) this sours their marriage. But either through love, commitment or society they do not divorce. Malick’s handling of the marriage and Pitt’s and Chastain’s is so powerful, and Chastain is beautiful and mesmerizing and I wanted to signal her out as well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The final scene, which I will not detail, is, I think, about forgiveness, about reconciling everything and everyone you’ve ever known to the fact that something has happened; that a brother has died; that parents are not perfect, age, and will always be a moving force in one’s life. But what is to be forgiven: Nature or Grace? What was it that took away this child; that began an exploration through the creation of the universe? Was it the will of God or the chance of fate? Did the way the planets formed influence the decision? Had a petal fallen too fast or withered on the plant for too long? Or had God decided it was time to take back what is his? Malick does not provide answers. He creates a scenario that is open, and the scene on the beach with strangers and characters we’ve gotten to know on this odyssey is a metaphysical experience rendered on film, one of the most moving and inexplicable experiences I have ever seen. I am not embarrassed to admit that the film brought tears to my eyes. In quick moments I had experienced what in actual time has taken a short lifetime.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">With all this I haven’t scratched the surface of this movie. It is an event, something like we haven’t seen in the art world for some time. It might be premature, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Tree of Life</i> will stand against the works of Ingmar Bergman and Andrei Tarkovsky as one of the most thoughtful and ambitious projects ever filmed. I had my doubts when I read others saying this, but I’ve seen it twice, with about a month’s break in between, and I was moved to tears more the second time. Go see this picture; if you see nothing else in a theater this year you will likely have seen as great a movie as can be made.<br />
<br />
Tree of Life, The (2011)<br />
Director: Terrence Malick<br />
Writer: Terrence Malick<br />
Stars: Brad Pitt, Jessica Chastain, Hunter McCracken and Sean Penn<br />
USA<br />
In English<br />
Runtime: 139 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0478304/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B005HV6Y5W" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B005LLX582" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B005UKJX4E" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0029O0BK4" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B003152YXC" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B005PD0VDI" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0056CCI20" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0055IWCSU" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-53415800762948763232011-07-22T18:48:00.001-04:002011-07-22T18:48:22.234-04:00Stolen Kisses (1968, Baisers volés)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hm6NDNYpjlo/Tin8m_c0INI/AAAAAAAAAGs/02n5Z6VlOfM/s1600/stolen+kisses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Hm6NDNYpjlo/Tin8m_c0INI/AAAAAAAAAGs/02n5Z6VlOfM/s320/stolen+kisses.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>It is said that the average person will change professions several times in his life. There may be many reasons for change, but it is sad when one’s own character prevents him from charting a course and sticking to it. Antoine Doinel, the hero of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows</i>, has not quite grown up. Let me rephrase that: Antoine and his environment are changing at different speeds. When once Antoine’s insolence was charming, as an adult it is clear he may never find his way. But is that as sad as I think? In between his gigs as a soldier, a concierge, a detective, a stock boy in a shoe store and a television repair man (I think I’ve got them all) there is always love, sweet, impulsive love. In this regard Antoine will never age.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">François Truffaut’s major preoccupation was romantic longing. We see it in every one of his pictures: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Two English Girls</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Woman Next </i>Door are both about obsession; in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Bride Wore Black</i> love manifests itself as revenge for a lost love; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fahrenheit 451</i> details the love of books, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows</i> was the love of childhood, of cinema, of friendship and liberty, all also themes in Truffaut’s work. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stolen Kisses</i> his themes clash in ways the director might never had hoped for. In the summer of ‘68, France experienced a revolution begun by students fed up with poor conditions in state-run universities. Riots and demonstrations (often one and the same) shut down industries; unions joined in the students’ struggles, and when the government appointed a new director for The Cinematheque Francais, ousting founder Henri Langlois, filmmakers joined in.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Langlois was one of the two most important people in Truffaut’s upbringing, along with Andre Bazin, film theorist and co-founder of Cashiers du cinema, the underground film magazine that Truffaut wrote for as a critic. Langlois, apart from single handedly preserving films that otherwise would no longer exist, gave Truffaut the opportunity to see films that no longer circulated in popular movie houses, and through Langlois, Truffaut and the entire Cashiers crowd gained their excessive love and knowledge of the history of their craft. Truffaut was so upset over Henri Langlois’ firing that he formed the Cinema Defense Foundation, an organization determined to give control of the Cinematheque back to its founder. The director supposedly made phone calls for donations in between takes on the set of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stolen Kisses</i>.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">For all of it though the film is mostly apolitical. If one does not research the topic it wouldn’t make a lick of difference when watching the film. Sure Truffaut opens the film with a shot unrelated to the story, the sad image of the French Cinematheque closed to the public (and he also dedicates the film to Langlois), but he does not address any riots, in fact completely ignores the plight of the students, a cause he championed in his private life. The reason for this is simple: he was not a political filmmaker, though it makes the words of Jean-Luc Godard at the 1968 Cannes Festival both ironic and searing, accusing himself and all filmmakers presenting that year that they were behind the times since no film detailed contemporary France, the struggle between the students and the extreme right-wing government. Is this a fault of Truffaut’s or merely something that proves him as a true auteur? I’m inclined towards the latter since I myself detest politics in films. Truffaut was more interested in the arts and humanity, in love and romance and friendship. Life should not stop because of political upheaval, instead this upheaval is a part of our lives, and we should live and rally against the opposition.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">In this regard, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stolen Kisses</i> as a movie is not one of Truffaut’s best pictures. There’s nothing wrong with it per se, but it is too improvisational; that is there exists a free-wielding structure that can be great in another movie but here it left me... not bored but ambivalent towards the screen. I hope that makes sense. Watching it in action the film moves as briskly as anything Truffaut made and it’s filled with beautiful, touching moments, but it lacked the earnestness of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows</i>, the film that gave us Antoine Doinel. Maybe I shouldn’t be comparing the two films. They are quite different.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Here Antoine is becoming a man. He (like Truffaut did) receives a dishonorable discharge after volunteering for the service. The man dismissing him wonders why he volunteered; speculates it was to impress a woman, but we soon learn the truth: Antoine read a book about the service and his experiences in the army merely did not match it. This is the problem with Antoine as he gets older. I may be biased since personally I’m not prone to risky, hasty decisions, but the older he gets the less “cute” his misadventures seem. He doesn’t seem to understand that the years will go by whether or not his romantic fantasies are indulged, and in trying to live as he thinks he should he is forgetting to live. But that is not right—this is my own attitude talking. Antoine lives an exciting, experience-laden life. His many professions allow him to sample a whole universe set up by tradition and necessity. He is constantly working, obviously, making enough money to keep an apartment (and certainly doing better than an old school friend he meets on the streets who rummages through trash—perhaps a dig at the government for failing its youth). </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Jean-Pierre Léaud reprises the famous role. This man was a conduit of the New Wave. I get the feeling that we, the audience, have never known the true Léaud. Truffaut used him to express his own flighty moods and Godard used him as an anarchic symbol, another extension of someone else, and through it all Léaud let himself be shaped. He is a true chameleon, a divisive actor whose improvisation style never seems to be wrong. He always fits his films, even when he stands out. I can admit though to finding him pretentious sometimes, though seldom with Truffaut. Throughout the Doinel films he doesn’t shape an arch for the character. He simply performs the role as Truffaut wrote it, experiencing life as Antoine has in Truffaut’s script. This relaxed attitude towards his craft (and least that’s how it appears to me) is fascinating, and proves that movie acting is about having spirit and knowing lines, and very little complexity. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stolen Kisses</i> is Léaud and Truffaut’s lighthearted take on the growing adventures of Antoine Doinel. He is no longer the lost kid we first knew. He is a young man, making his way in the world and constantly lost in it through a free-wielding spirit in search of love. I along with millions of people since 1959 have adopted Antoine as a friend, a son, a spiritual partner, and care about him deeply. I guess ultimately I found <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stolen Kisses</i> somewhat melancholic; that Antoine cannot keep a job and moves with the wind does not speak well for his future endeavors.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stolen Kisses (1968)</div><div class="MsoNormal">(a.k.a. Baisers volés)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Francois Truffaut</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writers: Francois Truffaut, Claude de Givray</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Claude Jade and Delphine Seyring</div><div class="MsoNormal">France</div><div class="MsoNormal">In French</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 90 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062695/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062695/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00008H2GR" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00000JLTR" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00000JQBG" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000F5JRAE" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000BONXKY" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1572525916" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0306805995" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0520225244" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-89893591542437490252011-07-16T20:46:00.004-04:002011-07-25T02:35:37.830-04:00Paranoid Park (2007)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rI2bHMhMO9w/TiIvODuLNjI/AAAAAAAAAGo/owwEeZWlgdE/s1600/paranoid+park.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rI2bHMhMO9w/TiIvODuLNjI/AAAAAAAAAGo/owwEeZWlgdE/s320/paranoid+park.jpg" width="215" /></a></div>Stream of consciousness filmmaking is closely linked to the written counterpart, but because words are intellectual this form of writing is literate, whereas in cinema it feels more like memory. Moving images have an instant validity, and when a story is not linear, when it depends on the mind of a teenage kid with a lot of time on his hands, the work is experimental and involves us despite the disjointed, often fractured and confusing storytelling. Gus Van Sant’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paranoid Park</i> is a great and rare example.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Other examples in contemporary American cinema are some of Van Sant’s other recent works. He is proving himself a remarkable talent, one that even his early successes could not have hinted at. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paranoid Park</i> is about an incident and characters that live it, but there is no storyline. Alex is a skateboarding kid. He hangs around with his best friend Jared who convinces him to go to a place that Alex admits he is not ready for: Paranoid Park, a grungy skate park in Portland. One night when Jared goes away, Alex goes to the park, meets some older guys, runs away with one of them via spontaneous freight train, and an incident occurs. This is linear progression, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paranoid Park</i> exists in Alex’s writing. He’s constantly writing in what I at first thought was an extended journal. Only at the end of the film did I understand that Alex is writing over the course of one night, and the majority of the film’s final scenes actually take place—chronologically—somewhere in the middle of the film’s short 84 minute running time.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We often see the same scenes repeated. The shots of Alex in either his uncle or his mother’s house show him entering his bedroom from a room where we had seen him previously write. I believe every time we see this same setup we are seeing the exact same moment in this character’s life. Why would Van Sant construct his film like this? He does a similar thing in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Elephant</i>, but there because of the structure of the film we were seeing several different stories taking place congruently. Here we have one perspective, Alex’s, and the conceit doesn’t seem like it could fit but it works remarkably well.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Well, why does it, and why do we see these repetitive moments? This is not a question to be asked but merely a fact we must accept. I personally found the challenge of deciphering this movie a welcomed change of pace from most films that predictably proceed in a linear fashion. I often wonder why films <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">need</i> to tell a story. It takes a skilled hand to render 90 minutes or so of screen time without a clearly defined story, characters and conflict, but often times the results of these experiments is quite fascinating. They are not slice of life films, a term I despise because of the connotations the phrase conjures. Rather they are experiences, impressions of life, and Van Sant’s treatment here creates an impression of a character. I often say that this is the ultimate reach of the cinema, to create impressions. A movie is a work of art, not life, and often times, films of this kind contain a hyper-reality that gives us, the audience sitting in our seats looking at a 2-dimensional flat screen, a sense of how the director uses reality to create his vision.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The film, however, though essentially about a death, is not a mystery nor is it suspenseful. Van Sant doesn’t show us the character most duplicitous in the crime or event as receiving punishment. He suggests it is coming and indeed creates a great deal of fear and paranoia and the utter indifference one so young, of a sort or type typical in youth culture for the past decades, but the film is never “about” the crime. It is about a kid dealing with the fact that he, directly or indirectly, is responsible and now has to deal with it. The film, however, is more definitive than I am suggesting, but because the narrative material is comparatively slight I will remain vague so as to not spoil for you the mood and anticipation I certainly got watching it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One thing I greatly appreciated was Van Sant’s use of aspect ratio. Most films are in a wide-screen format, some 1.85:1 or even worse they’re in scope, something narrower like 2.35:1. This basically means the screen is rectangular. I don’t like looking at movies this way. In a sense the aspect ratio renders everything as a landscape, at least in terms of framing a painting; there’s either portrait or landscape. The landscape composition is meant to show beauty, and in cinema I find a square ratio, 1.37:1, is more fitting in capturing reality. It cuts off our peripheral vision and focuses in on what the director wants.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I love Gus Van Sant’s modern, experimental work. I love that it’s done by an American filmmaker. It shows us that American cinema isn’t dead yet. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Paranoid Park</i> is intelligent, thought-provoking movie making, about characters of a certain age, and still refreshingly original.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Paranoid Park (2007)<br />
Director: Gus Van Sant</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writer: Gus Van Sant</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Gabe Nevins, Daniel Liu and Taylor Momsen</div><div class="MsoNormal">USA / France</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 84 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0842929/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0842929/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001CDFY7S" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B004GCLMDW" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0015VI3CU" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=7115209219" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B003CJGK4G" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0001EFUFK" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000AYEL10" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1590052870" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-66720213306995753862011-07-12T00:19:00.005-04:002011-07-12T00:27:09.310-04:00Antoine and Colette (1962, Antoine et Colette)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yqRaZpnqN98/ThvIRFMRiFI/AAAAAAAAAGk/l45sw1gmzi0/s1600/antoine+and+colette.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yqRaZpnqN98/ThvIRFMRiFI/AAAAAAAAAGk/l45sw1gmzi0/s320/antoine+and+colette.jpg" width="239" /></a></div>There is a perverse pleasure in falling love, in watching someone you’re attracted to from afar, forever inching yourself closer, anxious and scared of if or when you’ll say something. And when you finally do, you’re intimidated and excited. There is also a love for the cinema, a love possibly more infectious, without limits, for young love is seldom ever permanent, and almost always sours.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Antoine Doinel returns in a short film François Truffaut made as part of the omnibus picture, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love at 20</i>. Doinel’s segment, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antoine and Colette</i>, shows what might be the hero of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows’</i> first romance, one that begins as we might expect from the once troubled teen. He and his friend René are at a youth concert, and Antoine sees a beautiful modern girl sitting with a girlfriend. He watches her, is as absorbed in her looks as the listeners are to their classical music. He follows her out but does not engage. He sees her again three times that week, and finally on their fifth encounter, he speaks to her.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Truffaut is the most infectious and loveable director I’ve yet discovered. He crafts intimate tales of amour, stories that range from innocent, to obsessive, perverse, and comical. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Antoine and Colette</i> he mixes all his elements into one of his most pleasurable experiences. While a short and therefore better equipped to be tidy and fluid, there is a sharp earnestness to the director’s storytelling, sometimes relying on an off-screen narrator to simplify narrative montages (telling us Colette sees Antoine as a friend) and swift, unexpected but incredibly honest changes in his characters’ character and actions. For example, Antoine soon takes an apartment across the street from Colette’s. For a moment, if that, it seems cute and innocent, but it really is a creepy thing for anyone to do; to pack up and live next to the person you’re courting. It is obsessive, insecure behavior, in line with the upbringing we’ve seen of Antoine in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows</i>. The perverse nature is Colette’s rejection of Antoine, leading him on, maybe unintentionally, and confirming what he seems to understand during a after dinner soirée at Colette’s parents’ request. Colette brings her new love in, embarrassing her mother and crushing Antoine. This love does not end well, but throughout it all we feel the energy of Truffaut, that untouchable magic he infuses his movies with.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This bittersweet tale gets its lighter moments in Truffaut’s storytelling. For example, Antoine works at a record manufacturer. Why? No reason; it is an interesting and appropriate profession for a young man of Paris in the 1960s. There is a fabulous short scene showing Antoine pressing his first record, a gift he later makes to Colette. This is so charming, so carefree, and a gimmick unique to the cinema. I believe in most other mediums such a progression of narrative would seem cheeky, but it works here. Or, for another whimsical twist, try Antoine and Colette’s parents’ relationship. Love is not always sexual. Affection can exist for someone whom you feel in sympathy with, someone whose look moves you in profound ways. The narrator says that the parents “adopt” Antoine as Colette becomes scarce to them all. To change the focus of the story from the young couple to the young man and the parents is a sweet twist, one I loved to see considering how uninterested we know Antoine’s parents were. The final shot is quite rewarding, the odd family sitting down to watch television.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">So Antoine has found love, a love more fundamental. He has gained parents, and with that the dignity of having two people to rely on. This is the second chapter in a series of films starring Jean-Pierre Léaud as Antoine Doinel, and like the whole of Truffaut’s work, these films are pure pleasure—whimsical and spontaneous living creatures. They remind me of why the cinema is my true love.<br />
<br />
Antoine and Colette (1962)<br />
(a.k.a. Antoine et Colette)<br />
Director: Francois Truffaut<br />
Writer: Francois Truffaut<br />
Stars: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Marie-France Pisier, Rosy Varte and Patrick Auffay<br />
France<br />
In French<br />
Runtime: 31 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1180329/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1180329/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
<i>Criterion has released </i>Antoine and Colette <i>only as part of their terrific collection, "The Adventures of Antoine Doinel." It shares the same disc as </i>The 400 Blows<i>, but remember while Criterion has issued several different editions of </i>The 400 Blows<i>, including a Blu-ray, the edition available in the box set is the only one containing the short film</i><i>. </i>Antoine and Colette<i> was released with another Truffaut short, </i>Les mistons<i>, by Fox Lorber a decade ago, probably with sub par image quality, but the disc is easily affordable via the Amazon links below:</i><br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal"><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00008H2GR" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00000JLTN" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1572525894" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0306805995" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></div>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-55355106195380282122011-07-09T03:06:00.001-04:002011-07-09T03:06:49.289-04:00Flight of the Red Balloon (2007, Voyage du ballon rouge, Le)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-af_5vZA46uo/Thf75nJ6-TI/AAAAAAAAAGg/cnTnxEEGpg8/s1600/Flight_Of_The_Red_Balloon__The___Voyage_Du_Ballon_Rouge__Le_%25282007%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-af_5vZA46uo/Thf75nJ6-TI/AAAAAAAAAGg/cnTnxEEGpg8/s320/Flight_Of_The_Red_Balloon__The___Voyage_Du_Ballon_Rouge__Le_%25282007%2529.jpg" width="227" /></a></div>It’s almost impossible to describe how joyous it is to watch a film like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Flight of the Red Balloon</i>. It’s a masterpiece, the best film I’ve seen in the last 10 and more, and its power comes from the simplicity and beauty of its story, its images, and from the lives portrayed. I used to think that for a film to be powerful and profound it must be dark or ugly, downright depressing so it can easily move its audience, but that is an immature thought. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Flight of the Red Balloon</i> is about the peaceful and hectic qualities of life that make existence such a magical thing.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">I can’t give a plot summary. It would sound boring, banal even, and may discourage potential viewers. Things happen in the film but they are elliptical, and a linear description would not serve the film well. It is told from the view point of a red balloon, and we are dropped into the story looking in on three very special figures. Fang Song, the Chinese film student studying in Paris; her new employer, Suzanne, a free-spirited mom; and Simon, her son, the child Song is now nanny to. I could describe the events overseen by the balloon but the film would seem insignificant. This is a film that has to be seen. It needs to act on our senses. Only then we can appreciate the experience.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Suzanne is a performer. Her grandfather was a puppeteer and she now does the narration and voice work for puppet shows. She is a mess, a ball of energy with weird fashion and a wonderful personality. She is always losing things or forgetting appointments—she has so much to do, and yet the people around her she never forgets. She has an instant rapport with Fang Song. Immediately she trusts her son with the girl, has her make a key to their apartment. The film might exist in a hyper reality where things are far from perfect but they are still slightly untouchable. This might be what I loved about the film more than anything. It is liberating to sit back and have such a soothing, happy experience without guns, violence, cussing, and all the ugly things that most movies rely on for entertainment. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Flight of the Red Balloon</i> is as aimless as a free-wielding balloon. Conventional screenwriting techniques would proclaim this structure a failure, and indeed if the screenplay read verbatim like the final cut of the film it would probably not be a good read. But this is a movie. It exists in sounds and images that create a great impression of life as I certainly would like to live it. Director Hsiao-hsien Hou has the eye and temperament of a master. He does not rely on typical, beautiful compositions or clean kept streets for beauty. Life in Paris is beautiful, or can be, just as it can be anywhere, and any pretense of creating artificial beauty is not needed. Life is beautiful as it is.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">This is not a film about nothing, or a slice of life. I think we have certain impressions of such phrases. I would say <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Flight of the Red Balloon</i> is a film about living. Think of how many people we pass each day, how many names we’ll never know. We will hear snippets of conversation or create scenarios based on what we can see, but for all of it we are no better off than a shiny red balloon.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The great surprise in this film is the character of Simon. It’s very tricky to create honest child characters. I think so many of us are disillusioned with life that we cannot recall what existing as a child was like. In American movies, young kids, ages 4-8, are blank-eyed, silent and morose things that are more creepy than enduring. Simon Iteanu is everything I would hope a little boy could be in real life: bright, inquisitive, interested in creativity, in cinema, painting, puppets; he sleeps with a stuffed bear and exists enough in the modern world to use a digital camera and play Playstation video games. He has answers to questions, insights and observations, like when Suzanne is arguing with a man on the phone who may or may not have been her lover or his father—we’re not privy to such information. Suzanne screams, “I need a man beside me and there is no one beside me.” Simon in the back seat says, “I am a man.” The delivery is much more charming than the words, and the little Simon Iteanu is superb. Juliette Binoche we expect a perfect performance from, Iteanu is a revelation.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One of the greatest scenes I’ve ever seen in a movie is Suzanne’s final scene. She has just argued heatedly with a neighbor, slammed the door in his face and now sits teary-eyed before her son, Fang Song, and a piano tuner. The camera stays on Binoche’s face. She calls her son over to her, asks what he did in school. They hug and she smiles. Simon goes off to play his Playstation. Suzanne smiles serenely, still fighting back tears, shaken with anger as she asks the piano tuner if he’ll retune the piano okay. Binoche does something magical. Her expression, her attitude, her talent—I don’t know the right word, but this is a true moment of tranquility and it always makes the hairs on my arm stand.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I can only describe moments in the film. There is not a thing wrong with it. I could detail every scene but a masterpiece like this is better off discovered fresh. I had such a profound reaction to this picture that I hope I am not overselling it. Subtle movies affect everyone differently and it simply moved me like few films have. I like to think the red balloon is watching all of Paris. Only occasionally does it appear at the window. Often it is floating in the sky. Think of the stories that exist in the film that we do not see. What does the red balloon know, and what other magic has it seen?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Flight of the Red Balloon (2007)</div><div class="MsoNormal">(a.k.a. Voyage du ballon rouge, Le)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Hsiao-hsien Hou</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writers: Hsiao-hsien Hou and Francois Margolin</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Juliette Binoche, Simon Iteanu and Fang Song</div><div class="MsoNormal">France</div><div class="MsoNormal">In French</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 115 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0826711/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0826711/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001ADXXBO" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001CDFY46" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0012Z361M" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001IZI0OE" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=9622090745" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=7807138416" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=2866424379" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0231128991" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
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</div>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-24823009384144439882011-07-06T14:03:00.001-04:002011-07-06T14:03:16.837-04:00Swimming Pool (2003)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a6bHiPMzRMc/ThShM7Q8XaI/AAAAAAAAAGY/0-9DrppciG0/s1600/swimming+pool.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-a6bHiPMzRMc/ThShM7Q8XaI/AAAAAAAAAGY/0-9DrppciG0/s320/swimming+pool.jpg" width="224" /></a></div>François Ozon channels Alfred Hitchcock in his psychological thriller <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Swimming Pool</i>. Where Hitchcock only hinted Ozon marches fearlessly ahead in this surprisingly effective, sexually dynamic mystery that is more conventional then it ought to be. Actors Charlotte Rampling and Ludivine Sagnier as a would-be mother / daughter team break through the convention with fascinating performances, bringing out the rich nuance in Ozon’s macabre screenplay.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Rampling plays Sarah Morton, acclaimed author of the Inspector Dorwell series. Sarah retreats to her publisher’s summer home in France to find inspiration for a new, watershed project. When at first she begins writing the next in her Dorwell series, her tranquil visit is interrupted by Julie, her publisher / lover’s daughter. Julie is a punk: brash, keeps odd hours, and is inconsiderate of the reserved English author’s peace of mind. Julie brings different men home and has loud sexual trysts which agitate and seemingly arouse and fascinate Sarah. The film doesn’t become a murder mystery until ¾ into it, and that section of the film is its weakest, but the set-up to the fatal accident gives us two very opposing rivals, one sexually liberated and one who, in Julie’s words, only writes about dirty things and never does them. The dirtiest of things, the act which soils most, is done by the less likely of the women.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Ozon is unafraid to show Ludivine Sagnier’s beautiful body. It’s hard to accept this is the same girl who played the impish Catherine in Ozon’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">8 Women</i>. I admit I didn’t want to see her naked having adored her in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love Songs</i>. I’ve associated a certain innocence with her. Here her breasts are everywhere, and she touches herself more explicitly than a lot of actresses would on screen. Some of her boy toys’ rear ends are seen, too, and these guys are not really the kind you might want to see naked. This is something that bothered me about Julie. She is so beautiful and sexy that you’d think she could attract hotter guys, at least guys her age. And she probably could, but as we slowly learn this girl must be starving for attention, more so than we might thing even at the film’s climax. The only nudity that embarrassed me was Rampling’s full frontal shots. I felt that, while what the character was doing was interesting, it did not grow organically from the script and that Ozon was abusing his actress. Then I realized that Rampling starred in Liliana Cavani’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Night Porter</i> in 1974, and then I understood that she is a fearless performer.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Her relationship with Sagnier’s Julie is really interesting. Sarah, we sense, is an empty woman. Her life is lived in her writing. The only man at home is her invalid father; her lover—her publisher, Julie’s father—keeps big secrets from her, and she doesn’t have children. I never sensed that Sarah wanted kids, but the twists she takes in her relationship with Julie really allow them to bond as mother and daughter. I don’t want to give it away, but trust me, they do bond. It could be that Sarah’s interest in Julie is solely as subject matter for a new book seemingly inspired by the writer’s experiences with the young girl. In that case Sarah gets too intimately involved in the messes of her characters, but then again it is often said a writer’s characters become like their children. Sarah’s efforts to protect Julie can be seen as motherly.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I can’t say, though, that I understood the ending. To be honest, I guessed—and it will be fairly obvious to those familiar with the devices of thriller plots—the twist ending well before the finale, but the way the story unfolds is both unexpected and predictable. So what does that ending do to Sarah and Julie’s relationship? I honestly don’t know. I can make assumptions, or at least explain it to myself, but my explanations alter or destroy the great material of the film, the relationship between Julie and Sarah. But a twist ending in a thriller is often a letdown. If the material is excellent, the bad ending can be overlooked, at least by me. While the ending is not bad, it leaves a lot of questions at too late a point in the experience. But I didn’t mind, just like I didn’t mind the some of the convention in the later part of the picture. It is old-fashioned fun but with a sexually explicit twist to murder mysteries.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’m really starting to like François Ozon’s work. I’ve seen 4 films, and the first, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Under the Sand</i>, was very boring. It also starred Charlotte Rampling, but it’s the kind of arty flick where the subtly was so subtle that any subtext was altogether lacking. The other three have been terrific. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Swimming Pool</i> isn’t unique or original, but I was not bored. There were a few moments where I was nervously inching towards the screen, and if a thriller can do that, it’s won.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Swimming Pool (2003)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Francois Ozon</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writers: Francois Ozon and Emmanuele Bernheim</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Charlotte Rampling, Charles Dance and Ludivine Sagnier</div><div class="MsoNormal">France / UK</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English and French</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 102 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324133/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0324133/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00005JMIJ" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0000YHQNU" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00013EY7G" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00013EY76" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-22383216155668664802011-07-03T10:34:00.001-04:002011-07-17T02:21:58.037-04:00400 Blows, The (1959, Quatre cent coups, Les)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QRZ1lsyxBGU/ThB61OBI5DI/AAAAAAAAAFc/oyWgtVRR6dU/s1600/400+blows.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QRZ1lsyxBGU/ThB61OBI5DI/AAAAAAAAAFc/oyWgtVRR6dU/s320/400+blows.jpg" width="256" /></a></div>Watching <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows</i> for the second time I remembered things from my adolescence that I had long forgotten. These were not dramatic, life altering episodes but rather personal moments that add up to create an impression of life. This is what cinema can aspire to. Art is reproduction, it is not life. All it can hope to do is create impressions, and François Truffaut’s first and probably best feature film creates a terrain of childhood that we have all traveled, even if we’ve experienced it differently than young Antoine Doinel. After all, we are on some level lost children on a beach, returning to the elements in search of our freedom and place in the world.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">I did not have the wild adolescence of Antoine Doinel. I never stole money from my parents, never skipped school. I was raised to be docile, to observe, and was made (either by my insecurities or by instruction) to please others when asked, and I could still relate to and sympathize with the misunderstood and grossly underappreciated Antoine, never believed by his parents, abused through indifference by them, a scapegoat for teachers, and even betrayed by in his friends in moments when the blame for a class prank falls directly on the boy’s shoulders. It is no wonder Antoine cannot conform to society. He’s a bright kid who remains loyal, who never rats out his friends or his cheating mother and who always is under pressure of being caught. For what? His lying of course—Doinel is not a perfect kid—but society has set it up so that he is always the villain. His is punished for his precocious nature; that he wants to understand and finds it difficult, that face-value is meaningless to him, that he has seen too much arguing between his parents and knows so much that someone so young, in their developmental stages, shouldn’t know will curtail his innocence. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But for all the ugliness and cruelty Antoine experiences there is always Truffaut. I often forget just how great a filmmaker he was. I’ve seen all of his movies, many of them have left indelible impressions on me, but for some reason I always recall many others directors as favorites before remembering Truffaut. His films contain a magic called joy. There is always a zeal for life, a craving never satiated though always pursued, that gives his work a momentum and passion that can only be truly appreciated when actively watching his films. They are hypnotic. They are experiences offering glimpses of life as it should be, as it should feel, and these impressions are among the greatest works of art of the latter half of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows</i> may be his masterpiece, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Small Change </i>(or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pocket Money</i>, its UK title) is the other work of his that I truly think is just great. In both films one can see a motif that permeates much of the director’s work: his love of children, their unbiased look at a world that has fashioned itself on antiquation. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows</i> is a more tragic film, made at a time in Truffaut’s life when one can argue that as an artist and as a human being he was coming into his own. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Small Change</i> was made many years later, when the director had children of his own and we can guess having gained insight into his parents, his teachers, his world that were before too close to be obtained.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">An aspect of the film I loved so and was grateful to have experienced vicariously was the close friendship Antoine shared with his schoolmate René. I did not have friends as a child, never learned how to make them being the younger brother and youngest of all my cousins. I was always with them as a baby, and when they entered school and made their own friends I was lost. Here I could experience a close, apparently life-long friendship (René is based on Truffaut’s best friend) that is as strong as any emotional bond ever described in a movie. These kids, so small and so cute, are there for each other. When Antoine repeatedly runs away from home René at first sneaks him into his uncle’s abandoned factory then into an obscure room in his spacious and beautiful apartment. He brings Antoine food and travels by bike to pay a visit when Antoine is sent to reform school. They skip school together and stand up for each other. When Antoine is expelled, René gets himself suspended to stick it to the teacher. There are beautiful moments like this throughout the picture and for me to describe them here is a waste. My words could never do justice to the atmosphere of Truffaut’s moving images.<o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But one more point on a similar subject. I loved the sense of childhood Truffaut created in the film. There’s one shot filled with humor and honesty and brilliance as a gym teacher takes Antoine’s classroom on a jog through Paris. Little by little patches of children run off, and thanks to one continuous overhead shot we follow the aloof teacher as his line of children gets smaller and smaller. Such an energizing image is indicative of the playfulness and inventiveness of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows.</i><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><br />
</i></div><div class="MsoNormal">This is a very important film. Its greatness aside, historically cinema after 1959 might have been entirely different if Truffaut and his New Wave colleagues had not tried new things with the medium. A movie like this, of its reach, would not have been possible in a more structured filmmaking environment like France in the 50s, or Hollywood throughout the Golden and Silver Ages. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows </i>derives its power from it spontaneous and crude cinematic qualities, the honesty of its writer’s story and Truffaut’s love of being alive, indulging in his passion for freedom and the movies. The dichotomy is that without the past <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows</i> could not have been made. We see that in Doinel’s love of Balzac and his stealing of a still of Harriet Andersson in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Summer with Monika</i>. How great must it have been to be young and in love with cinema in the 1960s. The passions involved in making movies, arguments even revolutions being made in defense of one’s heroes and the conviction that movie goers wanted something more than cheap entertainment is something that we likely will never have again. We do have though the physical films still, and these are enough to inspire us still, but I’m afraid something has been lost.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I hope I’ve done the film right by my words. I have related as best I can my immediate reaction to this marvelous picture, but I know I have not given a clear statement about what the movie is about. This is in part intentional. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows</i> and indeed many of the more adventurous New Wave films were radically different from traditional filmmaking, their storytelling raw and style crudely cool. The story is told through a series of events, one building upon another in a chapter-like way. There are no big story twists; a melodramatic event like Antoine seeing his mother kissing another man is treated as just a troubling fact of life that is best kept secret, partly to keep peace and also for leverage if the need would arise. These are the insights Truffaut has, and it is what makes all of his films and especially <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The 400 Blows</i> so painfully beautiful.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Above all though, the film allows us to recall our own childhoods, and what can be more beautiful or painful than that?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">400 Blows, The (1959)</div><div class="MsoNormal">(a.k.a. Quatre cent coups, Les)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Francois Truffaut</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writers: Francois Truffaut and Marcel Moussy</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Jean-Pierre Leaud, Claire Maurier, Albert Remy and Patrick Auffay</div><div class="MsoNormal">France</div><div class="MsoNormal">In French</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 99 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053198/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053198/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001O549FC" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00008H2GR" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000E5LEV0" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001LMU1AU" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0306805995" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0521478081" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0815410247" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0253207711" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-57796340153205259742011-07-01T23:48:00.003-04:002011-07-07T00:54:10.350-04:00L.A. Zombie: Hardcore (2010)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PS9gw8JoZSg/Tg6SqhGkGMI/AAAAAAAAAFY/vjEU5Hzg8qM/s1600/la-zombie1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PS9gw8JoZSg/Tg6SqhGkGMI/AAAAAAAAAFY/vjEU5Hzg8qM/s320/la-zombie1.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>Can porn be art? Is porn ever entertaining? And for that matter, what qualifies edited pieces of film as pornography? What is pornography in general? Historically, I mean—how did we create this word and how do we define it in a contemporary world? It comes from the Greek <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">porno</i>, meaning harlot, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">graphein</i>, to write; a literal translation being the writings of prostitutes, a solicitation for sexual acts. A dictionary definition in America might be something like, ‘materials (film, video, photos) designed to stimulate sexual excitement.’ Maybe the definition of Justice Potter Stewart may be the most eloquent when deciding what it or isn’t porn: “I know it when I see it.”<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">I will define pornography for myself: sex scenes which cut to close-up shots of penetration, usually beneath and between the dominating sexual partner’s legs or just above his belly, looking down on the passive sexual partner’s lower back, or most boringly from a simple close-up profile shot of the two actors. It’s these close-ups that make sex scenes pornographic. Actual penetration might be erotic to see, but from a wide shot, showing both actors’ bodies and in particular letting us see their faces, actual sex in movies can be quite moving. Look at Catherine Breillat’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brief Crossing</i> or Ang Lee’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lust, Caution</i>. Neither film is erotic, but one cannot deny the power that those images have in the context of their stories.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I think I’ve just thought more deeply about the subject than Bruce La Bruce, writer and director of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L.A. Zombie</i>. I don’t understand the purpose of the film, the reason for it being made, but the story revolves around a zombie, henceforth known as The Zombie, played by François Sagat, who emerges from the sea and has sex with the dead and brings them back to life. Sounds interesting, some of us more perverted might be thinking, but the execution and staging of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L.A. Zombie</i> is exactly like pornography. There might be parallels La Bruce is making with a certain kind of life style in excessive America, but the movie is quite frankly too depressing an exercise for me to care about. It is not well made—in fact in one shot a cameraman who’s going in for a close-up shot of sexual penetration actually pops into the master shot of The Zombie plowing a dead homeless man from behind—and it is not acted at all, except for the stereotypical loud moans and grunts of pornographic films.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It began well enough with some beautiful photography of the sea, a landscape similar to the beaches of Ingmar Bergman’s films, and a haunting all strings piece of music. The Zombie emerges from the water, much like the fragile characters of Bergman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Through a Glass Darkly</i>, a film about a young woman with mental illness. This connection may be important to understanding the true nature of The Zombie. He is shown in three forms throughout the picture: a gray, post-George Romero zombie, a more hideously deformed zombie with large canines protruding from his gums, and a human form, Sagat in living flesh as a homeless man wandering the streets of L.A. Is The Zombie a homeless man by way of mental illness? Are all of his experiences largely imagined, schizophrenic episodes that speak philosophically to a perversity in gay culture in America? I’ve read comments on the internet like this, but I think that’s only a way for people to praise a film that has hardcore sex scenes without them seeming to the public to be perverted.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I think the director might have been trying to express a viewpoint, but what he didn’t understand, something anyone could have seen in the very first sex scene, is that pornography is not very interesting.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Male orgasm is achieved through a repetitious motion; watching an erect penis penetrating any orifice gets old very quickly. It’s pretty much the same no matter how you do it, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L.A. Zombie</i> lingers on the penetration in the same ways as pornography. Bruce La Bruce should have known that showing porno scenes in-full would distract the viewer. I’ll admit I found the bodies on display to be attractive, though the scenarios were kind of disgusting and over-the-top, but after the first few minutes I got sick of seeing the sex. It was like watching open heart surgery: technical and gross. My mind started to wander; I started to think of why I was watching this movie. This is where the film became depressing—it was boring and wasting 2 hours of my life. How could La Bruce credit himself as writer? There’s no characters here, no dialogue except for the occasional trifles before the characters are killed (immature arguing between violent criminals, for example), and the structure of the film is stolen from pornography—the Zombie wanders the streets of L.A. and episodically has sex with the men he meets. What La Bruce basically had was a concept, an experiment which may sound interesting—a series of hardcore scenes—but as cinema it is lifeless. Boring, and that is the biggest mistake any filmmaker, narrative, documentary or experimental, can make.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Some might question if instead La Bruce has made an anti-pornographic film. And I would say that is an interesting argument. The form and function of pornography with blood; penetrating fresh wounds rather than natural orifices; and a penis for The Zombie that looks like a goblin’s tool—long, unnaturally colored with a curved tipped head—spouting blood instead of semen. It is impossible to find this material erotic, and I found it to be disgusting but so what? Any hack can revolt an audience. The image I found most deplorable is Sagat’s Zombie’s penis. Its unnatural curvature and the blood in place of semen might have been too much to take if the material weren’t so overblown, but I found absolutely no point to any of this. And, if this was part of La Bruce’s experiment, then he failed because most of the scenes involve natural-looking penises that have normal orgasms, the men for the most part are handsome, and the sex scenes linger so that I at least started to view them abstractly. Instead of the whole film I saw Sagat sucking on a penis. These are two diametrically opposite images and that they exist in my perception in this case is not a plus for the film. I got tired of what I was seeing and was looking for something else.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">But to give another point to this idea of anti-pornography let’s look at François Sagat. I find him very attractive: a great body, handsome face and a great scalp tattoo. In <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L.A. Zombie</i> he always looks ugly. Obviously as a zombie, but even in his homeless human form I felt more... pity, I guess, though I didn’t care about the character. I cared about François Sagat the actor doing some outlandish and embarrassing things onscreen. There is one scene where The Zombie tries to drink a cup of coffee but he spits up, and Sagat is made to rub the spilled coffee on his chest in an erotic way. Why is this man, who seems to be an intelligent guy in real life and who is a good actor (if his performance in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Man at Bath</i> is any indication of his range) degrading himself in such a meaningless piece of garbage like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">L.A. Zombie</i>?</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Maybe on some level the film does work. Maybe it is only meant as a provocation. Is society so numbed that we need these kinds of films? Yes and no. We have numbed ourselves in various ways as a culture (a 24 hour media?) but 99% of us if not more will never see this movie. They’ll never hear of it. I certainly didn’t like it but I’m trying to engage it on some intellectual level but it might be futile.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The version I saw was called <i>L.A. Zombie: Hardcore</i>. It ran for 105 minutes. Strand Releasing is putting the film out in theaters in the US, presumable in an edited form. It will run 63 minutes. There must be alternate footage shot because 63 minutes is still too long for the hardcore version minus the hardcore. I’m actually interested in seeing the edited version. Could it be a successful exercise without the penetration shots and the shorter running time?</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
L.A. Zombie (2010)</div><div class="MsoNormal">(a.k.a. L.A. Zombie: Hardcore)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Bruce La Bruce</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writer: Bruce La Bruce</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Francois Sagat, Rocco Giovanni and Wolf Hudson</div><div class="MsoNormal">USA</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 105 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">To purchase the hardcore version of <i>L.A. Zombie</i>, visit the film's official website:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://lazombie.com/">http://lazombie.com/</a><br />
<br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Visit Strand Releasing's official page of the film to lean more about the US release:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://strandreleasing.com/films/film_details.asp?BusinessUnitID={BFD06A96-7612-4F21-AEC0-3452C34902C4}&ProjectID={BC9E0DA3-37A3-4983-AA48-9EE900A0B189}">http://strandreleasing.com/films/film_details.asp?BusinessUnitID={BFD06A96-7612-4F21-AEC0-3452C34902C4}&ProjectID={BC9E0DA3-37A3-4983-AA48-9EE900A0B189}</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1594921/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1594921/</a></div>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-79107464724076212092011-07-01T00:31:00.000-04:002011-07-01T00:31:49.186-04:00Breaking the Waves (1996)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EjVnfharUIg/Tg1K-cEonTI/AAAAAAAAAFU/VY0SfDB7oMM/s1600/breaking+the.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-EjVnfharUIg/Tg1K-cEonTI/AAAAAAAAAFU/VY0SfDB7oMM/s320/breaking+the.jpg" width="216" /></a></div>Lars von Trier’s work is often very difficult to describe. A plot summary would often make them sound silly, simple. In reality his work is the opposite, and even if you disagree with what the director is saying, it is difficult to deny the power of his work. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breaking the Waves</i> may be in parts too simplistic, but the experience of watching it makes up for its weaker moments.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">Bess McNeill is a good Scottish girl marrying an outsider in her community, Jan. He works the oil rigs, and after their wedding which is as beautiful for Jan as it is for Bess, her husband goes off to work. Bess is raised in a religious community that seems centuries away from our time. Women are not allowed to speak aloud in church, cannot attend funerals, and must obey their husbands and the Lord. Bess spends much of her time talking to God, asking for favors, and she answers herself in God’s words. I found these moments a bit awkward and very unoriginal, but this has to be accepted as part of Bess’ character. Is she really hearing the voice of God? Well, yes. As long as Bess believes, she does hear. God promises to send her husband home early, and Jan is in a terrible accident when renders him paralyzed.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I was not as absorbed into <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breaking the Waves</i> as I have been with other of von Trier’s films. The big problem is that the opening scenes or chapters are much too long. They linger, and while as episodes they are not bad, the plot as I’ve described isn’t really what the film ultimately becomes. About one hour into the film Jan, now a quadriplegic, asks his loving, devoted wife to sleep with other men. He himself cannot experience love and if only Bess could tell her about her sexual encounters Jan will feel close to her again. This is very interesting, at first naughty and in a dark way kinky. But Bess is not all together. She struggles with pleasing her husband, torn between his words and the word of her religion. She asks God and he replies through her she must obey her husband.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">She attempts to sleep with her husband’s doctor, a decent and very handsome man, but Bess cannot command her sexuality with intimacy. She is on a bus, makes eye contact with a dirty old man, and masturbates him. She tells Jan about it and he seems to get better. Bess starts to believe in her ability to save her husband.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Von Trier is always asking profound questions, but with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breaking the Waves</i> he is asking more about human beings than God. Except for the ending, which I will admit to finding farfetched, this is not a religious film. It is a film about faith; as all good religious films are—they do not presume too much—and it questions what most believe about God. What is sin? Can one be a sinner and still be loved by Him? As God points out through Bess, Mary Magdalene is one of His most beloved creatures. It is the harsh faith of the village elders, who have the power to banish people from the community, who decide what sin is. In a way, the film questions whose faith is stronger. Bess, a simple minded girl, the first heroine in von Trier’s trilogy of naïve and brutalized women, is like a loyal dog. She does not matter; only the health and life of her husband counts. The others with this stone and wood building and their bible do not understand what Bess has turned to, and for that they banish her.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Her family cannot understand her either. Her mother is the first to warn her about banishment. Her grandfather, a village elder, is non-vocal but his glances and presence impose much. It is Bess’ sister-in-law, Dodo, who both knows what Bess is doing and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">why</i> she is doing it. They are best friends, have been since Dodo’s wedding to Bess’ brother, but his death brought them even closer. Dodo cannot believe in Bess’ reasons for sleeping with other men. She is concerned for Bess’ mental health and also for the sick control Jan is having over her. She is a nurse, is treating Jan, and knows what the drugs and constant surgery is doing to his mind. For Bess it doesn’t matter; as long as Jan’s condition improves, she will continue to be promiscuous.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Von Trier always gets great performances from his actors. Emily Watson is probably the most substantial she has ever been on screen. She has a pixy-like sweetness that really makes Bess a 3-dimensional character when she could have easily been a cartoon. It’s surprising to discover that this was her first film. She is intense, too, and very brave. Often in this director’s movies actresses have to do things ordinary actresses would never be expected of, typically scenes of sexual explicitness, especially when portrayed so honestly. It is however not the explicitness that makes these performances brilliant but the intensity and commitment by these actresses. After all they agreed on the roles. It makes me hopeful for Kristen Dunst’s upcoming turn in von Trier’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Melancholia</i>.<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><o:p></o:p></i></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Breaking the Waves</i> seems so alien to most modern people: firstly the idea that the church can play such a significant role in life, and secondly because of the cruelty of being someone of faith. Though Bess accepts her duty with relative ease, what Jan or God or she herself asks of her is too cruel. The northern Scottish environment, the lack of technology—the reliance on public phone booths, for example, to receive a call—is so backwards. So is the idea that a person can be banished from society for actions that others disprove of. In their eyes Bess is a prostitute. She dresses like one to attract men, but I never viewed her actions as perverted. Bizarre, yes, but perhaps because I have walked with her I could understand. The coldness with which friends and family, in the sake of tradition, greet each other is equally bizarre. I was wondering if von Trier might have been exaggerating his story to be more effective. That could be true, but then I remembered that in the Amish community one could be thusly banished, so this extremely religious mentality does exist today. Most of us, including myself, simply do not experience it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">It’s hard to say whether I liked the picture. If I had to be honest I would say I didn’t think it was a masterpiece as many have said. It is in parts too long and boring. Some of the actions and thoughts the characters have make little sense. Let me rephrase that—they come out of nowhere. When the Doctor steps in to talk Bess out of her delusion, he confesses his love. He speaks and reacts to her indifference the way a lover would, so this “love” isn’t just plutonic, it’s more sensual. They had only a few scenes prior, and nothing hinted at the Doctor’s feelings. Ultimately it doesn’t matter. You should see this film if it sounds interesting to you, and my opinions and observations aside, I think I’ve done a fair job explaining the extensive setup of the story. It is interesting and worth sitting through to the end. Those who are religiously inclined might find more topical or at least theological discussions to engage in with the film, but as a movie it is far from perfect. But von Trier’s films are never perfect. He is more instinctual, and his films are crude but powerful works of art and his audacity is enough to check out every one of his films at least once.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A final note, two versions of the film exist: an American version and the European version. It’s obvious which is “censored” and you should seek out the European version. I cannot describe all the differences except for one, based on a screenshot comparison I found online: during their wedding night, Jan lets Bess explore his body. Von Trier’s camera lingers on a shot showing actor Stellan Skarsgård’s penis. In the American version, his hand cups his privates. If seeing Skarsgård’s junk isn’t your thing, consider this: the character’s hand covering his genitals tells the audience they’re watching a movie. The image takes us out of the experience, and this is a film where every single image needs to be experienced the way its director intended.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Breaking the Waves (1996)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Lars von Trier</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writer: Lars von Trier, Peter Asmussen and David Pirie</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Emily Watson, Stellan Skarsgard and Katrin Cartlidge</div><div class="MsoNormal">Denmark</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 159 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115751/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115751/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=6305899681" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=6304442459" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00009KOW5" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=6304442467" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00004VXSU" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000UAM8IC" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1905674430" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0571207073" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-78008457773476226782011-06-17T09:52:00.000-04:002011-06-25T23:12:01.316-04:00Wild Strawberries (1957, Smultronstället)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kOskU62YufQ/TftYYd5VktI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/HRv6UzeL_6I/s1600/wild_straw.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-kOskU62YufQ/TftYYd5VktI/AAAAAAAAAFQ/HRv6UzeL_6I/s320/wild_straw.jpg" width="227" /></a></div><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wild Strawberries</i> is about an aged doctor, Isak Borg, traveling to receive an honorary degree. He is accompanied by his daughter-in-law, and during their car trip Isak recalls episodes from his past. Convention would assume the Professor is experiencing his memory due to the acute awareness of his own death, but Ingmar Bergman’s film is more celebratory of life and its creatures’ follies. Isak isn’t remembering because he is dying. He remembers because he is alive, and self-doubt is not reserved for the young.<br />
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</div><div class="MsoNormal">A lifetime achievement award seems to summon the end of one’s life, especially for those who have devoted all their passions to their work. Alfred Hitchcock, when receiving the honor from the American Film Institute, thanked his audience and proclaimed, “I think I will go on.” Sadly he didn’t, but Isak Borg will go as stubbornly as his still living elderly mother, going strong at 96. To understand the deeper truth to Bergman’s film, it helps to have an understanding of the director through his film work to see how his perspective changed with age, and in particular the transition period Bergman found himself in during <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wild Strawberries.</i> Bergman had made 16 movies before <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wild Strawberries</i>, and his cinematic counterpart had been actor Birger Malmsten, a handsome but gouache Swedish lead. In their films together, Malmsten portrayed an insecure, repressed young man wandering to find his way. His romances were messy and dangerous, and life was not kind. If Bergman never intended to make Malmsten his alter ego, the scripts the director was writing were certainly self-possessed. Isak Borg, in the context of Bergman’s heroes, is very telling of a director who for the first time was receiving great international praise for his work. Gone is the stubbornness and childish defiance of Malmsten’s characters. Isak has achieved something. Bergman had too, and their fears are that their accomplishments are meaningless; that they were frauds fooling at times even themselves; and the fear of being exposed as empty. Insecurities are not limited to the youth who are finding their way. Bergman was growing as an artist, but the fears any professional has, at least in Bergman’s case, did haunt him well into middle age. Lifetime recognition proclaims to others but most chillingly to the recipient that they’ve achieved all they can in their profession.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We remember the past not as our former selves but as the people we are the moment we are remembering. “Flashbacks” as narrative devices are actually active moments in a film, existing in the present. This is one of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wild Strawberries</i>’ biggest accomplishments. Isak can remember the past, his eccentric extended family, the wild strawberry bushes on their property, with the insight of so many years’ experience. We all would do things differently if we could. Even without regrets; if we’re lucky, time gives us experience that allows us to become our selves. There is no one age where we truly understand who we are and the story isn’t written until the later years. That does not mean death. There is a beautiful moment at the climax (though that word might be inaccurate given the unique qualities of Bergman’s narrative structures) when Isak is taken to see his parents during the film’s final fantasy flashback sequence. He sees them from across a pond, and the expression on Victor Sjöström’s face is one of great serenity. He is not crying or gushing of happiness. What I’ve always been impressed with is Bergman’s lack of sentimentality; not because I dislike emotion. On the contrary, Bergman’s approach allows him to be honest, and instead of tears Isak Borg looks at his parents with fondness and understanding. Having lived a life of his own, sharing probably in similar emotional experiences as his parents, he can understand them and appreciate them as human beings.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Convention would, after the Professor’s final flashback, tucked in bed and ready for sleep, allow Isak to die. In Hollywood storytelling that would tie things up, package the story, and give us a sense of resolution. Such endings are so pessimistic because life goes on, even for the elderly. Isak, I believe, undergoes some very profound and subtle changes that allow him to grow at his old age. It’s great that Bergman will allow his character the dignity to experience at least one more day with this new perspective.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The youth in the film is very special. They oddly are liberated from doubt. They are carefree and hopeful. Bibi Andersson, one of Bergman’s many brilliant leading ladies, plays a duel-role: Sara, Isak’s cousin in the flashbacks, the woman he loved and wanted to marry, and Sara, a hitchhiker going with two male friends to Italy. Let’s talk about the modern-day Sara. Her biggest woe is deciding which of her boyfriends she really likes. There’s Viktor, a theologian, and Anders, a doctor. Their fights over God give the film its biggest laugh. They box over God’s existence, and when they return defeated to Sara, she asks, “Does God exist?” Andersson is especially sweet, and her scenes give the film much of its beauty. Sara of the past is theatrical, possessing the neurosis apt of a formal, hierarchal society. In the modern world of the film, the elderly retreat into themselves: Isak, of course; his mother, and Miss Agda, Isak’s housekeeper and comic combatant. Isak’s son and daughter-in-law are repeating the mistakes of the past, but the new youth is hope for the future.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Isak and Marianne, his daughter-in-law; their relationship I found intriguing. Maybe because it is so unusual to see this family relation depicted in fiction, but it is poignant that Isak discovers much about his own son through the conversations with Marianne. Evald, the son, is a stranger to Isak and yet he hates his elderly father. Isak is surprised by this, but he accepts it. Maybe his son’s feelings are understandable to him. The two opposing characters, Isak and Marianne, traveling in a car, might make the film seem like a buddy picture, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wild Strawberries</i> lacks the required and implausible confessions and revelations seen in the genre. Instead these characters experience growth unparalleled in most films. By depicting moments—conversations, glances, experiences not directly related to plot (the visit to Isak’s mother, for example) Bergman, as he nearly always does, gives us people more than characters.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The film is a bridge between Bergman’s past and future work. He has the formal structure and the theatrical rhythm typical of his early film. Bergman came from the theatre, and he continued to write his films like plays, and many of his published screenplays are indeed in play form. His cinematographer during the 1950s, Gunnar Fisher, achieves his most delicate work in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wild Strawberries</i>, a more naturalistic view of the world that looks ahead to Bergman’s work with the masterful Sven Nykvist. Bergman’s screenplay and scenario is more typical of the chamber dramas that define his 60s and 70s output. Isak Borg will make way for the weak, mawkish male figures in films like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Persona</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Shame</i>, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Scenes from a Marriage</i>. As Bergman’s success increased, his insecurities did too, but it is easy to imagine the director at peace towards the end of his own life—a journey we can imagine as frightful and full as Isak Borg’s. His last films are proof of this; <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fanny and Alexander</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saraband</i> are rich in their human qualities. Sorrow still exists but the director had realized that the poor parts of life are eclipsed by the joys, and he was talented enough to make these beautiful moments as profound and rich as the heavy drama. These films show the great Bergman characters accepting peace where they find it, and where the past has made room for it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Wild Strawberries (1957)</div><div class="MsoNormal">(a.k.a. Smultronstället)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Ingmar Bergman</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writer: Ingmar Bergman</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Victor Sjostrom, Bibi Andersson, Ingrid Thulin and Gunnar Bjornstrand</div><div class="MsoNormal">Sweden</div><div class="MsoNormal">In Swedish</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 91 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050986/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0050986/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00005UQ7T" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001BEK8EC" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001BEK8EC" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=6302783356" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000WC39FY" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00005V4WT" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0851704816" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0671678337" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-62367861382245712732011-06-04T15:49:00.000-04:002011-06-04T19:59:58.664-04:00Nocturnal Uproar (1979, Tapage nocturne)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x6v-Q1IHZEo/TeqJZElJaYI/AAAAAAAAAFI/EnLHS-gIGpc/s1600/nocturnal+uproar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-x6v-Q1IHZEo/TeqJZElJaYI/AAAAAAAAAFI/EnLHS-gIGpc/s320/nocturnal+uproar.jpg" width="223" /></a></div><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nocturnal Uproar</i> was Catherine Breillat’s second film, released in 1979, and is one of her rarest movies. It has finally found an American home video release, a DVD from Pathfinder Home Entertainment which, despite being released only last week, is already difficult to locate. The film is about a filmmaker, Solange, played by the beautiful Dominique Laffin, who intellectualizes sex, who has lots of sex, and who seldom makes movies. Maybe she’s too busy in the bedroom for such distractions.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Solange is a young writer / director whose sexual conquests are vast and legendary. She is married to a rich moneyman, someone who lets her indulge in her appetites. First is her lead actor, a handsome American played by Warhol and Paul Morrissey regular Joe Dallesandro, but Solange states that ‘she loves him and is sick of him.’ Solange is always hungry, and when she meets a fellow director she becomes infatuated with him, wants him, and his initial resistance only makes her steadfast to the point where she develops an unhealthy obsession that has her questioning her thoughts on desire and sex.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Descriptions of the film state that Solange as a filmmaker does what her male counterparts do—sleep with lots of people, including her lead performer. My problem is that whenever a film is about a filmmaker I find the material is often too fake, and the profession is treated as something intangible and sacred or taken for granted and the process of filmmaking is never done justice. With <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nocturnal Uproar</i> it’s simply not used at all. Solange functions as a filmmaker for only the first act and only slightly. Sessions in the editing room are used complaining about her sexual partners, and then we never see or hear anything about her work. The film changes focus before the half-way point, signs of an unfocused screenplay, and perhaps the film is less about a filmmaker and more about a woman. But why have her be a director? It doesn’t enhance the mise en scène nor give depth to the character; film director is such a pronounced profession that to have it go unused I found a distraction.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps the film is more personal for Catherine Breillat. Is it a record of her working methods during this period? Her films have always dealt with sexuality and maybe the filmmaker was simply using the medium to express her own thoughts and experiences. I love that; a great deal of why I love the cinema is the auteur theory which states the director is the author of a film; that links in an artist’s work can be found from work to work. Breillat surely qualifies, and I can see how this film influenced her later work. For example, it seems to be a precursor or even a veiled prequel to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sex Is Comedy</i>, an infinitely more insightful look at the filmmaking process and sexual manipulation, and there’s a series of shots showing 2 characters descending a spiral staircase that she would repeat 30 years later in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bluebeard</i>. The problem with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nocturnal Uproar</i> is that it isn’t insightful about the cinema, it isn’t insightful about relationships, and it isn’t even honest about sex. I don’t want to sound perverted but the sex scenes in this film almost all look fake, though it is obvious that actress Laffin is being touched between her legs. The film develops into a woman’s sexual obsession for a man who toys with her, someone who may or may not have alternate intentions with his amours. This is a great subject for a film but it is arrived at a little too late.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Considering gender and sex; can a woman be as sexually free as a man? Sure she can prey after the men who attract her like some men do for women or even other men, but because women have been brought up to be and perhaps instinctually are more in tuned with their emotions can they have indiscriminate sex and not, on some level, feel tied to the men they have? Is the act of being penetrated, of having someone inside of you, too intimate a feeling to simply toss off sexual intercourse as a fling? On some level I believe this. The intimacy created by inviting someone inside physically is a more intense sensation, one that requires more trust and strength than being the more dominant sexual partner, and perhaps Breillat is arguing that women cannot be free sexually and perhaps more generally they lack freedom in Christian-dominated societies.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The film works better as an intellectual exercise than it does a movie because frankly it isn’t visually interesting. It’s all dialogue, and while the majority of Breillat’s work relies on dialogue here her characters have very little of interest to say. They seem more to be parodying what a Breillat film will become rather than offering genuine insight into sexual or human relationships. Catherine Breillat again gets a gutsy and rather brilliant performance from her lead, Dominique Laffin, whose innocent looks and beauty reminded me of Irene Jacob. Laffin is nude a lot, mostly from the waist down, an interesting decision by the director, and she performs the part great as written. I only wish it were written better. She is however an actress I loved looking at, and I was shocked to read that she died at 33 of a heart attack. Life is sometimes a bad joke. Joe Dallesandro was a surprise to see. He’s not a great actor but he has been great on screen, particularly in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Flesh</i>, the Warhol Factor’s best feature. Here he is playing someone like himself, a handsome young actor who’s photographed more for his looks than talent. It’s sad that while still young, the effects of drug use seemed already to be working against him in 1979. The character of Bruno, Solange’s filmmaker lover, isn’t that impressive. He has his games with Solange but I never believed that she would become so obsessed by this man. Yes she is flirtatious but the parts are not well developed and we never see their intensity build.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Catherine Breillat may be a crude or uneven filmmaker—some of her movies are masterpieces, others insufferably slow and thoughtless—but that is the nature of her art. She uses the cinema not to entertain or even to enlighten but to rummage through her own demons. This explains the existence of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Nocturnal Uproar</i>. It is an impulsive film, indecisive; maybe this is the film she should make now, with some 30 years distance, to truly make her intentions felt. Maybe now after a life lived, a stoke which must be life changing, she can grasp at a more clear understanding of her younger self and write about a sexually desiring filmmaker who uses men until she tires of them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Nocturnal Uproar (1979)</div><div class="MsoNormal">(a.k.a. Tapage nocturne)</div><div class="MsoNormal">* the DVD goes by the title "Night After Night" *</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Catherine Breillat</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writer: Catherine Breillat</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Dominique Laffin, Bertrand Bonvoisin and Joe Dallesandro</div><div class="MsoNormal">France</div><div class="MsoNormal">In French</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 97 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134993/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134993/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B004TIOKIC" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0719075300" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0819568260" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0312240406" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=082642967X" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1403989605" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0006Z2NCW" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B004NWPY5C" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
<br />
A great resource for Breillat on DVD:<br />
<a href="http://breillat.blogspot.com/">http://breillat.blogspot.com/</a><br />
<br />
<i>I have been in touch with Pathfinder Home Entertainment via email and they confirmed that </i>Dirty Like An Angel<i>, currently Breillat's only unreleased film in the US, will be released this fall.</i>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-86404800006254176782011-05-29T22:02:00.000-04:002011-05-29T22:02:59.113-04:00Certified Copy (2010, Copie conforme)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kwc3c74bAIU/TeL4_i79oDI/AAAAAAAAAFA/jcceyx78SNg/s1600/Copie+Conforme.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Kwc3c74bAIU/TeL4_i79oDI/AAAAAAAAAFA/jcceyx78SNg/s320/Copie+Conforme.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>2 people explore the treasures of Tuscany on a lazy Sunday afternoon. They are at first strangers, but the things they say to each other leave us questioning the nature of their relationship. I didn’t have to make up my mind as to Juliette Binoche and William Shimell’s relationship. It is obvious to me what is happening in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Certified Copy</i>, but whether or not we believe Binoche and Shimell are married is not the focus of the film. The film works as a puzzle. It remains mysterious and objective, asking us to consider where the true worth of human experience exists: in a happy past or a less romantic present.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Shimell, an English opera singer, plays James Miller, an art expert who has written a book called Certified Copy, about the worth and unique authenticity of art forgeries. He argues that a reproduction is just as valuable as the original, partly because the original is itself a copy of a real event. Binoche plays an unnamed woman, a fan with a teenage son who waits impatiently while James is giving a lecture. Her son teases her, insinuating his mom has a crush on the author. And, she seems to. Binoche leaves her number with his Italian translator and she and James meet on a Sunday. He signs multiple copies of his book for her, one made out to her sister, Marie, who with her simple love for her husband is in sympathy with James’ philosophy of art forgeries: it is not the work itself that has value; it is our appreciation of it that gives it its value.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Their dialogue is imprecise and mawkish when James first meets her. Binoche is self-conscious and excited to be in the author’s presence. They take a drive. “I can’t believe you’re sitting in my car.” This shot is amazing. For several minutes, Binoche and Shimell are in a two-shot, photographed from outside the car, and the reflection of the buildings on both sides of the street obscure, in flashes, both actors. Their dialogue is innocuous but the scene is riveting. We’re really seeing two images; a visual clue to the idea of the film. There are overlaid images in many moments in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Certified Copy</i>. Director Abbas Kiarostami’s directorial approach at first seems breezy and loose, but in Shimell’s and Binoche’s first scene together as they wander about her shop, precise choreography between the two leaves Shimell alone among many art forgeries, and Binoche reflected in a small mirror in the background. They face each other even when they are separated in the filmed frame. A similar image happens later, when Shimell stands alone near a motorbike and in the side mirror Binoche is reflected off screen. I can’t say I’m familiar with Kiarostami’s work; I don’t know if his double images are unique to this film or important in his overall body of work but they support the material, which is not so much about doubles but the multiple interpretations of what two people say.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We are like the tourists on Binoche and Shimell’s vacation. We hear what they say and yet lack the greater context of their lives to truly understand. The advantage we as an audience have is that unlike these tourists who exist as extras in the film, we get to follow these two people and hear the whole of what they say. It is still not a fault of the picture that we are not given a blunt truth. The film is a puzzle which cannot be solved, and when I saw the film for the first time I was so overjoyed to be actively participating in the story. Depending on how I viewed the material, the story would change and satisfy me. It also is very mysterious and good at dropping clues through dialogue and facial expression. The flipside is that when we solve this puzzle, the second time around <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Certified Copy</i> isn’t as absorbing. We can view the early scenes and notice the subtle clues that support our theories. I, for example, found great meaning in a quick line of dialogue by Binoche’s son which suggests much of the complicated dynamic between these three people. To be honest the line is so quickly delivered and I don’t speak French and I missed it the first time. But if films are meant to be viewed more than once then the lasting impact of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Certified Copy</i> will not live up to its reputation. If I had written this right after I saw the film once, I would have talked only positively about it. I didn’t know what to say then other than, ‘see it and interpret it for yourselves,’ and I hoped that I could elaborate on my own opinions about the movie itself with a second viewing. Truth is I found it difficult to get into it in the same way. Like a mystery film I kept examining the film for evidence and found the situation betrays itself. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I still admire it a great deal. The digital photography is sublime, and Binoche is terrific. I think many years down the line historians will make her out to be the greatest performer to ever appear in front of the camera. It may sound like hyperbole but I really believe it. The things this woman can do with her face are amazing. She would have been fabulous in silent movies. She’s also great at delivering lines, and without giving away my interpretation of the film the great material is the quarrels that this couple shares. This is a terrific script. It balances three different languages—English, French, and Italian—which Binoche can speak perfectly. There is a great exchange between Binoche and the proprietress of a small café. The proprietress assumes James is her husband, and the woman gives Binoche a reasonable speech about what husbands, even bad ones, give their wives.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I feel I must say a bit about how I saw the picture. I sensed a great deal of hostility in Binoche’s voice early on towards James. This is when I began to suspect things aren’t as they appear. At first I was made uncomfortable by her forward, angry speech. It is not at all how people behave to strangers and I felt embarrassed for her. But James seems a willing listener. Neither backs down on their beliefs and yet they never once put an end to their union. I think something more is going on, something more complex than are they strangers or are they married, but a saving grace of the picture is its ambiguity. It also makes it more of a puzzle, and it distracts somewhat from the generally brilliant experience it is to watch Binoche’s and Shimell’s performances.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Certified Copy (2010)</div><div class="MsoNormal">(a.k.a. Copie conforme)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Abbas Kiarostami</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writer: Abbas Kiarostami</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Juliette Binoche and William Shimell</div><div class="MsoNormal">France</div><div class="MsoNormal">In French, English and Italian</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 106 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i>Certified Copy</i> is currently available On Demand from Comcast and other service providers. It should be released on DVD by IFC in the near future.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020773/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1020773/</a></div>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-1873863992643226172011-05-21T02:55:00.000-04:002011-06-05T02:50:58.910-04:00Birds, The (1963)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zYXshMNoVRk/TddfOQcxjoI/AAAAAAAAAE8/Oik9nkRj1LU/s1600/birds.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-zYXshMNoVRk/TddfOQcxjoI/AAAAAAAAAE8/Oik9nkRj1LU/s320/birds.jpg" width="226" /></a></div><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i> begins like a sitcom, or at least like a low-rent TV project from the 60s. We’re introduced to the pretty girl, Melanie Daniels, played by Hitchcock’s final cool blonde Tippi Hedren, as she is kept waiting for a pair of birds from a bird shop. A handsome, mysterious man who knows all about her plays a prank, sort of payback for Melanie’s infamous practical jokes. The man is Mitch, a lawyer, and Melanie is a playgirl with a rich newspaper tycoon father. She buys a pair of love birds for Mitch’s sister, Cathy, and secretly brings them to Mitch’s family home in Bodega Bay, California. Their playful banter is disrupted by a swooping seagull who takes a peck out of Melanie. We meet Mitch’s mother, Lydia, who would disapprove of any woman Mitch brings home. Just ask the town’s schoolteacher, Annie. When Mitch’s father died, he broke off their relationship, and she moved to Bodega Bay just to remain close. That was four years ago, and she and Lydia are now friends. It seems Lydia hates the idea of being abandoned. Melanie and Annie become accidental friends when Melanie lies to Mitch, insisting she was coming to Bodega Bay to visit her old college chum. Annie’s name she got from the general store.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Ordinarily in a Hitchcock film, this material would be the real story, and indeed it is in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i>. The bird attacks are merely the MacGuffin, but there is a superficial quality to this film. The characters are thinly sketched and merely archetypes. Mitch is the strong handsome lead, Melanie is Hitchcock’s heroine, the character through which the story will unfold; Lydia is a dominating Hitchcockian mother, selfish, violent even, and Cathy is the innocence that was intended to really jab at the audience once the horror starts. Annie is the only human being in the cast. We can understand her pain. She sticks close to the man she loves because that is all she can have. This character is similar to Norman Bates and Marion Crane from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Psycho</i>. The others are quite frankly boring, and the performers can’t save them.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">A weakness of the picture is usually something that saves Hitchcock’s subversive characters: the actors. Here the two leads are a letdown. Tippi Hedren is fun to watch. She’s beautiful but not typically so. There’s an odd quality to her. Her voice is high-pitched, raspy, and awkward, and as a movie personality she does well. She’s very curious, though. Sometimes she delivers her lines well, other times, more often than not, she is unconvincing. I can’t really fault Rod Taylor as Mitch. I just wasn’t interested in him. Hitchcock should have chosen Rock Hudson, someone who looked younger, more boyish and possessed more charisma. Mitch and Melanie’s relationship was not organic. It felt forced. I wonder why disasters are always aphrodisiacs in the movies. There’s an embarrassing scene on the sand where we learn something of Melanie’s back story. We find out her playgirl days have made her a mature woman, that the lifestyle ruins reputations and she is devoting herself to good causes now. We also learn of her deadbeat mother, and partly due to Hedren’s delivery but mostly to the script, the sentiment is false and truly laughable. It’s predicable, and Hitchcock is too good to be predicable but there you have it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The supporting performers are fine. Jessica Tandy chews the screen in subtle ways as the mother. Of course Suzanne Pleshette is fantastic. She brings a rare quality to a Hitchcock role: grittiness. Annie is a real woman: attractive but not glamorous, frank, honest, and a little bit depressed. I personally found Veronica Cartwright very effective for her generation. I guess I must say this because when I saw the film with an audience, everyone was laughing at the portrayal of all the kids. It’s just too old-fashioned for modern viewers. I may be being a bit grumpy but why then were these people in the theater? They know the film is old—grow up!</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Actually I was very upset when I left the theater. There was too much laughter during the screening. An old couple sitting next to me said that the great thing about seeing a film like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i> with an audience was hearing the nervous laughter during the tension-filled scenes. I did not contradict them but they were out of touch. No one respects the movies anymore. I saw the film at the Coolidge Corner Theater in Brookline, MA, the Boston area’s most well known independent theater. Their programming is often banal, showing the more ordinary independent stuff. I’ve noticed that the audiences typical of Coolidge are kind of would-be movie snobs, the sort who prefers to drop various names and titles during discussions but who have no true understanding or appreciation for the cinema. There was a lot of laughter during the area premiere screening of the complete <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Metropolis</i> and there was laughter at <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i>. Moments like the attack at the birthday party. There’s a shot of a little girl face down on the grass as a seagull pecks at her head. I didn’t find the image funny. There was one moment where the film shut the audience up. It’s probably the most well-known shot in the film, where Lydia wanders into her friend’s house and finds him dead with his eyes plucked out. You could feel the audience was disturbed. It was a thick atmosphere, but people still found things to laugh at. Perhaps the idea of birds run amuck just isn’t believable. I grant you that while walking down the streets of Boston it is ridiculous to imagine that the common pigeon will start attacking. But this is the movies—this is a Hitchcock movie! Suspend your disbelief otherwise stay home.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The moment I expected laughter (and was actually dreading because I found the constant laughs inappropriate) was met with silence. It’s the semi famous moment when Melanie watches as a trail of spilled gasoline catches fire. Hitchcock chose a strange series of parallel action, where the shot of the encroaching fire is disrupted by freeze-frame images of Hedren with her mouth agape. The problem with it is that her shots are held too long and the people behind her move at normal speed. The silence from the audience is probably due to the very palpable scene Hitchcock had staged. It is one of many of the film’s later moments that are filled with tension and dread.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i> was ahead of its time in one way: it is the first of the modern-day disaster pictures. In fact, I found parallels with two very popular and effective ones: <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Night of the Living Dead</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jurassic Park</i>. Spielberg’s movie is reminiscent because, like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i>, it has innovative special effects and is terrifying about Earth-bound creatures attacking humans (granted dinosaurs are long extinct), but both also lack seriously developed characters, leaving the only points of interest with the attacking animals. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Night of the Living Dead</i> is a more apt companion film, and it is easy to see that George Romero took the structure of Hitchcock’s picture and many of the ideas as well. In both films there are languorous openings that suggest a different kind of story will be told instead of the one we’re given. Both feature characters terrified by the danger outside their home, boarding up the place, and then turning on each other once the terror becomes unbearable. They both also succeed as brilliantly claustrophobic and downright depressing exercises, though Romero’s film is much more shocking and sophisticated. Though it was made only 5 years later, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Night</i> was made in a different time in American film. The<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> Birds</i> begins carefree, with hope and promise for its characters but all joy is robbed by birds.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Where Hitchcock succeeds is also where he fails. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i> was a film Hitchcock almost never made. After <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Psycho</i>, another accidental project, Hitchcock was developing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marnie</i> as a return vehicle for Grace Kelly. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i> was made instead because Kelly regretfully turned down <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Marnie</i>, and with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Psycho’s</i> unbridled success the director turned out another devastating horror film. It feels to me that Hitchcock gave up with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i>. He was cashing in on the audience’s expectation of his moniker but he failed to find the key to his success: a tight script and convincing characters. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i> never feels like a work of cinema. It feels like a cynical exercise, even though it is technically well made and possesses some great cinematic moments from The Master.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The film is innovative too in its sound design. It is very effective, and apparently much of the credit goes to composer Bernard Herrmann. Herrmann is the greatest, most important composer of the 20<sup>th</sup> Century, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i> exists without a note of music. The composer, Hitchcock’s creative partner for nearly a decade, convinced the director that the film would work better with only the sounds of birds. In comes a machine called the Mixtur Trautonium. Along with the Theremin, it was one of the early electronic musical instruments, and this machine, a precursor to the synthesizer, created the shrieks for the birds. I noted, however, that we seldom hear actual birds in the attacking scenes. I recognized cats and chimpanzees, but in the chaos these were believable sounds. In fact, the sounds probably caused much of the chaos. Hitchcock must have been appreciative as Herrmann received onscreen credit as “Sound Consultant”, but this may be equally due to their friendship. Another nice bit of sound is during the final scene, the massive shot of the exterior of the house littered with waiting birds. There is the sound of wind, of pressure, something almost subliminal that suggests unease. This reminded me of the great electronic score for Tarkovsky’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Solaris.</i> There was a problem, though, and it might have been unique to the print I saw, but the bird attack scenes were way too loud. The dialogue and other scenes were at a normal volume, but the frightening scenes could have been turned down.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I do regret that Herrmann did not write music for the film. I think it would have helped cement the film, made it tenser and its characters seem less simple. The example to go by is Hitchcock’s own <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Torn Curtain</i>. Herrmann wrote a score but Hitchcock rejected it. The film with its current score is good but like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i> weakly sketched. Herrmann’s score would have shaded in the characters, and I feel he could have only helped the film. His and Hitchcock’s collaboration is legendary, and together they created the best American films of the 50s and 60s. One artist fed off another, and their work is probably the definitive example of a director / composer relationship. If nothing else, Herrmann’s score for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i> would give us one more Herrmann score.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I’ve never been impressed with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i>. When I first saw it in high school I felt cheated by the ending. Now I accept it and even think it’s the only way the film can end, but as a film it does not succeed. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds</i> showed Hitchcock failing by clinging to a formula that made him very wealthy in 1960. While there are great moments of terror, the characters in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Birds </i>are not compelling enough to carry us through scene to scene. Because it is Hitchcock we stay, but you take away the birds and there is no film left.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Birds, The (1963)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Alfred Hitchcock</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writer: Evan Hunter</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Tippi Hedren, Rod Taylor, Jessica Tandy and Suzanne Pleshette</div><div class="MsoNormal">USA</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 119 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056869/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0783240236" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000A1INJE" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00466H3I6" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0783235666" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0385418132" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0671604295" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0060988274" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0231126956" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-63255588312290492482011-05-14T11:40:00.000-04:002011-05-14T11:42:26.510-04:00My Man Godfrey (1936)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s-S4Sf1EOB0/Tc6f9nPLvEI/AAAAAAAAAE4/rRGhy2M_Sno/s1600/my+man+godfrey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-s-S4Sf1EOB0/Tc6f9nPLvEI/AAAAAAAAAE4/rRGhy2M_Sno/s320/my+man+godfrey.jpg" width="226" /></a></div>It’s very easy to tell when a film was made in 1930’s Hollywood. Stylistically the lighting is very flat, the camera movement is limited, mainly photographed in long or medium shots to give the feeling of a play, and the characters are dressed in the latest fashions, so sheik for their time that today they stand out. Also these films, less so as the decade went on, contain searing social commentary. This is an adequate distillation of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Man Godfrey</i>, a beloved screwball comedy more in the tradition of drama, though the characters are oddballs and the women speak at a mile a minute.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Godfrey is a “forgotten man”, one of the homeless living in New York Dump 32. One night a group of society people come to him asking for his help for their scavenger hunt. You see, the two women need a forgotten man to come back to a posh hotel for them to win the game. As Irene Bullock, played by Carole Lombard, notes, one does not win a prize but merely the honor of winning. Godfrey ruthlessly turns down Irene’s sister Cornelia, someone whose very name describes her witchy snobbery, but he helps out the friendlier and perhaps more naive Irene. He wins her the game and she feels so indebted to him that she gives him the job of the Bullock family’s new butler.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The high jinks or at least the narrative takes off from here, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Man Godfrey</i> is seldom laugh-out-loud funny. Most of the comedy comes from how out of touch the Bullock women are, and there are some genuine laughs. But the film feels more like a depression-era fable, about a spoilt heir (spoiler—Godfrey) giving up wealth to communicate with the downtrodden, finding with those who struggle a kinship and honesty. It is easy to see why when looking, say, at Irene’s mother Angelica; she keeps a protégé called Carlo who is nothing more than a freeloader, accepting insults from Mr. Bullock as long as he does not have to work for money. In fact the very word causes him pain. Angelica, or Mrs. Bullock, is a daffy, clueless woman who does not take into consideration how much money their family wastes, or that her husband constantly tries to mention his business troubles. This talk upsets poor Carlo.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">I will again admit to a bias against comedies. I simply prefer dramas, but the screwball genre is interesting. My textbook example is <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">His Girl Friday</i>, which is one of my favorite films. That film is wall to wall laughs, and it gave me the impression that screwball comedies are farce and quick gags. An online search regarding the genre informed me that it really is indefinable. I like “Sex comedy without the sex”, as defined by critic Andrew Sarris. The few screwball comedies I remember involve courtship, usually the woman directly vying for the love of the handsome, befuddled man. They are innocent fun steeped in the moral traditions of another era. In fact, at one point <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Man Godfrey</i> played more like an early 1900s piece than a more modern and less moralistic 1930s. The 1930s of course were a very controversial time for American film, with censorship becoming a reality by 1934. That the film is less comedic is not a fault of the picture. As far as it goes in screwball territory it succeeds, but the film is about the carelessness of the idle rich.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">William Powell’s Godfrey seems most out of place in a screwball comedy. I think it is his character that blurs the lines of genre. He is world-weary and so sure of himself. He minds the social hierarchy and is careful to remain distant but compliant with the at-odds Bullock sisters. Irene loves him and Cornelia is after revenge for his initial snub. Godfrey, as he says to an old friend, was not equipped to handle struggle in life. His rich upbringing left him child-like. The adult world disillusioned him. The film feels at times something like a Frank Capra film, or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Make Way for Tomorrow</i>, with its biting sociopolitical observations. I have to say Godfrey’s character distracted me a bit. Not only is he never meant to be funny, his character seems above the film, as if he merely watches the Bullocks and judges them. This is in fact what Godfrey does, but as such he belongs in another film. Cary Grant never played a screwball character like this. He was often the male lead and he was always as sharp and odd as the women he was up against—Katharine Hepburn, Rosalind Russle and Irene Dunne. The fault is not Carole Lombard who is very good here; nor is it actor William Powell, but Godfrey’s.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">There is nothing wrong with the film. I suppose I liked it. It held my attention totally from the fascinating opening titles sequence, but I must admit I was underwhelmed. The story was not exactly predictable but the scenarios and resolution were not surprising. That didn’t bother me, though. What saves the film is the talent. Carole Lombard does some of her finer work here, maybe because her character is more interesting than some of her other roles. Irene is a girl who knows what she wants and can’t accept or understand why her feelings can’t be met by others, in this case Godfrey. She is so good that I think a great compliment to her is that I recognized where Lucille Ball got her comic persona. Alice Brady plays Mrs. Bullock and steals the show.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Perhaps I need to devour more screwball comedies in order to appreciate <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">My Man Godfrey</i> more. I haven’t seen enough even for my own liking. I don’t know if it’s necessary because I did have a reaction to the picture, a lukewarm one, but because the film exists in a time and genre that makes it an historical piece of work—a definitive 1930s screwball comedy—a wider understanding of the niche genre might broaden its appeal.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">My Man Godfrey (1936)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: Gregory La Cava</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writers: Eric Hatch and Morrie Ryskind<br />
Original novel by Eric Hatch</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: William Powell, Carole Lombard and Alice Brady</div><div class="MsoNormal">USA</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 94 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028010/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0028010/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B00005EBSE" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B001BSBBDK" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B004T8CEYE" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0786411066" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0810844249" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0521002095" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0306808323" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0879100419" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe><br />
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<i>My Man Godfrey</i> is available for free viewing at The Internet Archive:<br />
<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/MyManGodfrey1936">http://www.archive.org/details/MyManGodfrey1936</a>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-46447599208706730912011-05-09T23:36:00.000-04:002011-07-02T20:24:44.263-04:00Woman Under the Influence, A (1974)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m32qTcmUGME/TcixmmRQaJI/AAAAAAAAAE0/BXHMPlA2Df4/s1600/woman+under.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m32qTcmUGME/TcixmmRQaJI/AAAAAAAAAE0/BXHMPlA2Df4/s320/woman+under.jpg" width="232" /></a></div>I didn’t know what to say after watching <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Woman Under the Influence.</i> I was stunned, silent. There were times when I simply couldn’t look at the screen. Watching its characters was intrusive and so painfully embarrassing that I felt safer with my hand shielding my eyes.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">The film begins with a housewife, Mabel, sending her three kids away for the night with her mom. She has planned an evening together alone with her husband, but Nick calls and cannot make it. He works for the city and a water mane has burst. Mabel is upset, passionately so, and checks into a bar and brings home a stranger. Nick insists to his co-workers that Mabel is not crazy, and because we’ve only just begun to witness their life together we side with Nick. But it becomes very clear that something is wrong with Mabel, and John Cassavetes’ brilliant film depicts a series of episodes or moments in their life together that are beyond realistic and probably the only honest and horrifying scenes of mental illness ever shot. </div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">We all leave the house and leave the secrets inside. The outdoors provides a temporary escape, and it is possible that those who suffer such fates are very enthusiastic in their public selves to overcompensate for the pain at home. This is Nick. The first time the screen became unbearable was during the long breakfast / dinner scene where he brings his coworkers home, possibly to prove to Mabel that he did work and ease the tension of her mind. Mabel has just woken up from her night with the strange man, and after a dazy introduction with Nick’s coworker friends, Mabel and they make a huge spaghetti meal. This is one of the best scenes I think I’ve ever seen in an American movie. I can only compare it to the extended Christmas family meal from Ingmar Bergman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fanny and Alexander</i>. This early morning dinner scene continues as if we were a spectator at the table. Cassavetes’ direction is relentless; we get intimate in the harmonious moments, like when the unstable Mabel asks each of the coworkers their name. She and Nick share some very odd personal glances. It is obvious that something is going to go wrong. When he lashes out at her for insisting a little too much to dance with one of them, the dense, terse mood was so recognizable from real life that I had to force myself to turn back to the screen. It’s a moment where film ceases to be a series of flat images on a screen and where it becomes the present reality.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Gena Rowlands gives one of the best performances I have ever seen. I won’t be able to express myself the way I want because I am still trying to comprehend it, but I was dumbfounded by her focus and concentration. I won’t describe it further. Such things need to be experienced individually, and if I oversell it the performance can’t possibly live up to my promise. The expectation would be too great. But <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I</i> could not believe what I was seeing. I will say that Ellen Burstyn winning for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore</i> falls in line with the gross negligence the Motion Picture Academy is historically famous for. Peter Falk is great too, and his performance is quite dangerous. I truly didn’t like his character, but I understood him.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Nick and Mabel’s relationship made sense to me, even though I hated that they are a couple. They seem to do so much wrong and yet I don’t think they could make it alone. Nick certainly couldn’t. He’s the kind of mutt that clings to out of loyalty, regardless of the damage he causes. Damage not just to Mabel but to their kids and to himself. He seems equally unstable. His temper is short, his force brash and violent. His insecurities and ignorance can help no one. Mabel has a clear illness, though I’m not sure how much of her illness stems from a chemical imbalance or is caused by the people around her. I will admit I know nothing about true mental illness, but her parents, her father especially in one frightening later scene, her mother-in-law, herself and her family can never work harmoniously. Everyone seems to know the right thing to do and everyone has a unique way of setting things right, but no one listens. Mabel, who cannot focus like the average person, is treated like a patient in need but everybody else gets away with doing her in. Worst is Nick, who may have a reason for his condition. His reason is Mabel’s lack of stability, but he should be man enough to relinquish some control. When he tries to help he sometimes hurts, but there are moments where these two seem to function together: the breakfast scene, or the night when Mabel returns from an extended stay in the hospital. His direct temper, his lack of coddling her, seems to set her right for short bursts, and though the film ends with them tiding up, actually and metaphorically, they are still going to have the same problems.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">John Cassavetes really needs to be commended for his screenplay. Though his work feels very improvisational, actors Falk and Rowlands both agree that Cassavetes was a writer first. He writes genuine scenes. He writes long scenes, and he lets them develop through natural dialogue and then refuses to let go once the ugliness begins. Most filmmakers would not show things so clearly because the effect it has on an audience isn’t pretty. This isn’t a fun movie to sit through. It was excruciating. But it’s also brilliant, and while I was severely depressed watching it, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Woman Under the Influence</i> was simply too good to shut off. I remember four or five really long scenes, the dinner scene mentioned before, a spontaneous party Mabel throws her kids which is disastrous, a visit from Mabel’s doctor, Nick taking his children to the beach once their mom has been committed, and finally her return home, which is long and hopeless. An average film would have some kind of big statement. Either Mabel’s treatment would have cured her or she would take her own life. Sometimes life is most terrifying when things simply don’t change. People sometimes are beyond help, and a developed society cannot put an end to Mabel’s life. She has to live with it.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">These are my initial impressions after one viewing. It is the first John Cassavetes film I’ve seen, and I’m eager to see more. I would also like to revisit my thoughts with greater distance. I feel I have not yet been lifted from the experience and my words are failing me.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">One thing I do know is that I don’t want to see this movie ever again. This is a knee-jerk reaction because as I write this I know this is a film I will study forever. But the experience is so overwhelming that I don’t think that anytime soon I could handle it again. It is a force. It’s not a motion picture. This is a living creature. It’s not bound by anything.</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">Woman Under the Influence, A (1974)</div><div class="MsoNormal">Director: John Cassavetes</div><div class="MsoNormal">Writer: John Cassavetes</div><div class="MsoNormal">Stars: Gena Rowland, Peter Falk and Fred Draper</div><div class="MsoNormal">USA</div><div class="MsoNormal">In English</div><div class="MsoNormal">Runtime: 155 minutes</div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><div class="MsoNormal">IMDB link:</div><div class="MsoNormal"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072417/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0072417/</a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br />
</div><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0012TIWTY" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=6304864159" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0002JP2OS" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0764005332" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1401360130" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0006TZPXC" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0521381193" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=0967417007" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3638525347265011815.post-3986881926356564052011-05-04T21:33:00.000-04:002011-07-03T10:37:59.645-04:00Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The (1964, Parapluies de Cherbourg, Les)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rlSZANL-XS4/TcH_Nk44meI/AAAAAAAAAEs/-DODsApOZl8/s1600/Umbrellas+of+Cherbourg.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-rlSZANL-XS4/TcH_Nk44meI/AAAAAAAAAEs/-DODsApOZl8/s320/Umbrellas+of+Cherbourg.jpg" width="209" /></a></div>I have been watching a lot of musicals in recent weeks, a lot which star Catherine Deneuve. I always saw the genre as being artificial, sappy, and always happy, but I’m discovering many musicals are quite sad. <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i> is sad in a sappy way that is uniquely cinematic. Descriptions of the film tell of its beautiful qualities and these same qualities from its leading lady, but Deneuve is seldom happy in <i>Cherbourg</i>.<br />
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</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Deneuve plays Geneviève. Her widowed mother runs a poor umbrella shop, but Geneviève is too happy with her handsome beau, Guy. They cannot wait to marry but Geneviève’s mom sees no future for the young couple. Guy is drafted and he and Geneviève make love, and naturally she is with child while he is off fighting the French war against Algeria. Geneviève is melancholic with Guy’s departure and her loving but selfish mother doesn’t make her ordeal easier by encouraging Geneviève’s relationship with a handsome young jewelry salesman named Roland Cassard. Though the child is not his he wishes still to marry Geneviève. With the passing time and the infrequent letters from her true love, Geneviève decides to marry the rich Roland lest all chances of her happiness vanish.</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I must admit my recent viewing of <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i> was my first. I had not seen it before seeing Christophe Honoré’s <i>Love Songs</i>. I was completely unaware of how much Honoré was influenced by <i>Cherbourg</i>, so much so that I can only deduce that the film was a major film for the New Wave in 1964. Jacques Demy, the film’s gifted director, was a breed of New Wave filmmaker unrelated to Cahiers du cinéma, the movie review magazine that is remembered as the birthplace of the popular New Wave directors. Demey, with wife Agnès Varda and the great Alain Resnais, was part of a revolutionary contingency of New Wave filmmakers known as The Left Bank. Their films were more radical than The Right Bank, or Cahiers crowd, and often less successful. Possibly because of <i>Cherbourg’s </i>popular success the film has been separated from the memory of the Nouvelle vague. It’s a trivial concern because the film is so wonderful, but it is still interesting.</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Like <i>Love Songs</i> (or I should say <i>Love Songs</i> taking inspiration from <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i>) the film is divided into three acts, each act a unique section in its characters’ lives. The first part, The Departure, shows us how much Guy and Geneviève are in love, and how time is always against those in love, not just in the face of upcoming events but in its concept to quantify the minutes, hours, seconds that go by and are gone forever. Love can never be enough, and in one way <i>Cherbourg</i> is a film for young people. The film screams of youth and beauty and promise, of children becoming adults in the face of difficulty. In another way, the film is for such adults, those who know that the promise of young love is irrational and misleading. Geneviève’s mom knows that if her daughter marries Guy their future will be difficult. Geneviève knows they would live modestly but if they love they will be happy. Young lovers never consider bills. Love doesn’t pay in reality. The film’s second part, The Absence, focuses solely on Geneviève as she deals with her pregnancy, hopeful when receiving Guy’s letters, panicked when not. Roland is a handsome guy, nice too and infatuated with Geneviève. I would go so far as call him a pushover. Geneviève makes some serious decisions in the face of the facts.</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">One at first thinks of her actions as cold and of betraying her and Guy’s love, but the French have always had such keen insight into human behavior and ritual. At least their films have, and if <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i> was a real 50s Hollywood musical, Geneviève would have defied her mother and ignored Roland, but an unwed young girl expecting with the father countries away has few options for the future.</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The final part, Guy’s return, is the saddest section in the film, perhaps because it hits a nerve in modern times. After serving his country, Guy comes home to find his love gone, married to another man raising his own child. There is no place for him in an ever changing Cherbourg, and he wallows in drinking and cheep women, his vital time passing him by. With our country at war for the last 10 years, it is painful to watch a veteran so short-changed in very honest ways. Nino Castelunuovo, the actor who plays Guy, is just terrific. Handsome, Italian, sensitive and charismatic, he really makes the last act of <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i> work. I expected to be wooed by Catherine Deneuve, but Castelunuovo was a pleasant surprise. That he clings to his invalid aunt’s young nurse in the face of his own loneliness is the ultimate tragedy. Though the film’s final shot suggests true happiness in his new life, I got the sense that Madeleine, the nurse and his new wife, will never be loved the way she loves Guy. She is his consolation prize, pretty as she is, but Guy will always be inevitably comparing her to Geneviève. Their relationship can stand for many. I feel sorry for their son, who when he grows up might learn the truth, that his parents’ love isn’t what society says marriage should be. I understand it’s only a movie but good movies make you forget.</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I wasn’t impressed by the music. Though composer Michel Legrand’s music is beautiful, I didn’t care that every line of dialogue is sung. It feels too much like operetta. I wasn’t bothered or turned off by it but I will say that for the first 10 minutes I did consciously notice it. There also isn’t a “great” song to be remembered afterwards like in a traditional musical structure. There is one bittersweet melody that becomes Guy’s and Geneviève’s love tune that is worth humming, but the continuous song, separated mostly by the act breaks, seldom with the changing scene, isn’t what I’m used to with musicals. But don’t let that dissuade you.</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">All the beautiful comments made throughout the years regarding <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i> are warranted, but I wish its memory recalled the bittersweet quality this film has. A musical’s ability to capture the trials of life, sad and true, is an event to behold.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Umbrellas of Cherbourg, The (1964)</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">(a.k.a. Parapluies de Cherbourg, Les)</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Director: Jacques Demy</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Writer: Jacques Demy</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Music: Michel Legrand</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Stars: Catherine Deneuve, Nino Castelnuovo and Anne Vernon</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">France</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">In French</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Runtime: 91 minutes</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The best DVD edition of <i>The Umbrellas of Cherbourg</i> is the UK 2-disc set, which features a feature-length documentary by Demy's wife, Agnes Varda. Purchase at Amazon (UK):</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Umbrellas-Cherbourg-Special-DVD/dp/B000AMSSCK/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1304558757&sr=1-1">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Umbrellas-Cherbourg-Special-DVD/dp/B000AMSSCK/ref=sr_1_1?s=dvd&ie=UTF8&qid=1304558757&sr=1-1</a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">IMDB link:</div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058450/">http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058450/</a></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Various Amazon links, including multiple DVDs, a VHS, the documentary <i>The World of Jacques Demy</i>, and Legrand's soundtrack:</div></div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0001BMLUA" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=1572521783" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0001BMLUK" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=8388164449" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0000CDL9I" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B0000074OE" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe> <iframe frameborder="0" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=inthereaofcin-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=B000B5XSSA" style="height: 240px; width: 120px;"></iframe></div>Joseph Pellegrinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/07197415164473459582noreply@blogger.com1