Brown ads

Okay the election is over so I don't have to make any political pitches now. I can view them in an historical entertaining context. These two ads by Jerry Brown were brilliant. They may not have alone won him the election - but they were to the point in a way that voters could understand.

AFI Free = dumb idea

The AFI Film Festival in Los Angeles [Hollywood actually] is free again this year. And it is a dumb idea. Here's why. As of right now tickets are available for free [started at 10 am] - but most people cannot access the site now because [duh!] everyone is swamping the site.

But here's the thing, most everyone who can access the site can afford to buy tickets. The folks who would benefit most from the festival being free don't have easy access to a computer. And a good many others are at work right now and cannot access the site because...well they are working and it's not advantageous for them to be perusing the site.

The only other options are to buy a pass for $500.00, which is not really a good choice, or to join AFI and get a chance to aquire tickets...well  yesterday. This scheme is obviously a nice way to advertise AFI. And maybe that is the whole idea behind the concept.

But I say here's a better idea: Stop making the AFI Festival free and instead sell tickets again so people can get tickets for movies they want to see without the hassle.

That said, I saw five or six films last year at the festival and none of them were sold out. So there is a good chance that films will still have seats available on the day of the screenings. But a good many people will not want to drive across the city, pay for parking and take a chance that maybe they can get into a film.

It's time for AFI to admit that the only reason they offer free tickets is as an adsvertising tool. It's a nice idea in theory. Let's hope next year they stop advertising and let us buy tickets again.

Kuroneko

One of the best films I've seen this year is the 1968 Japanese horror film Kuroneko directed by Shindō Kaneto’s who is known for directing Onibaba a film somewhat similar in plot and theme.  But while that one is a bit more realistic this one is a ghost story of sorts in a sub-genre known as bakeneko mono or monster-cat tales.

The film's first scene involves a group of samurai who invade the home on Yone (Nobuko Otawa) and her mother-in-law Shige (Kiwako Taichi) whom they brutally rape and murder. The two women lay dead and a cat comes along and laps up their blood, which leads to them being transformed into vengeful spirits or bakeneko, "beautiful cat-like women" who have taken an oath to kill and suck the blood of all Samurai.

Subsequently, they settle in a home deep in the forest where they lure samurai to kill them. As the story unfolds we learn that the mother has a son - married to her daughter-in-law - who went off to war. He returns and is promoted to samurai by the local warlord who tells him to go in search of the spirits that are killing the samurai. He, of course, doesn't realize that these spirits are his mother and wife.

The story is quite good as it builds tension amid some of the horror elements - although to be honest the film is not particularly scary or bloody. At least by today's standards. However, the cinematography is stunning both in the use of black & white lighting but also the staging of each scene in the forest and some visual references which recall the influence of Nōh theatre.

Overall, the formal elements are terrific and the fillm's story really builds a very engaging suspense.

More info here:

MediaSeized analysis
Film Ref review
DVD Outsider review
DVD Beaver review

Fish Wanda Poster

I just unexpectedly saw A Fish Called Wanda at The American Cinematheque. I say unexpectedly because I had read the calendar incorrectly and thought I was going to see a German film, which actually plays next Saturday. Anyway, I had seen A Fish Called Wanda when it came out in 1988 and for some reason was not impressed. Twenty-two years later I have to admit my original opinion of the movie was wrong; it is truly a comedy classic. I laughed a lot. The crowd loved it too.

It was showing as part of a retrospective of Jamie Lee Curtis' career. She was in attendance and provided an entertaining interview after the movie. In the interview she talked about how the original ending was scuttled in favor of a happier with a love story element. Apparently, during the testing phase American audiences did not respond as well to the original darker ending in which is was evident that the Jamie Lee Curtis character was going to knock off the John Cleese character once they got to Rio. So various scenes were shot after principle photography to give the film a bit of a love story element.

One other thing she mentioned was that the original film poster was scrapped for a different one. I have included the poster above. This poster was supposed to have been destroyed due to an image flaw. But enough copies got out that it still exists today. If you look closely at it you will see that Jamie Lee Curtis is standing in an awkward way. The reason is because her image is a composite of two different poses she took during the photo shoot; One in which she was standing sideways and one in which she was standing looking straight ahead. You'll note that her upper body is facing us directly but her lower body is to the side. The pose, while not impossible, is off kilter in such a way that Jamie Lee Curtis had the poster redone. A bit of trivia for a fine and very funny movie.

1999 best

One of the best recent years in film was 1999. Check out a list of over 40 films released in the US that year. [I've only included films I either liked or that were significant in one way or another. I've also only included films that got an official release of a week or more in the US in 1999].

Affliction
All About My Mother
American Beauty
Audition
Autumn Tale
Beau Travail
Being John Malkovich
Besieged
The Blair Witch Project
Boys Don't Cry
Buena Vista Social Club
Dogma
The Dreamlife of Angels
Election
The Emperor and the Assassin
Eyes Wide Shut
Fight Club
Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
Go
Humanité
Human Resources
The Insider
The Iron Giant
It All Starts Today
Late August Early September
The Limey
Magnolia
The Matrix
My Best Fiend
Not One Less
Princess Mononoke
Ride with the Devil
Rosetta
Run Lola Run
Show Me Love
The Sixth Sense
The Straight Story
Three Kings
Time Regained
Topsy-Turvy
The Wind Will Carry Us

Penn

Arthur Penn 1922 - 2010

Penn was a very good filmmaker who sort of remained in the shadows due to making so few films over the past twenty years. While Bonnie and Clyde was never forgotten [and won't be] many of his other films were. In some cases films like The Left-Handed Gun and The Miracle Worker and The Chase lost to time and critical apathy. While Little Big Man, Night Moves and The Missouri Breaks remembered mainly by film lovers but defended strongly by those who especially like them.

True, he made three westerns but I would argue that he was one of those filmmakers who made a wide variety of films that are tough to label as 'a Penn film' in the same way we could label a Kazan or a Kramer or a Frankenheimer picture. You could watch The Left-Handed Gun [a Paul Newman western with a 50's psychological edge] and then turn and watch Mickey One [an intriguing independent 60's drama] then Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore [a late 60's 'hippie' dramedy] and finally Night Moves [a 70's private detective drama] and you would be hard pressed to know they were all directed by the same director if you didn't know better. In my book that is the quality of not only a talented director but one willing to stretch beyond his stylistic comfort zone.  True, they have a common theme regarding the outsider failing to fit in, the violence of America and the corrupt myths of America. But cinematically along with the tone of their drama they were all different.

We would call such filmmakers journeyman directors. But he was a cut above. I've liked everything of his that I have seen.
[photo from Todd McCarthy's indiewire column]

Cookware giver

Perusing through an April 1966 Life Magazine it didn't take long to find a politically incorrect ad.

Lost Island of VHS...VIII

The Comfort of Strangers - Paul Schrader - 1990

One of the more intriguing films of the 1990's and certainly one of Paul Schrader's finest films is The Comfort of Strangers. Based on an Ian McEwan novel and adapted for the screen by Harold Pinter it is about a young couple played by Miranda Richarson and Rupert Everett vacationing in Venice Italy who get caught in a very odd web of dark desires with an older Venitian couple played by Christopher Walken and Hellen Mirren.

At times the film recalls Luchino Visconti's  Death in Venice crossed with something by David Lynch. Especially with it's mysterious atmosphere, underlying black humor and use of sexuality. At the heart of the film is Walken's role, which is certainly one of his finest, as a character who has a particularly old [masculine] world view that borders on charming and dangerous. He regales the couple with stories of his father, a man who seems to have been the embodiment of imperialism and fascism.

As the story unwinds it becomes evident that the couple are working through a rough patch in their relationship. But, after their first couple of encounters with Venetian couple, they begin to grow closer together. Yet as they get sucked into the deviant web it seems that the survival of their relationship is the least of their worries.

The cinematography by Dante Spinotti really deserves a special notice. The film showcases beautiful lighting along with lengthy, smooth, slow tracking shots that - coupled with the Badalamenti's score -  add to the creepy milieu as the film moves along to an ending that is both inevitable and shocking.

So how does a film this good with such names as McEwan, Pinter, Walken, Mirren, Badalamenti, Spinotti, et al. stay relatively unknown 20 years after it was made? I have no idea. It could be because MGM owns the rights and they have no desire to release it on DVD. Or it could be because it is an unconventional and too dark. But I will say some day when there is a retrospective of Paul Schrader's work this is the film that - I think - will make people reevaluate Schrader's work as they wonder why they had never heard of it. It is not available on DVD in Region 1 but you can buy it for under $10.00 from Amazon UK.

Chabrol

Claude Chabrol, 1930 - 2010
Another great filmmaker has left us.

Chabrol was the most prolific of the primary filmmakers in the French New Wave making close to 70 features in 52 years.

I've managed to only see a handful of his films. Most are suspense films hence he was considered the French Hitchcock. But too his films have an eye on class. Many of his characters are working or middle class who come into conflict with the upper class. And there is always a murder in there somewhere. His direction was always controlled but not so tightely controlled that he railroaded the narrative from start to finish. Instead he often develops characters within a particular setting and then spins the tale from there all the while leaving a bit of suspense and a little surprise to jolt us out of our complacency.

Of his many films the ones I highly recommend that I have seen are:

Le beau serge
Les bonnes femmes
This Man Must Die
Le boucher
La rupture
La cérémonie

But there are so many more to catch up with. Mubi has some great links.

Bertolucci Plaisir

I came across a 'Guilt Pleasure' article by Bernardo Bertolucci from the July / August 1996 issue of Film Comment. In it he writes about the films he likes. One of the films was Le Plaisir by Max Ophuls. As you will see his response is a peculiar form of pleasure.

My wife took me to see it nine years ago in Paris, and after the first episode, "The Masque," I was so excited that I got a fever and couldn't stay for the other two episodes. Two or three years later, in a little cinema in Rome called Film Studio... I went again and saw the first part and then the second, "Le Maison Tellier," in which the brothel closes so that all the hookers can go to he Holy Communion of the daughter of one of them. And it was so beautiful I couldn't stand it - it was too moving. And again, I had a fever and had to leave the theatre. A few years later I could see the third episode, "La Modele," which is devastating.

Le Plaisir is one of the least known of late Ophuls works but just as beautiful as La Ronde or The Earnings of Madame de.... Most will have seen it by now if they have seen the other two. But if not make sure to see it. And, just to be safe, have some aspirin on hand so you can enjoy it in one sitting.

Telluride 1990

Twenty years ago today [and to the hour of this post] the above photo was taken [by my dad] at the Telluride Film Festival. On the left is Annette Insdorf who hosts the seminars and on the right is film critic Roger Ebert. This particular panel [called 'noon seminars'] was about film critics. The highlight of the discussion was Ebert taking on Richard Corliss who had written a critical article in Film Comment about the thumbs up and thumbs down culture of film criticism. Also on the panel were Manny Farber and Paul Schrader. Manny Farber, known for his cantankerous nature, was in fine form taking on everyone including people who asked simplistic questions as well as Premiere Magazine, which was hosting the event. It was really rather enjoyable to sit in the park, feel the high altitude sun, look up at the high peaks surrounding the town and listen to the discussions echo through the speakers.

The four day festival was special for me in part because it was the first festival I had ever attended. But too because I was there with family and friends. The previous spring I had graduated from college and with a friend had gone to the East coast for the summer. There we met a young French couple who we became friends with and by summer's end had convinced to drive back to Colorado with us. They came along and loved the trip. As their vacation was coming to an end my dad and I told them we were going to attend the film festival in Telluride and they decided to come along. We drove up in my dad's green VW. Upon arriving we got a camp spot just outside of town and prepared for the nights first films. The French couple were particulary excited because they had learned that Gerard Depardieu was there; something they could not really believe since they were in this small Colorado mountain town.

Before the festival started I managed to sneak into the student program intro, which was being held in an old school house. The host that day was Bertrand Tavernier, who was the festivals' guest director that year. I had no idea who he was but was amazed at his knowledge of old Hollywood. Thereafter he became a frequent Telluride attendee.

That evening the festival began with the opening night party [they call it the 'feed']. Back then the feed was not held on the main street but was held in a courtyard that was part of the New Sheridon hotel. We looked on as the passholders mingled with the festival guests. All of a sudden my dad and I saw the French couple among the crowd. They had simply gone into the Sheridan lobby and snuck in through a side door. We decided to do the same.

Telluride is a very small town. And back in 1990 some of the streets were still unpaved. At that time the festival too was still generally small and the lines for each movie were relatively short. There were five film venues all within short walking distance of each other. The biggest venue was in a quonset hut [called The Community Center] located next to an old school building, one was in an old opera house, one was in the Mason's hall, one was outdoors, and one was an actual movie theater. The quonset hut has since been torn down and replaced by an auditorium but the other venues are all still used today.

Highlights that year were tributes to Clint Eastwood [White Hunter Black Heart], Gerard Depardieu [Cyrano de Bergerac] and director John Berry [He Ran All The Way].

Other films of note shown were:
Archangel - Surreal and funny early film by Guy Madden.
The Civil War - Ken Burns' most celebrated documentary.
The Comfort of Strangers - Paul Schrader film set in creepy but beautiful Venice.
Reversal of Fortune - Barbet Schroeder fillm about Claus von Bülow.
King of New York - An early Abel Ferrara movie with Christopher Walken.
L'Atalante - A definitive restored version of the Jean Vigo masterpeice.
The Nasty Girl - Inventive, thought provoking German film by Micheel Verhoeven.
Freeze - Die - Come to Life - A stark film by Pavel Nazarov about two kids in Siberia.
Ju Dou - Zhang Zimou's first real international hit.
All The Vermeers of New York - Jon Jost's beguiling film about art and love.

Lost Island of VHS...

Wife! Be Like A Rose - Mikio Naruse - 1935

This is a terrific film from what many call the fourth master of the classic Japanese cinema: Mikio Naruse. Naruse, no doubt, stands on his own in film history but having never seen any of his films this one felt like a fusion both in style and content of two of those other great masters Yasujirō Ozu and Kenji Mizoguchi. Like the films those two filmmakers made this film deals with domestic issues in 1930's Japan as well as the plight and/or roll of women in the society. In this film a young woman (Sachiko Chiba), soon to be married, goes to the country to bring back her father who left his wife and kids for a geisha twenty years before. What she does not know is that he has fathered two other children and is quite happy in his present life.

Despite the built-in drama and serious themes Wife! Be Like A Rose is on the lighter side and almost comedic at times. In part, this is due to the actress Sachiko Chiba who charms and smiles in each scene. Nothing much seems to phase her as she comes to accept the fact that reuniting her mother and father in not in the cards. [The Japanese title is Kimiko, which is the main characters' name].

Stylistically, the film also incorporates the "tatami shot" - used notably by Ozu - in which the camera is placed at a low height, along with distant framing shots and smooth camera movement which were utilized so well by Mizoguchi.

I'm am not sure why only one Naruse film is available in the US on DVD. I can only guess there are rights issues. Perhaps Criterion will eventually unspool a few of them in an Eclipse set. One can only hope.

A longer review of the film can be found here.

An interesting piece of history on the film when it opened and closed in New York in 1937 is here.

There are good notes on Naruse retrospectives at Filmforum and Harvard Film Archive.

Also a good piece over at The Evening Class.

It's time for Naruse to be re-discovered...or maybe just discovered.

Cameron punk'd?

In the dept of "he doesn't get it" director James Cameron has said he will now reconsider making a sequel to Avatar based on the experience he had after showing the film to the Achuar - an Amazonian community who want to keep oil companies from drilling near their homelands.

From the interview:

These are people who had never been in a movie theater. They’re wearing feathers and paint. And they put on the glasses and watch Avatar, the first movie they’ve ever seen. And when they came out, the BBC interviewed them. This one woman, a tribal elder, says, 'In this movie, they solved their problems by fighting. We are not afraid to fight, but we have decided to try to solve our problems through dialogue. So this movie needs a better message.' I felt like I’d been punk’d. But it made me think."

He felt like he had been punk'd? What? Is it possible he has gotten so close to his own movie that he can't see a major message in it is using violence to solve problems? I mean, sure the way the story unfolds the Na'avi characters have no choice, but to people in the real world who have never seen a movie I would think the action would be pretty tough to look past.

Moon Gutter

Moon in the Gutter is a film I have wanted to see since I first read about it in the winter 1989/90 issue of Sight & Sound magazine. Despite the fact that it was a monumental failure and one that had apparently sunk the French company Gaumont I was intrigued enough to seek it out. How could one not be? But I could never find it on VHS and it didn't seem to come around even to the many venues in Los Angeles.

But just recently it was released on DVD by Cinema Libre.

Starring Gérard Depardieu, Nastassja Kinski, Victoria Abril and Dominique Pinon the film is about a dock worker named Gerard (Depardieu) who becomes obsessed with finding the man who killed his younger sister. Hitting an emotional snag in his life he falls for a photographer (Kinski) and attempts to leave his girlfriend (Abril) and the dingy docks where he lives and works. But that proves impossible.

The film succeeds mostly in the production design and cinematography departments. The sets are big and colorful and even though they feel like set pieces each scene has just the right aesthetic - at once claustrophobic and wide open. The DP was Philippe Rousselot who employs beautiful tracking shots and an almost too glossy look to what is otherwise a dark setting.

To be sure, Moon in the Gutter can only really be judged by the criticisms stacked against it. And after now viewing it I can see why the critics were disappointed. Coming off of the success of Diva Beineix was expected to be the next big French director. And as critics are wont to do they sunk their teeth into an artist whom they had previously placed on a pedestal. Adding insult to injury Gaumont trashed the extra footage negatives thus making it impossible for Beineix to ever create a definitive version like he did for Betty Blue.

The film is a tad long and considering Beineix's original length was around 4 or 5 hours I can't imagine the film being better or even more fleshed out. I can only imagine more beautiful shots and perhaps more intrigue. If anything there is a lesson here about studios giving a director too big a budget and a director who thought he could fulfill the promise of that budget.

Moon in the Gutter is a film worth seeing but an asterisk will always hang above it.

Nuclear or Magnetic

Anyone else confuse Margot and the Nuclear So and So's with Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros? Looking for the song 'Home' [a title I had forgotten] I kept looking for songs by Margot and the Nuclear So and So's. Finally found the song - but it is by Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. Now I know.

Ultrarunning comic

An old Tank McNamara strip I keep around.

Black Magic Woman

'Black Magic Woman' was written and performed by Peter Green & Fleetwood Mac before Santana made it famous.

Stinson Dipsea

In May I was up in the Bay Area and I did a great loop trail run from Stinson Beach up the Matt Davis Trail to Pantoll station and down the Dipsea trail.
It was a cool windy day, which made for great running weather.

This shot looks down the Dipsea trail toward Stinson Beach.
[It is also similar to this drawing presented below]

Goo music covers

Italian prog record from the 1973 and a blues rock album from the 2003.

Two Waving

Think about this for a moment; Way back in 1961 "L'année dernière à Marienbad" by Alain Resnais and "Paris nous appartient" by Jacques Rivette were released. The Nouvelle Vague had just leapt onto the world stage and Hollywood was beginning to wane a bit as many filmmakers and movements were about to burst forth in what would be the most creative decade in world cinema since the 1930's.

But for the sake of this post consider the fact that there is little doubt that no one was thinking that almost 50 years later in 2009-2010 both Resnais and Rivette would still be making films and giving cinephiles everywhere something to delight in for a couple of hours.

The world of cinema is a very different one than it was in 1961 - but it's reassuring to know that Resnais and Rivette still make the films they want to make with little or no interference from producers, studios or the marketplace. They have pretty much set their own pace and the world has had to conform around them.

So what about the new films?

Les herbes folles [Wild Grass] by Resnais is a rather dramatic and surreal tale about the power and mystery of love and 36 vues du Pic Saint Loup [Around a Small Mountain] by Rivette is a tale about a woman's reluctant entrance back into the world of the circus with the help of a man she doesn't know. Both are not what I would call masterworks but they have elements that only masters could really attain. Rivette's pacing is tremendously sure and Resnais has a way of turning a film from drama to comedy to surreality in the matter of one agile scene.


Rivette, as he usually does, plays with the conventions of a fictional proscenium as an allegory to the real world ultimately leaving us satisfied and reflective while Resnais plays with narrative structure never really defining the story or the character motivations and leaving us even more puzzled [but exhilarated] by the end.

Both films are unconventional love stories featuring older [40 and up] characters who are trying to reconcile their past so they can get on with their lives. Both deal with men who show up in a confused woman's life but then the tables reverse as the women, though independent, find they need the men in their lives at this particular point. And the men then find they need to make some sort of commitment in order to free the women.

Stylistically the films are very different. Resnais eschews his recent theatrical staged films for a lot of swooping camera movement [by DP Eric Gautier] and color while Rivette keeps it more laid back and simple with scenes that frame their characters outdoors [with a mountain in the background] or in dark tent of the circus.

Both films are recommended and welcome.