Telluride Film Festival 1991

 

Twenty years ago this weekend I was part of the Telluride Film Festival Student Program. I wrote an essay on 'McCabe and Mrs Miller' which was good enough to get me accepted to the festival. [Confession; the student program was less competitive then, plus I attended a college in the area]

I had been to the festival for the first time in 1990 so I was excited to return for the beauty of the area as well as the selection of films and the friendly crowds that gathered each Labor Day weekend in the spectacular town of Telluride.

The festival, then [the eighteenth one], was much, much smaller then than it is now. However, in 1991 they expanded the festival by adding a new large location that they called The Strand, which was a High School gymnasium that they had converted to a theater.

There was no gondola, therefore no Chuck Jones theater. And the Galaxy theater was not there yet either. Instead what they had was a Quonset hut called The Community Center, which was in the same vicinity. The other theaters, still there today, were The Opera House, the Nugget, the Mason's Hall and of course the Abel Gance Outdoor theater.  What was especially notable was the festival was more compact then. When the noon seminars came around each day there were no other events. So people either went to the seminar or went to lunch. And, of course, the lines for each movie were shorter.

In those days they only had 30 movies that played over the four days, the cost of the festival pass was $325.00 [individual tickets per movie were $7.00 or $10.00 for the Opera House] and they had a federal grant for the National Endowment of the Arts. The main corporate sponsor was Premiere magazine.

That year the tributes went to:
Nature's Filmmakers - An interesting cross section saluting various 'nature filmmakers'. That year the 'Trials of Life' series was to be shown on PBS.
Sven Nykvist - The famed cinematographer for many of Ingmar Bergman films. That year he had a film of his own titled 'The Ox'.
Jodie Foster - After 30 years of actiung she had her first directed film there titled 'Little Man Tate'.

The rest of the line-up was the usual interesting cross section of films that Telluride - like any quality festival - was known for. But in those days Telluride was not necessarily known for big premieres - although they had a few every so often. They were known more for the art of old and new films that the cinefiles out there could appreciate.

In 1991 the guest director was Laurie Anderson the eclectic musician who can only be described as unique. She is both funny and wise and is great at weaving intricate and interesting stories, which she did when she came to talk to us in the Student Program.

This was only the second year they had a guest director and so rather than the customary five film selection they have now established there were only two films. She chose a terrific Mexican drama titled 'Danzon' and a selection of short video works titled 'New Video Art'.

Here were the film selections that year:
FEATURE FILMS [NEW]
A Captive In The Land - John Berry
Danzon - Maria Novaro
Dogfight - Nancy Savocca
The Double Life of Veronique - Krysztof Kieslowski
Hors La Vie - Maroun Bagdadi
I Want to Fly [aka Volere volare] - Maurizio Nichetti
Let Him Have It - Peter Medak
Little Man Tate - Jodie Foster
New Video Art - various short experimental videos
The Ox [aka Oxen]- Sven Nykvist
Prospero's Books - Peter Greenaway
The Rapture - Michael Tolkin
Rambling Rose - Martha Coolidge
Sanctus / Lyrical Nitrate - Experimental and reconfigured silent films
Scream of Stone - Werner Herzog
A Tale Of The Unextinguished Moon - Yevgeny Tsimbal
A Woman's Tale - Paul Cox
Raise The Red Lantern - Zhang Yimou

FEATURE FILMS [REVIVAL]
3:10 To Yuma - As part of a mini tribute to Glenn Ford and Elmore Leonard
Lucky Star - Frank Borzage 1929 film [rediscovered]
Prix de Beaute - Louise Brooks film from 1931
Ride The High Country - Sam Peckinpah film from 1962

DOCUMENTARIES
Anima Mundi - Godfrey Reggio
Empire Of The Air - Ken Burns documentary of radio
Hearts of Darkness - Documentary on Apocalypse Now by George Hickenlooper
The Other Eye - Documentary on GW Pabst
The Tourist - a personal diary documentary by Robb Moss
Wild By Law - Doumentary on the Wilderness Act in the US

The closest Oscar contending film was Rambling Rose, which garnered nominations for Laura Dern and Diane Ladd. In a fair world Sheila Florance from A Woman's Tale would have been nominated for her brave role of an elderly woman dying of cancer, which in fact was really what was happening to her when she made the film.

Raise The Red Lantern and The Double Life of Veronique are today classic foreign language films. In the case of Veronique many had not yet heard of Kieslowski. This was his first film outside of Poland.

Hearts of Darkness became the standard for films about filmmaking but the other documentaries quietly came and went as was the case with documentaries until a few years ago,

A good number of films never really saw distribution in the US including A Tale Of The Unextinguished Moon, Hors la Vie and The Tourist. Many had minor releases such as A Woman's Take, Oxen, I Want to Fly and Danzon.

Highlights I can recall:
* The Lucky Star screening at the Opera House with a musical score by Adrian Johnston was transcendent. The film had not been seen, much less heard of, for over 60 years so no one knew what to expect. But what a discovery. Most of the audience were in tears if not because of the subject matter [a Borzage weepy about a man in a wheelchair who learns to walk again] but because of the beautiful score by Johnston.

* Ken Burns addressing the students. As I learned, it became customary for Ken Burns to address the staff before the festival began. He brings an eloquent and friendly charm that wins everyone over to his way of thinking. He got us excited not just about the festival but about filmmaking and the valuable service a good filmmaker [especially a documentary one] can do for the arts and society.

* Watching Werner Herzog run down the mountain after the Labor Day picnic. In those days the Labor Day picnic was held at the top of the mountain [see photo at top]. The main way to get there was to take the chair lift. Once the picnic and the seminar were finished people get back in line and ride down the mountain. Werner saw the line was too long so rather than wait [which technically he did not have to do] he decided to just head off straight down the mountain. Me, being a mountain runner, badly wanted to follow him down the mountain. However, I was already on the chairlift descending to town. So I was able to watch him tear down the grass, weed, and rocky trails. When I got to the bottom I asked him how he enjoyed his route and he said he enjoyed it and had to do it because he wanted to get the the screening of Raise The Red Lantern.

* Meeting Irene Jacob at the Labor Day picnic was a delight too. As is often the case in Telluride it is fairly easy to approach a star and say hello. Irene Jacob was easy going and spoke to some of the students about The Double Life of Veronique. She pointed out to me that the film is edited differently in the two parts of the film. The first part in Poland is analytical while the second part in France was more poetic. She explained it all but it was hard to concentrate on what she way saying. After all she is the same age as me and very attractive.

Telluride has a great film festival and I returned to it for many years from 1992 to 2008. 1991 was special because of many of the people I met in an educational type setting. Of course, it is only 4 or 5 days of film. But it is intense and exciting. I am still in touch with four friends I met that weekend. Which is about as many people I am still in touch with from college.

Monroe calling....

She looks as though she is on an invisble cell phone.

"Hello, Arthur..."

Best of 1974

A list of some of the best films of 1974 [some of which were not released in the US until later].

Chinatown
We All Loved Each Other So Much [released in the US in 1977]
Going Places [Les valseuses]
Ali Fear Eats the Soul
Bring Me The Head of Alfredo Garcia
The Phantom of Liberty
Celine and Julie Go Boating [released in the US in 1978]
Lancelot of the Lake [released in the US in 1975]
California Split
Lacombe, Lucien
Godfather Part II

Antonioni fog

I'm seeing the beginning of a pattern here.

Nim

Project Nim

The documentary Project Nim is about a bunch of humans who acted like wild animals in order to get a wild animal to be more human.

Okay, there is more to it than that but it is quite evident that the people who initiated the project - to teach a chimpanzee sign language - went about it the wrong way. It started when they forcibly tore him from his mother's arms when he was two weeks old. His journey from there was full of adventure, delight, destruction, sadness and sorrow. But not just for the chimp; for the people involved as well.

In 1973 a scientist named Herbert Terrace had a theory that a chimpanzee could learn sign language and communicate with humans in that way. They took a baby chimpanzee - who they named Nim Chimsky - and moved him in with a human family who raised him as one of their own. But the family did not attempt to teach him sign language enough so Terrace moved Nim out of the house to an estate with a young eager teacher. From there many other trainers and teachers came along to raise and teach Nim. But not much progress was made - although Nim did manage to learn around 100 signs as well as bite and scratch the teachers enough to make the sessions challenging for everyone involved.

After five years Nim could no longer be part of the human world because he was getting too big and strong. He posed a threat. Plus, it seems his learning days were over. But what happened next is really what the documentary is about. Essentially, Herbert Terrace had no real plan other than to just hand Nim to a chimpanzee farm [of sorts]. But, clearly, to do that to a chimp who was solely raised by humans was a tad inhumane. It got worse for Nim.

James Marsh, who directed the terrific, award winning Man On Wire and the fascinating and dark Wisconsin Death Trip here taps into his heartfelt side and for the most part succeeds. The movie, if anything, becomes a good place to start a debate about animal testing - which,  if done right, can yield important and useful results. But it is a debate that is very much with us today.

Of interest, no one in the documentary mentions that Nim was named after Noam Chomsky who is a highly influential linguist. And because of that they also don't get into the core of Chomsky's [at the time] controversial theory, which is that language is essentially an instinct. It is not something that can be taught. Humans are born with an innate ability to speak human language. Chimps are not. They speak chimp language - if one can call it that. They can learn a code but not the essential syntax of human language. So the idea that you can bridge the gap between species - even if it were somehow easier to deal with a chimp's wild-nature attitude - is not really possible. At least not in the way the scientist or trainers believed it to be possible.

Of course, it took Terrace's experiments to come to this conclusion.

This does not mean that Nim and his trainer/ teachers could not communicate or that there was not a strong bond. As is evident in the documentary these trainer /trainers had an emotional bond with Nim and he with them. So the documentary is in some ways a cautionary tale about how naïve the scientist was to pull Nim from his species, raise him among humans and then after five years throw him back to the chimpanzee world.

It's pretty easy to conclude that experiments and testing were not necessarily foolish but that the planning for how to end the project was.

Mont Blanc vittles

There are four books from the 19th century that I could find that begin with the title:
"A Narrative Of An Ascent To The Summit Of Mont Blanc...." followed by the year of the climb. One is from 1821, two are from 1827 and one is from 1830.

In the book by John Auldjo [in 1827] he provides a list of the provisions he and his group of a half dozen or so took for the two day ascent. Suffice it to say these are not the freeze dried, high energy light-weight snacks one would take today.

Our stock consisted of the following articles: twenty bottles of vin ordinaire; one bottle of champagne; one bottle and a half of vinegar; two bottles of brandy; one bottle of sirop de vinaigre; two large pieces of veal; two large pieces of mutton; six sausages; sixteen chickens; two large fowls; several loaves of bread; six lemons; sugar; a large quantity of cheese; raisins and French plums.

Letters from directors

Kubrick wanted it 1.1:66 and Lynch wanted the sound 3db louder than usual and a director of animation says watch those eye lines!

In a Field

Movies that feature posters [and a still] with one guy in a field.

Tree of Life

The Tree of Life, by Terrence Malick, is a serious film in a cynical time. It is a film that you have to either fully or partly embrace if you are to appreciate or even like it. Similar to the the films of Theo Angelopoulos or Alexander Sokurov this is a film that deals with big themes in an honest [even earnest] way and if you don't ride with them you may feel like turning away.

The film is not a typical narrative film. It is instead a cinematic poem that is comprised of a series of visual and aural moments and vignettes that flash by onscreen in the way that a memory might in the mind of someone who remembers their childhood with an acute clarity. [Critic Todd McCarthy likens it to a symphony].

Most all movies have poetic moments in which the filmmaker presents us with a montage that breaks away from the narrative to express a particular tone or to show time passing. It is a narrative technique that can infuse a movie with energy and distinction as well as give us a rest from the plot. The Tree of Life is a movie almost completely made up of such moments. That is both a good thing and somewhat of a challenge.

Good because [if anything] it lives up to the promise of the trailer. What I mean by that is there are many times we see a trailer that captures the best poetic and visually interesting moments of a film. But when we see those moments in the context of the film they seem almost banal. Not in the case of The Tree of Life. This is a movie that maintains the intoxicatingly splendid visuals and editing thrills from start to finish.

Somewhat of a challenge because the movie is like a high wire act in which the audience is the one on the high wire. And this begs the question, how long can most of us remain engaged when the visual and aural moments are of such splendor? Or, more to the point, how long can we stay focused when the narrative never really establishes itself from the overpowering form? How long can we hold-out without a story to grab our attention?

If you cry watching The Tree of Life it won't be because of the death of a young boy [a plot point we know in the first reel] but because of the way Malick edits music and visuals together in such a magnificent way. I happen to think that is a perfectly legitimate reason to shed a tear or two. But others may disagree. Others may want us to feel the emotion by intimately getting to know the characters. Others too may want a traditional narrative with character development and a plot to follow. Malick is not interested in that. And, frankly, I don't think we should be either - because, after all, this is his vision and his way of telling a story. And so it should be judged on the merits of the expression of his vision.

The acting, such as it is, is good. The children are best because they seem to fit into Malick's grand innocent and mysterious world view. They don't seem to be acting but rather existing and reacting to the world around them. Brad Pitt juts out his jaw a lot as the authoritative father but he maintains a believable attitude throughout. Jessica Chastain has a purity to her that is angelically bland and Sean Penn seems lost in thought when he is on screen - which he is, actually.

The cinematography by Emmanuel Lubezki and the editing by numerous editors over a three year period are the real winners here. As is the utilization of the musical score, which comprises works from such masters as Bach, Brahms, Berlioz, Mahler, Smetana and contemporary film score maestros Alexandre Desplat and Zbigniew Preisner - the former who is credited with the score.

Malick has given us a vision of life - all of life; from beginning to end. From the big bang to the creation of earth to evolution to the death of dinosaurs to the innocence of growing up in 1950's Texas [where DDT is merely a cool thick fog] all the way to present day and beyond. It is film that is at once Biblical and personal, terrifying and reassuring, dreamlike and surreal but also grounded in the cycles of nature. It deals with grace and hope in ways that might make you cringe or cry but which you cannot deny is presented with power and originality.

I think it is a great film with some flaws. Some would say that about life.

I can't wait to see it again.

More Reading:
An article on the cinematography.

Some good observations and background on the film.

Popmatters considers the themes of Malick's films.

George at Cannes

My friend George the Cyclist was at Cannes again this year and he managed to see 70 movies. I am not really sure how he did that, but he loves movies enough to make it happen. Here are blurbs on some of the notable movies he saw.

Airirang
Documentary by Kim Ki-Duk. He has been a recluse all this time living in a tent...overcome by the near death of an actress on his last film and also by the betrayal of two of his assistant directors. He concludes that life is sadism, self-torture and masochism.... A remarkably original film.

The Artist
A superbly crafted re-creation of a silent film [set in the time] when the silent era was drawing to a close. [It] will be a hit at film fests and on the art house circuit.

Bonsai
A made-to-order film for Cannes. [Filmmaker] had the formula down--a polished, arty film, with convincing performances about some young struggling writers. The film looked nice, and was a palatable film-going experience, but didn't amount to much.

Drive
An immensely pleasing, highly stylized film of honor and quiet strength. Ryan Gosling, oozing boatloads of charisma, brilliantly protrays a Hollywood stunt driver who also works in a garage and moonlights as the getaway driver for criminals.

Footnote
This was a highly intelligent film with an orginal premise and an unflinching, butally honest study of academic rivalries. The moral dilemmas raised provide some of the festival's best fodder for post-film discussion.

Le Havre
Kaurasmaki the majordomo of droll...[this] will rank among the best of his films.

Hors Satan
It is another of [Dumont's] rural Flanders films with a grizzled male who is either saintly or sinister, coming to the aid of the wayward.... I have friends who think Dumont is repugnant and others who think he can do no wrong. This film will not change the regard of any of them.

Melancholia
Von Trier does not disappoint and Dunst goes though a range of enough torments to be a worthy award winner.

Michael
A generally understated Austrian feature that managed to be quite engrossing and compelling. [Main characters] takes his [ten year old] hostage on outings and lets him come out of the basement for meals. The tension doesn't necessarily build, just the curiosity of how this will end.

Miss Bala
A film about a young beauty pageant contestant who inadvertently falls into the clutches of a high-powered drug gang and is forced to do their bidding. The film does not sensationalize or go overboard on the violence. [An] honest and original film.

Tree of Life
As the film gradually swept over me and settled into a semblance of a narrative... Malick won me over. This was High Art, a film that lovers of cinema will be happy to see again and again, not only to fully fathom it, but to appreciate it more and more.

We Have a Pope
French stalwart Michel Piccoli plays a just-elected Pope who doesn't care to accept the position. [S]urpsingly thoughtful movie from the often goofy Moretti.

We Need to Talk About Kevin
This is a film that justifies those who like to limit their daily intake of films to three or four at the most per day, to fully absorb and recover from each. This is a film that might take an entire festival to recover from.

Blonde Leather

From Blonde In Black Leather a schlocky Italian comedy with Claudia Cardinale Monica Vitti

Cannes 2011 - blurbs II

The Kid With a Bike - Dardenne Brothers
YAY
'The Belgian siblings are again at the peak of their powers in this impeccably observed drama.' - Rooney, Hollywood Reporter

'The Dardennes strike a perfect balance...it's dramatised superbly.'
Sandhu, Telegraph

NAY
'An unwieldy epilogue, with a series of awkwardly written and executed scenes that seem to be suggest Cyril needed a form of karmic payback for some of his rash, rascal-ish actions.' -Boyd van Hoeij, IndieWire

'I’ve never been sold on the Dardennes — [this film] hasn’t changed my mind.' - Zacharek, Movie Line.

Miss Bala - Gerardo Naranjo
YAY
' As a political and social document, Miss Bala is shock, awe, and pure cinema at its finest.' - Heath, Slant

'People will look back at the lineup in years to come and marvel that this powerhouse wasn’t in Competition' - D'Angelo, AVClub

NAY
None that I can find....

Outside Satan - Bruno Dumont
YAY
'Another "WTF?" film from Gallic writer-director Bruno. Word-of-mouth... should make "Satan" a must-see among artfilm aficionados' - Nelson, Variety

'It will find admirers among Dumont’s hardcore followers - and indeed, anyone with a taste for art cinema at its most uncompromisingly gaunt.' - Romney, ScreenDaily

NAY
'“Hors Satan” is a slog. A capital P pretentious film that is made in the tradition and fabric of an arthouse film that seems dated and laughable.' - Jagernauth, IndieWire

'[Dumont] a filmmaker who solemnly believes that every stylistic devise, forced camera angle, monosyllabic utterance or careless shrug from an actor conveys great meaning to his audience.' - Honeycutt, Hollywood Reporter

Cannes Scorecard

Here is a screenshot from ScreenDaily's digital edition.

Cannes 2011 - blurbs

Who knows how we feel about a film until we see it? I have often loved films that other critics hated and hated films that other critics loved.

This is especially true of the reception of the films that play at Cannes. Year in and year out the critics give us the buzz and by the time the films reach us it seems as though the critics were reacting to and writing about other films.

So with that in mind I will simply give a small sample of both positive and negative blurbs for some of the films that are at Cannes this year. In most cases these blurbs will be slightly out of context because a good many films get a mixed reaction from any one critic. But like the marketing companies out there I'll avoid any of that gray area writing. Here are five films that have YAH and NAY reviews.

We Need to Talk About Kevin - Lynne Ramsay
YAY
'Extraordinary' - Brooks, Guardian
'I want to throw up,' I remarked to a friend upon exiting the theater. 'But in a good way.' - Lodge , In Contention

NAY
'Frequently buckles underneath the weight of its labored and schematic story.'- Abrahms, L Magazine
'Most critics raced from this wildly overwrought Alain Resnais remake of The Bad Seed'. - Hoberman, Village Voice

Poliss - Maïwenn Le Besco
YAY
'Impressive. Convincingly jumps from laughter to tears and back again' -Mintzer, Hollywood Reporter
'When it’s good it positively crackles.' - Romney, Screendaily

NAY
'Could very well be the worst film I see at Cannes this year' - Heath, Slant
'One colleague admitted he endured the two-hours-plus running time just so he could hiss at the end.' - Anderson, Artforum

Restless- Gus Van Sant
YAY
'A gently moving hymn to life.' - Goodridge Screendaily
'Somehow, by the end, it all comes together. The very final shot is a peach.' - Bochenski, Little White Lies

NAY
'Treacly' - Dargis, NYTimes
'Treacly' - McCarthey, Hollywood Reporter

We Have a Pope - Nanni Moretti
YAY
'Superior [to The King's Speech].' - van de Klashorst, ICS
'Gentler and more benign than you'd expect from a left-wing non-believer.' - Romney, London Review

NAY
'Humdrum' - Kohn, IndieWire
'We have a papam; we also have pap.' - Anderson, Art Forum

Sleeping Beauty - Julia Leigh
YAH
'Near-perfect cinema.' - Rocchi - IndieWire
'An assured debut.' - Bradshaw, Guardian

NAY
'A cold film about heated things.' - McWeeney - Hitfix
'Was greeted with unimpressed silence, followed by a desultory smattering of whistles.' - Romney, London Review

Two trailers

Two films playing at Cannes have cool teaser trailers.
This is why I like teaser trailers so much better than traditional trailers.


MISS BALA


The latest film by Sang-soo Hong.

Poetry

The Korean fllm Poetry opened in Los Angeles Friday.

It's about a mother [and a grandmother] who must deal with situations in her life not of her choosing. Up against cultural clashes, legal matters and her own mortality she has to make choices. Choices none of us will hopefully ever have to make.

Much like other films by Lee Chang-dong it is heavy. But not heavy handed. And he has learned to pull back a bit and let the character and the story develop without us feeling it is being forced on us.

It's a devastating film and one of the best of the year. No matter how many films I like this year Poetry is assured to make my top-ten. Go see it if you can.

I wrote a review of it in relation to another Korean film, Mother, last year.

Future Music

I love rare albums. I particularly like albums you can hear before they are released. But what about albums that won't be released for 14 years! Note the release date on this screen grab.

Something happened here but I'm not saying anything. I like future music.

Romantic Netflix

Netflix has recommendations. But half the time they are odd. For instance, I don't think they [or their algorithms] know what is or what is not a romantic film.

Besides this screen grab here are a few titles they recommend as romantic films based on my taste:

That Obscure Object of Desire
Secret Things
Talk to Her
Emmanuel 7
La Jetee
The Piano Teacher
Jerichow

Notes on 7 films

Win Win
A lawyer / wrestling coach commits a criminally liable act but finds a way to redeem himself by helping a struggling teen and his recovering drug-addicted mother, which he would never have had the chance to do had he not done the crime. Every scene intricately ties into every subsequent scene until it builds to a satisfying whole. Its win, win for all involved including the audience.

Meek’s Cutoff
A family of homesteaders in Oregon are lost thanks to an incompetent mountain man named Meek whose cutoff has led them to a dry dusty plain. Slow, methodical, often very hushed this is a film that lingers like a summer afternoon. Shot in 1.33:1 aspect ratio with a good number of shots that just observe the action rather than propel it forward. The film is not as engaging as it could be and perhaps a tad bit revisionist [or liberal] in its view of history but also more accurate than most westerns. Director Kelly Reichardt has built a respectable track record.

Bill Cunningham’s New York
An enjoyable documentary about an unpretentious man in a pretentious industry. Bill Cunningham is a 80-something down-to-earth fashion photographer who completely belies everything about the fashion world by photographing people on the New York City streets wearing the fashions of the day. He bicycles all around New York; he lives in an apartment with nothing but filing cabinets and a bed. He’s the real article and people love him for it - on his own terms. The documentary doesn’t dig deep into its subject but why should it?

The Princess of Montpensier
Four men vie for one woman in 16th century France while religious wars ensue, court intrigue and royal power plays manipulate everyone, sword fighting disrupts the order and beautiful castles dot the distant landscape. What’s not to love? This is Bertrand Tavernier at his best getting quality out of every performance, every line of dialogue and every foot of film. Save for the high production value this is a film Hollywood could not make. And I don't mean 'costume drama' because everyone does those - but instead that certain je ne sais quoi that only the French do so well. See it and you'll know what I mean.

Source Code
A movie that somehow has critics [and some scientists] embracing as darn near probably. Huh? How? Well, who cares? The movie is ‘Groundhogs Day’ [or maybe a Hindu tale] done as a sci-fi fantasy. It is enjoyable but when it attempts to display an emotional human core it stalls the narrative just long enough to make us think about what we are seeing - and that’s not what you want in this kind of film.

The Adjustment Bureau
A Matter of Life and Death by way of Wings of Desire, It’s A Wonderful Life, Here Comes Mr. Jordan, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Jump along with shades of Total Recall, Minority Report, Twilight Zone and the X-Files. It is about as original as a snack of milk and cookies but it is pleasant enough if you don’t stop to think about it much.

In A Better World
This Danish / Swedish drama is like watching a long row of domino's with spikes fall in slow motion along someone’s back; Predictable and painful. It is very well acted, directed, shot and edited but the story plods along imprisoning all the characters in a relentless world of fate. The parts of the film that take place in Africa are by far the best and could make a separate and better film than the other heavy-handed section about two boys wrecking their lives. There is no denying the talent behind and in front of the lens but director Susanne Bier has done better.

Renoir on Nixon

I found this humorous anecdote in an article that Peter Bogdanovich wrote for The New York Observer a few years ago on a visit he had with Jean Renoir [and is wife Dido] one afternoon in Los Angeles.

One time, I brought my mother over to meet Jean and Dido. She was a great admirer of his work—as my artist father also had been. It was a lovely afternoon, sitting in the living room, sipping some white wine from antique sterling silver cups. At one point, while we were discussing dubbing of voices in movies, Jean said, “In a really civilized time, like the 12th century, a man who dubbed voices would be burned at the stake as a heretic for presuming that two souls can exist in one body!” Later, we got onto world politics and Nixon, who was still president then, and my mother remarked that Nixon’s gestures never seemed to fit with what he was saying. Everyone agreed. Suddenly, Jean called out to her: “Madame! I have it! Nixon is dubbed!” Renoir was as delighted with his conclusion as my mother was.

Lumet

Sidney Lumet [1924 - 2011] made movies for six decades. He carved out a respectable status as a high quality director churning out many different kinds of films.

He made movies amid many different eras and had one released almost every year from 1957 to 1990. Some years there were two. He started in the golden age of television in 1951 and made a first feature film - '12 Angry Men' - in 1957, which was made at the tale end of old Hollywood.

He went through the conformist 50's, the turbulent 60's, the gritty 70's, the corporate 80's and into the blockbuster 90's and the new century. He had a pretty strong run from 1972 to 1977 a period in which he made: 'The Offence', 'Serpico', 'Murder on the Orient Express', 'Dog Day Afternoon', 'Network' and 'Equus' - all films that helped cement his reputation.

His last film 'Before The Devil Knows Your Dead' was made in 2007. What is most remarkable is that the year his first film - '12 Angry Men' - came out there were also films by such old time film making legends as Raoul Walsh, Delmer Daves, Rene Clair, King Vidor and Leo McCarey. Each had started making films in the silent era.

Lumet was in many ways a bridge between eras. Other than other currently working directors such as Manoel de Oliveira, Andrzej Wajda and Arthur Hiller he was one of the last of his kind to make films over such a long period of time.

Few filmmakers, either, have ever had as long a run.

Article about his career on Salon

Lost Island of VHS...XI

Mädchen in Uniform - Leontine Sagan, Carl Froelich - 1931

This German film was one of the first big foreign language 'art' films to play in the United States. It tells the tale of a 14-year-old girl named Manuela (Hertha Thiele) who is enrolled in a very strict boarding school by her aunt after the death of her mother.

While there she makes some new friends. But she also grows attached in both a romantic and a mother/daughter sense with one of a sympathetic teacher - Fraülein von Bernburg - whom all the girls have a crush on. This forbidden relationship leads to trouble for both her and the teacher.

If this film were made today the 'sensitive girl falls in love with a female Nazi teacher' angle would be played up as an exploitative steamy lesbian tale. No doubt in 1931 it was controversial as well. But seen today it is rather tame on the ‘lesbian’ angle and instead more of a solid story about a young vulnerable woman trying to make sense of the strict boarding school in the emerging militarized world of the Weimar Republic. Indeed, the lead actress years later was quoted as saying: "I really don't want to make a great deal ...or account for a film about lesbianism here. That's far from my mind, because the whole thing of course is also a revolt against the cruel Prussian education system."

I personally did not feel the film was any more a lesbian film than it was a 'heterosexual' film. It is pretty evident that the girls are rather harshly treated by all the teachers and most particularly by the school's Principle - who is as unsympathetic as you would expect a 'Nazi' character to be. And so the girls take a liking to Fraülein von Bernburg because she is so much fairer with them. In one scene one of the girls shows elation and relief when she realized that von Bernburg will be doling out punishment to her. It is not that von Bernburg will grant her some tenderness but rather the penalty will simply be less severe.

Fraülein von Bernburg becomes the equivalent of a mother, a sister and someone who relates to them. And they love her for that. It is also worth noting that there are no boys around. So any tenderness the girls show toward the teacher and she toward them need not necessarily be lesbian in nature. And, despite the one affectionate bedtime kissing scene, that is my reading of the film.

The film was remade in 1958 with Romy Schneider as the school girl.

A good long article here. And a review from After Ellen here. The original 1931 NY Times review is here.

Movie Titles

Movie Titles in Movies


A Brief History of Title Design

Elizabeth

Elizabeth Taylor

Certified response

Those expecting Certified Copy to be a 'Juliet Binoche' movie will be disappointed.

Those expecting Certified Copy to be an 'Abbas Kiarostami' movie will [most likely] not be disappointed.

The US trailer and the UK trailer make the movie seem to be a 'Juliet Binoche' movie. And what I mean by that is not a slap against Binoche - who has had roles in a good number of challenging and interesting [good] films. What I mean is the marketing by IFC, Artificial Eye and MK2 is reaching out to the mid-30's to mid-50's art house viewer [mostly women] who want to see a romantic film set in Northern Italy.

Yes, the film has an undeniably romantic setting. But it ends there. The film is actually an intellectual exercise with some raw emotions at the center of the story.

Mom's favorites

My mother loved movies.
She grew up in San Francisco and was able to see many while she was growing up.
But she moved to a small town in Colorado in the 1960's and spent the remainder of her life there and was only able to see a few in the theater through the years. Once video came along she caught up with many of the classics she had missed as well as new ones that she grew to love.

Here is a list of a few she loved:
Beauty and The Beast [Cocteau] - A fairy tale for adults.
Brief Encounter - Purely romantic.
Bullitt - San Francisco in the sixties appealed to her.
Forbidden Games - One she remembered with fondness.
Four Wedding and A Funeral - Always made her laugh.
Gone With The Wind - She loved the book and felt the movie did it justice.
It Happened One Night - She loved Claudette Colbert.
The Red Shoes - One of the Powell Pressburger films she found magical.
Roman Holiday - After she had been to Rome this meant more to her.
La Ronde - Elegant and funny.
Room With a View - Romance in Italy.
La Strada - Funny and tragic.
Wages of Fear - French suspense film in South America.


My mom didn't watch much TV. In fact she really only watched Masterpiece Theatre.
Poldark
Pride and Prejudice
Summer's Lease
Upstairs Downstairs

There are many more of course, which I may write about later. I am sorry I will no longer be able to share new and old movies with her. Bye mom and thanks for everything.

Buñuel documentary

Here's a good 30 minute French television documentary from 1964 about Luis Buñuel's and his early career. Lots of good interviews with those who worked with him and knew him as well as a rather enjoyable interview with Buñuel himself.

Avatar to Metropolis

From Avatar [2009] to Metropolis [1927] via directors and cinematographers [and through Fuller and Borzage].

Avatar was directed by James Cameron
James Cameron directed The Terminator
The Terminator was shot by Adam Greenberg
Adam Greenberg shot The Big Red One
The Big Red One was directed by Samuel Fuller
Samuel Fuller directed Merrill's Marauders
Merrill's Marauders was shot by William Clothier
William Clothier shot China Doll
China Doll was directed by Frank Borzage
Frank Borzage directed Three Comrades
Three Comrades was shot by Karl Freund
Karl Freund shot Metropolis

Lost Island of VHS...X

The Stars Look Down - Carol Reed - 1940

When 'The Stars Look Down' came out in 1940 the British critics [as a whole] voted it the greatest British film ever made, Pauline Kael has called it Carol Reed's best film and Parker Tyler placed it as one of the 75 best foreign films ever made in his 1962 book 'Classics of The Foreign Film'.

So how does a film with such praise not even make Time Out's recent list of 'best British films'? Well, of course, it is partly because Reed went on to make a trio of terrific films that overshadowed this one and cemented his place in film history; Odd Man Out, The Fallen Idol and The Third Man. But it shows you how much time's change too.

History shows that it received a lukewarm reception for political reasons. You see, although Reed made a film [based on a novel by A. J. Cronin] that argues against the private ownership of mines and calls for the rights of the miners it also lays blame at the feet of both mine owners [who are presented as criminally greedy] and unions [who turn a blind eye to the dangers of the mine].

Michael Redgrave plays David an intelligent and conscientious young man who aspires to leave the small Welsh community where his family have lived and worked for generations. While away at a university he falls in love with an uncaring woman [Margaret Lockwood] who uses him to get back at another fellow she loves - who is an old friend of David's but who now happens to be in business with the corrupt mine owners. David leaves the school but finds much dissatisfaction in the unhappy marriage. When Redgrave learns that the owners are considering re-opening a particularly dangerous underground seam he speaks up as eloquently as he can to prevent it from happening. But no one will listen. His wife also leaves him telling him he needs to put all this mine business behind him.

The film pretty much stacks the deck against David [and the poor miners] and I have to admit I found the film a bit heavy-handed at times. But the film successfully fits into the category of realism and completely eschews Hollywood formula at every turn.

The film is not on DVD [in the US] and VHS is tough to find. I found a copy on VHS that someone had made [and was renting] from a PAL copy.

- A little history of the film here.

Clair on editing

René Clair wrote in his book Cinema Yesterday and Today:

- Editing is in fact a procedure peculiar to the cinema which has no equivalent in any other medium of expression or art form.

One day I was in a projection room with a five-year-old child who had never seen a film of any kind. On the screen, a lady was singing in a drawing room, and the succession of images was as follows:

Long Shot: The drawing room; the singer is standing near a piano. A greyhound is lying in front of the fireplace.
Close-up: The singer
Close-up: The dog watching her.
At this last image, the child uttered a cry of surprise: "Oh! Look! The lady has turned into a dog."
For a new eye, one image replacing another in a flash does in fact give the impression of a magical substitution or a lightening-like metamorphosis.

Criterion to Hulu

The news that The Criterion Collection will be available to stream exclusively through Hulu Plus set the movie community into a a bit of a frenzy yesterday. Some love the idea and some hate it. I'm on the fence about it and here's why.

Is such an embarrassment of riches available to us all at once a good thing?

Criterion is a brand name that many of us know and love. With this move - which starts with 150 movie titles and moves to upwards of 800 titles in a short span of time - Criterion will basically be chucking out their successful business model. As someone who collects their DVD's [and now Blu-ray's] I can tell you that one of the appeals of the company is there slow but eventual release of great titles. Every few months they bring out a few titles, which they announce three months [or so] in advance. This helps build excitement for the release and [I would think] boosts sales a bit. By releasing titles in such a manner they can build awareness and anticipation around the title. But by putting up to 800 titles out there so quickly - a good number of which are not yet on DVD or Blu-ray - for us to stream they are essentially burying the unreleased titles.

And so the effect might be that they bury the title and then kill it. Meaning that the excitement for future new releases will be much less exciting because the film will already be available to stream. So, essentially, the consumer would see that some previously unavailable Kenji Mizoguchi or Michael Powell title is coming soon to Blu-ray but then they would see that it is already available on Hulu Plus. So they would hook into Hulu Plus, watch the title and then no longer be interested in buying it.

Maybe they think they are giving the customer the best available option to see the films in their library? They certainly cannot be accused of withholding the titles now. But I am looking out for the future of Criterion as well as the life of these films. By presenting the options like this it would seem that the films will not get the proper [traditional model] release into the marketplace and this would affect both sales and awareness about a title. They must have signed a heck of a deal.

Exclusivity can have its faults

Another problem I find curious is that they are going to only now stream exclusively [by the end of 2011] through Hulu Plus. If a company wants maximum exposure it seems odd [and foolish] to narrow the options of your audience to only one streaming service - especially one that is not as widespread as NetFlix. Part of the deal Criterion found appealing was that Hulu will give them there own section making it easy for consumers to peruse titles. Apparently, NetFlix would not give them this deal.

Long time coming

I'm no Luddite. I love the idea that someday every title I want to see will be at my fingertips. And I know that this option is one Criterion feels is moving toward the future of home film viewing. But I can't help but feel they could do a better job of upholding their business model by continuing to whet our appetite and getting us excited for the films in the way that they have for so many years.

I don't have Hulu Plus but I will likely get it because the idea of having access to 800 amazing titles for a mere $7.99 a month is hard to resist. Of course, it also means the future of video stores and DVD and Blu-ray sales is pretty much history. But that is a different argument for a different time.

Melville on Nouvelle

Jean Pierre Melville's relationship with the young turks that became the French New Wave started well but then became a bit frosty. Even though he had a bit part in Godard's À bout de souffle he was always an outsider and more of a paternal figure to the movement. But by the time Cahiers du cinéma magazine savaged Le Samouraï and L' Armée des ombres [which is amazing when you think about it because it is so outrageously political] he had turned on them as much as they had on him.

The Cinema One book Melville on Melville by Rui Nogueira has this exchange:

Q: What do you think of the Nouvelle Vague style?
A: There's no such thing. The Nouvelle Vague was an inexpensive way of making films. That's all.

You have to admit that - as influential as the movement was to world cinema - in France it was indeed a series of lower budget films made by a wave of new directors that managed for a while to get more attention than the directors of the bigger budgeted films.  But eventually some of the Nouvelle Vague directors came into the fold.

It's too bad they had a falling out because in retrospect the cinema of Melville is as good and significant in its own way as the cinema of Godard, Truffaut, Chabrol and Rivette.

La Dolce Vita boffo box office

Fellini's La Dolce Vita was acquired by Astor Pictures for release in the U.S. in 1961 for a then astonishing sum of $625,000. It went on to make an equally amazing box office gross of $19.5 million.

Most foreign language films released in The United States today are purchased for anywhere from 50K to $1 million depending on the clout the picture carries [an Almodovar film will usually be acquired for more than a million dollars] and don't make anywhere near $10 million. So making close to 20 million in 1961 dollars means that La Dolce Vita essentially would make well over $100 million in today's dollars.

Considering La Dolce Vita was a three hour movie with subtitles [dubbed in some markets] says something about the state of foreign language distribution 50 years ago versus today.

de Oliveira's Angelica

The latest film by Manoel de Oliveira, The Strange Case of Angelica, is a beguiling film in many ways. I found that it is best described by an answer that Manoel de Oliveira gave to an interviewer.

- Question: What is cinema for you today?
- Answer: It's the same as it was for Lumière, for Méliès and Max Linder. There you have realism, the fantastic and the comic. There's nothing more to add to that, absolutely nothing.

The film rolls this basic idea into one.
I have to say I enjoyed this film more than his previous film Eccentricities of a Blond-haired Girl if only because it is a far more intriguing.
I would argue that the film is more than just a simple fable about a photographer who falls in love with a dead woman. I would say it is - at the very least - a film about a man who dies the moment he has a strange encounter with the dead woman. Only he doesn't literally die. He just slides into a funk that leads to his inevitable death. In the context of the film it is about the way in which his spirit eventually leaves his body.

But why would he want his spirit to leave his body for a woman he never actually met?

In part this can be explained by the way Oliveira employs various anachronistic touches. The photographer -who still uses real film - seems to be a character out of time. He spends some of his time photographing day laborers who work on a hill lined with olive trees [Oliveira means 'olive tree'].  He doesn't seem interested in 'modern' technology or ideas. And so it seems Oliviera is saying something about our contemporary age as well.

However, in part this might be because the film was derived from a project Oliveira had developed in 1952. It should be noted that according to an interview with Oliveira [from the press notes] he says the protagonist of the original idea for the film was a Jewish man who had fled Nazi persecutions and settled in Portugal as a photographer. This bit of information, which is nowhere alluded to in the finished film, is an interesting back story that [would] in part explain why he seems lost, confused out-of-place and and out-of-time.

If this was actually part of the film then the encounter with the dead woman would just be one reason for him to leave - or die. I kind of wish that World War II element was in the film because it would explain much more. It would provide a history to the character and explain his motivations.  But as it is it in the film all the motivations are more puzzling and almost surreal.

Here is the trailer.

Template change

Don't be confused. The template has been changed. Carry on.

70's vs 80's

Mubi had a forum in which someone asked for people to list the movies that exemplify the difference between the 1970's and the 1980's. Here's a few I came up with [and one I didn't*].

 Obviously, I am being selective to the point that I am highlighting gritty and more independent [70's] vs more glossy and mainstream [80's]. But I'm also sticking with the films that are more memorable for the era in which they were made.

GANGSTER FILMS

70’s – The Godfather
80’s – The Untouchables

COMEDIES

70’s – Nashville
80’s – The Breakfast Club

COP MOVIES

70’s – Dirty Harry
80’s – Beverly Hills Cop

COP MOVIES II

70’s – The French Connection
80’s – Lethal Weapon

WESTERNS

70’s – McCabe and Mrs Miller
80’s- Silverado

SPORTS

70's - Breaking Away
80's - Hoosiers

LOS ANGELES

70’s – Chinatown
80’s – To Live in Die in LA

MEDIA

70’s – Network
80’s – Broadcast News

HORROR

70’s – The Exorcist
80’s – Nightmare on Elm Street

CAR MOVIES

70's - Two Lane Blacktop
80's - The Cannonball Run

SCORSESE

70’s – Taxi Driver
80’s – The Color of Money

SCI-FI

70’s – A Clockwork Orange
80’s – Back to the Future

SCI-FI II

70's - Alien
80's - Aliens

AFRICAN-AMERICAN

70's – Superfly
80's – Do The Right Thing

NEUROTIC COMEDIES

70's - Annie Hall
80's - LA Story

ITALIAN

70's - The Conformist
80's - Cinema Paradiso

FRENCH

70's - La Maman et la putain
80's - Diva

SPANISH

70's - The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
80's - Matador

* SCI-FI 2

Dogtooth

No nomination surprises me more than the best foreign language nomination for the Greek film Dogtooth. The movie is not what one would call an 'Academy friendly' film. But one thing I do find sort of appealing is the fact that there will be many curious people out there who will seek it out and, man, are they in for a shock.

It's a rather twisted film in which a mother and father keep their two kids locked up in compound of sorts [a house in the country] to keep them protected from the outside world. They teach them incorrect words for things, they convince them that anything from the outside is evil including cats - and to satisfy their sexual needs they bring in a guy to have sex with them.

Of course things go horribly wrong.

I read the film as a metaphor: The parents represent the government, the children represent the people and the compound is the country [Greece, perhaps].

I don't think the film works too well except as a black comedy with some shock value. Mainly because I found the kids too old for the part. If the kids were 10 then it would have been more convincing [and more disturbing no doubt]. But they are around 20 and, frankly, the situations that come up seem highly unlikely to me.

One thing I know is that the Academy nomination process for foreign language films is not understood by many. Basically, a very small number of folks nominate the films and apparently Dogtooth was really liked by one person who had influence.

It won't win but it is now on the map. Score one for Kino International and for Greece.

Anticipated Movies 2011

A list of some of the most anticipated movies of 2011 in the art house and the multiplex.
If half of these are good or great films it will be a good year in film.

Terrence Malick's Tree of LIfe
Pedro Almodóvar's Skin That I Inhabit
Alexander Payne's The Descendants
Wong Kar-wai's The Grandmasters
Alexander Sokurov's Faust
Lars von Trier's Melancholia
Bela Tarr's The Turin Horse
Guillaume Canet's Little White Lies
Lynne Ramsay's We Need To Talk About Kevin
Walter Salles' On the Road
David Cronenberg's A Dangerous Method
George Clooney's The Ides of March
Michael Haneke's Love
Susanne Bier's In A Better World
Aki Kaurismaki's Le Havre
Richard Linklater's Bernie
Dardennes Bros.' Set Me Free
Arnaud Desplechin’s Psychotherapy of a Plains Indian
Hou Hsiao-Hsien's The Assassin
Jia Zhang-ke's In the Qing Dynasty
Terence Davies' The Deep Blue Sea
Jason Reitman's Young Adult
Steven Spielberg's War Horse
David Fincher's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
Martin Scorsese’s Hugo Cabret
Steve McQueen's Shame
Steven Soderbergh's Contagion
Jon Favreau's Cowboys and Aliens
Cameron Crowe's We Bought A Zoo

Lost Island of VHS...IX

The Clouded Yellow - Ralph Thomas - 1950

This is a terrific British thriller made in 1950 that has more than one comparison with the best of Hitchcock.

Trevor Howard plays David Somers a former British Secret Service agent who is in need of a break. He finds it by going to work off in the countryside cataloging butterflies for a couple at their estate. While there he befriends the couple's niece Sophie (Jean Simmons). The job is about as far removed as you can be from his former job. Until, that is, the local gamekeeper ends up murdered and Sophie becomes the prime suspect.

Somers realizes something is not right so he helps Sophie escape arrest and they lead the police on a cross-country chase in what seems to be a virtually impossible escape. The film is an entertaining combination of romance and suspense. I saw it at UCLA a couple of years ago and the audience loved it; reacting to each scene as it built toward it's terrific climax.

I am not sure why it is not on DVD yet but perhaps one day it will show up in a box set of British noirs or thrillers.

Bitter Rice

I just saw the movie Bitter Rice, which was one of the big European films to hit the American screens in the 1950's. It combines Italian Neorealism with Hollywood elements and a little sex appeal. At the time it was actually banned in some places due to some of the racy shots of scantily clad women working in the rice fields. But seen today it is rather tepid - not to mention dated.

I dug up the original New York Times review and darn if the critic doesn't make it sound a whole lot better than it is. The review was by Bosley Crowther who seemed to be a fuddy duddy 17 years before he flubbed his infamous negative review of Bonnie and Clyde. Here are some of the highlights of his Bitter Rice review.

>"Passion toils and tumbles through it like the wrestlers in a gas-house free-for-all, and torments of carnal hunger are boldly and rawly exposed.

>[The director's]candid and natural presentation of the robustness and earthiness of life in a camp full of migrant women workers is bulging with vitality, and his episodes of violence and love-making are slices of life in the raw.

>[T]he ultimate seduction of the oddly perverse heroine is a wildly accelerating traffic in mayhem, sadism and reckless lust. And the final resolution of personal conflicts in a white tiled slaughter house, amid blood-dripping beef cadavers, is literalism carried close to the absurd.

>Silvana Mangano, [is] full-bodied and gracefully muscular, with a rich voice and a handsome, pliant face, she handles with vigor and authority the characterization of a tortured libertine. It is not too excessive to describe her as Anna Magnani minus fifteen years, Ingrid Bergman with a Latin disposition and Rita Hayworth plus twenty-five pounds!"

I want to see this movie! I mean, I did see it. But I want to see the one Crowther describes.

Lost Squadron

The Lost Squadron Press book

The Lost Squadron is a terrific aviation picture made in 1932 about a group of airmen who get a job after the war as stuntmen for a sadistic film director played by Erich von Stroheim [who else] who in order to get realism into his film rigs it so the airplanes will go down in mid-flight. It's got action, comedy and a good amount of irony. It is also a darker film than you might expect from the period - except it should be noted that there was a certain fatalism in many of the aviation pictures of the time, which reflected some of the malaise soldiers felt after the affects of World War I.

The press book link is from the William K Everson archive at NYU. For those who don't know William K Everson seek out his views. He was a film publicist / historian / programmer who knew everything about American cinema in the pre-VHS/DVD world of film. Which means he was watching movies on the big screen, programming them and writing extensive notes to keep viewers informed about great films. The archive has many of his notes and press kits to peruse. He also wrote a good number of books that are worth seeking out. I consult his Screwball Comedy book all the time as it is about the best on the subject.

[It should be noted that Everson was a mainstay at the Telluride Film Festival for the first few years after it's inception. He helped with programming and introduced many films].

Older Film Discoveries 2010

Here are 11 great films I finally caught up with or discovered in 2010.

The Landlord [Hal Ashby, 1971] - Ashby started his career with this terrific social comedy about a rich white kid who takes over a tenement building in NYC housing black tenants who won't pay their rent. Pure seventies cinema.

Humanity and Paper Balloons [Sadao Yamanaka, 1937] - A fine Japanese film about lonely masterless samurai in feudal Japan. Made by a filmmaker of great skill who died too young.

Léon Morin, Priest [Jean-Pierre Melville, 1961] - Melville never disappoints. Here again he has such great style and high quality acting with a good story.

La Chinoise [Jean Luc Godard, 1967] - One of the few Godard films from the 1960's that I had not seen. Revolutionary polemics and cinematic poetry in only the way Godard can do it.

La Femme Publique [Andrzej Zulawski, 1984] - A notorious Polish film that is more an assault on the audience than a quality film but that makes it a rather unforgettable experience.

Wife, Be Like a Rose! [Mikio Naruse, 1935] - This was the year I finally caught up with Mikio Naruse films. I managed to watch five of them [thanks in part to YouTube]. This was possibly the best of the bunch. All were terrific in their own way.

The Night Of The Following Day [Hubert Cornfield, 1968] - I always stayed away from the less-than-classic Brando pictures and after seeing this I wonder why I did. This is an enjoyable, nasty and arty little thriller. I guess it's not mainstream but all the more reason to recommend it.

The Treasure of The Sierra Madre [John Huston, 1948] Yeah so I have to admit I had never seen this. A classic that lives up to the hype.

Los Angeles Plays Itself [Thom Andersen, 2003] - Fascinating critical documentary on many films that have been shot in Los Angeles. Every film buff should see it even if they disagree with some of the points the filmmaker makes.

84 Charing Cross Road [David Hugh Jones, 1987] - A good, literate and engaging film about two people who sort of fall in love through letters. A different era than the one we know today yet not so long ago really.

Le Combat Dans L'ile [Alain Cavalier, 1962] - A forgotten French [New Wave] film about a man caught between his passion for a woman and his passion for a lost political cause. The French do this so well.

Best movies 2010

As is often the case I get to the end of the year and have a tough time compiling a best movies list. Some movies have to sit with me for a while and, of course, I need to catch a good many that I missed throughout the year. This past year was no different and so I find it a bit easier and more entertaining to list the films in categories. The 28 films [!] are listed under each heading by preference. [If I haven't listed a movie that is making a lot of other lists it is probably because I have yet to see it].

What Dreams May Come

-The Social Network
-Inception

Life is Harder Than Death

-Vincere
-Secret Sunshine

Where Art Thou

-The Art of The Steal
-Henri George Clouzot Inferno 
-Exit Through The Gift Shop
-Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Radiant Child

Psycho Trauma

-Black Swan
-Shutter Island
-Mother

The Old New Wave

-Around A Small Mountain
-Inspector Bellamy

Whose Family is This Anyway?

-The Father of My Children
-The Kid's Are All Right

Formula Ones

-The King's Speech
-The Town

Escape is Impossible

-The Ghost Writer
-The Prophet

Terror Error

-Carlos
-Farewell

Picking Up The Pieces

-Soul Kitchen
-Winter's Bone

The West Was Guns

-The Good The Bad The Weird
-True Grit

Cuts You Up

-Salt
-Centurion
-Machete

Korean sons

Two Korean films this year dealt with Korean boys committing crimes and their guardian mother trying to deal with it. The two films were Mother by Joon-ho Bong and Poetry by Lee Chang-dong.

*Spoiler Alert*

The crimes are somewhat similar in that they deal with the death of a young woman at the hands of the boys. But the handling of the crimes by their respective guardian mothers is very different.

Mother features a rather crazy mother who is fiercely protective of her mentally unstable son. To the point that when he unwittingly kills a young woman she does everything in her power to get him released from jail and then cover up the crime. The film is a dark comedy/ drama that remains unsettling and unpredictable in every scene.

Poetry is very different in that it is a grandmother who is caring for her grandson who it turns out is part of a gang that rapes a young woman who then commits suicide. The story is more about the way the grandmother deals with her early stages of Alzheimers all the while trying to write a poem that expresses how she feels. But the issue of her grandson fits into the whole piece in that she wants to do the right thing before she is no longer able to. By the end she refuses to protect her grandson from police detectives even though there is pressure for her to do so by the fathers of the other boys involved in the crime.

What we see in both films is a [Korean] cultural obligation to protect sons. But both feature the situation from the extreme edges of the issue. One is a woman who will stop at nothing to protect her son and the other is a woman who decides doing the right thing is far more important than saving face or doing what is expected of her.

Both are very good films and worth seeing if you can. Mother is available on DVD and Blu-ray. Poetry will be released next year in the US by Kino International.

Why Season's Change

Axial Tilt.

I love the sound of this:

The obliquity of the ecliptic is not a fixed quantity but changing over time in a cycle with a period of 41,000 years. It is a very slow effect known as nutation.

The obliquity of the ecliptic!

Crossplot

Crossplot (1969) is hardly a great movie but it is a rather fun one. Undoubtedly it is a film that helped launch Roger Moore into the Bond franchise four years later. This film - directed by veteran TV director Alvin Rakoff - plays more like a comedic Bond film with it's swinging London locale, sexual relations between Moore and his co-star Claudie Lange and the dizzy incompetence of the crooks. It's very much a film that can be lumped in with 'Casino Royale', 'Danger Diabloic' [even 'Blow Up'] and all the Connery starring Bond films as a film that inspired the Austin Powers films.

The plot almost doesn't matter. Claudie Lange plays a Hungarian model who is wanted by an underground group of criminals because she accidentally overheard of their assassination attempt on a world leader who is coming to London. Roger Moore plays an ad-exec who unwittingly comes to her rescue. With his charm and wit he manages to uncover the plot and get her to fall in love with him. The film has a fair amount of repartee between the two stars that recalls some of the humor we see in screwball comedy; along with the conceit that the two are in love with each other but they don't know it yet.

Style is really what matters here. The women wear colorful clothing, mini-skirts and have big hair while the men sport long sideburns and wear frilly shirts. These along with subplots about students rioting and an assassination attempt make the film a relic of its time. It also has a rather unique scene involving a helicopter chasing a 1920's automobile.

Is it worth buying? No. But it is worth checking out on Netflix where you can stream a somewhat below par video copy.

The trailer can be seen here.

Kagemusha

Akira Kurosawa’s Kagemusha is visually impressive but the plot is both weak and convoluted to the point that it is hard to follow or even really care about what happens. However, stylistically it is a very interesting film.

It as though Kurosawa had imagined it as a play and then was given millions to create it as an epic, which he then decided to keep in the format of a play with a few scenes of great color, movement and light. Much of the action takes place off-screen and instead of seeing action we are told about it. When the emperor is shot we hear about it and then later the would-be assassin explains to his interlocutors how he did it and we see him shoot a tree.

Vincent Canby's New York Times review astutely notes:

Kagemusha is majestic, stately, cool, and, in many of its details, almost abstract. It appears very much to be the work of a director who, now seventy years old, is no longer concerned with the obligations of conventional drama or even with moral questions. He is, instead, contemplating history, not as something to be judged but, rather, acknowledged and, possibly, understood.

We keep being told about war but never really see it. Instead riders on horses charge around or the battle takes place just over the hill. All other times we see scene after scene take place indoors or around the various outposts. This, of course, is a stylistic choice by Kurosawa and while I have no direct facts as to why he chose to make the film this way it seems as though financing had something to do with it. After all we do know that Kurosawa had trouble getting funding after his previous two films and his disaster in trying to work in Hollywood.

However, despite this the film is still rather effective due to the prince and pauper formula about the poor thief doubling as the emperor. But too the final scene is particularly strong because of the stylistic choice, which involves showing us gunners firing from fortified positions, various battalions charging to their death and the reactions by the commanders and the [now] former emperor stand-in all powerless to the carnage they are witnessing. We never actually see the slaughter and it is made more powerful because we don’t. And then Kurosawa gives us a series of amazing final shots with bloodied horses and people dying in super slow motion.

Although Kagemusha is not a remake per se it is a film that had been made before in Japan and to my mind the earlier version is a better film. Directed in 1963 by Umetsugu Inoue it is titled Daisan no kagemusha (The Third Shadow Warrior). It's better precisely because it shows us the action all the way through and draws us into the story in a way that Kurosawa's film does not. We care about the character in Umetsugu's film because we see the challenges that the hero faces continually and wonder when and if he will be caught. In time he becomes the emperor because the people who know him to be a double all die. While in Kurosawa's film the double never escapes and is always in a role, which - granted - is part of the film's message.

Overall, Kurosawa is after bigger themes and grander statements. For an excellent overview of all these themes you can't do better than Donald Richie's chapter on the film in his book The Films of Akira Kurosawa.

I think both films should be seen because both can be enjoyed and appreciated for different reasons. Umetsugu's film can be found on eBay or on some Asian DVD websites. Kurosawa's film is available on Blu-ray from Criterion and looks great.