Super pretentious and always amazing film website MUBI is currently a Directors' World Cup on its forums. 128 directors representing healthy variety of nations and cultures. And of course, with all those serious film buffs nominating and managing the directors and each of their films used in a round, I haven't seen the majority. I missed all of Round 1 due to all sorts of reasons, not the least of which being the hugely intimidating amount of films I'd need to see to keep up. Round 2 began late Saturday with Terrence Malick's mostly perfect (and future Criterion DVD) The Thin Red Line facing off against Šarūnas Bartas' quiet and frustrating Few of Us. Bartas displays clearly a talent for beautifully composed shots and landscapes. Both films feature mainly internal conflicts, but Malick's use of silence is much more effective. The voting has just a few hours left with the films running neck and neck.
Match #2 features another Criterion film against a frustrating and slow, personal epic. Agnes Varda's Cleo from 5 to 7 vs. Victor Erice's The Quince Tree Sun. Varda's film is universally considered a groundbreaking classic, which is why I was so surprised when I found myself defending it against my friends whom found it boring, monotonous, and empty. Silly kids. I found parts purposefully empty, but always giving insight into "Cleo's" tortured mindset. The final twenty minutes work amazingly to provide the viewer with a whole new perspective on the seemingly self-obsessed protagonist. Varda's cinematography is stunning, moving through several different techniques successfully and organically, including handheld and long, smooth tracking shots. The Quince Tree Sun documents a painter working to finish his masterpiece. It's a long and detailed look into the creative process. It would most likely be a cinema formalist's wet dream with all of its long, static shots and apathy towards any sort of plot development. It never worked enough emotionally for me. It looks like Varda has a steady lead currently, but anything can happen in the day or so of voting it has left.
Today's Match #3 is Jim Jarmusch's Down By Law (CRITERION! WTF!) vs. Stan Brakhage's The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes (Seriously, Criterion. This ends after this match). This is no contest, whatsoever. I love Jarmusch, I hate TAOSWOOE (as I like to call it).
MUBI.com is what's up. I guarantee that you'll at least find out about films and directors you've never heard of before. Outside of the forum's, great critics, such as Glenn Kenny, publish articles there; and I've had the chance to see several films through the site long before they were released in theaters (Revanche, Apichatpong Weerasethakul's A Letter to Uncle Boonmee).
I know that sounds a little too much like a paid endorsement, but I legitimately love the site. And I'll be writing up on a lot of movies that are competing in the Cup. I haven't the time for every film of every match of every round or anything, but I'm trying to get through a bunch.
I also watched two aggresively stupid films: Ken Russel's Tommy and John Stahl's Magnificent Obsession. Tommy was at least fun, and visually stimulating. I wouldn't even call it a bad movie; it's just a stupid one. Magnificent Obsession, on the other hand, was pretty terrible. I mean, if you're going to be the source material for a Douglas Sirk melodrama made 20 years later, couldn't you try a little bit harder to put one single iota of rational or credible emotion into your film? Geez.
It's too early for sinus buildups, but I got 'em anyway. Maybe tomorrow I'll breath comfortably again? If not, it's another day of couching it up, this time with Ingmar Bergman's television cut of Fanny and Alexander. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.
Monday, August 30, 2010
Friday, August 27, 2010
Internet woes
My New Orleans apartment has been without internet for the past week. I hate when my movie build-ups are forced upon me. I am the only one who gets to purposefully neglect the promise I made to myself to write about films, gosh darnit!
I'll keep that promise in the most minimal way possible.
2010:
Piranha 3D was a surprising, trashy, gory blast. Adam Scott might be my hero. Seriously, what can't he do? I can, without any reservation, confirm that this is better than Mirrors.
Winter's Bone featured some fantastic performances, and a couple not great ones, along with some superb direction from Debra Granik. It's too bad the tension she builds magnificently mostly dissipates by the end.
Soul Kitchen is Fatih Akin's new comedy. It's broad and conventional, predictable and silly, but damn if it isn't sincere and heartwarming enough to forgive it everything. The joy of life conveyed in this film is pure cinema-magic at its best.
Japan:
Memories, from 1995, features three different stories from three different anime greats (supposedly). Like any omnibous film, the entries are of varying quality, but at least they're all good. The highlight is the first entry, The Magnetic Rose, from Koji Morimoto and a screenplay from the very recently departed Satoshi Kon (Millenium Actress, Paprika). It keeps with Kon's usual themes of memories and dreams to create a haunting story of eternal love, with the help of a beautiful, classical score that ties in wonderfully with the narrative.
Taboo, Nagisa Oshima's latest film (it's been 10 years), is elegant and visually stunning; but it may be a bit too ambiguous for it's own good. The narrative explores ambiguity in a black and white scenario, featuring a character of possibly ambiguous sex. The narrative itself at a certain point becomes quite ambiguous as Oshima really starts to force the viewer to work things out.
Criterion (and affiliates):
Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie is the final piece to Criterion's Bergman box-set which includes The Silence, Through a Glass Darkly, and Winter Light. It's a TV documentary series following Bergman through the production process of 1961's Winter Light, beginning with the script stage and ending with viewer reactions following the film's premiere. I don't love Winter Light, and the 5 episodes each run a longer than they need to; but it is informative, at least.
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes is on the By Brakhage anthology. I hear the guy made all kinds of films, even pioneered styles. That's great. I don't like autopsies in their full, unblinking eye glory. It's totally silent, really forcing you to feel whatever it is an autopsy makes you feel. I couldn't take it.
Le Jour se Leve is available on Criterion's Essentials line, a cheap bare-bones brand they use to reprint some of their films and release other acclaimed classics they don't have time to release regularly. Marcel Carne's pre-noir, bleak love story is clunky and awkward, but features some fantastic shots and some palpable atmosphere to make it worth your time. I prefer his earlier Port of Shadows and i absolutely adore his post-war Children of Paradise.
Rivette:
Jacques Rivette has to be one of the most challenging directors whose work I've had the pleasure of viewing. In my limited experience, they are very wordy, very long, and extremely strange. The three I've seen have involved some sort of puzzle and each has treated it's own very differently. Hopefully more of his films become available in The U.S. soon. Come on, Criterion, how are you not all over Celine and Julie Go Boating?
The Story of Marie and Julien ( 2003) is by far the strangest of his films I've seen, but also the least successful. It doesn't quite earn its length, but it does maintain an effective eeriness and ambiance that I enjoyed.
Le Pont du Nord (1981) easily became my favorite of Rivette's films. It features a real life mother/daughter duo as a two mysterious characters with a mysterious relationship over the course of four days. It's something of a female Quixotic tale around the Paris underground. It becomes an engrossing urban fantasy. Rivette purposefully and brilliantly leaves elements of his puzzle hanging at the end of the film because he knows it might not really be important anyway. (This isn't on DVD, but it is on youtube. Search for PDN1 to find it.)
Misc. :
Election. 4th time seeing it. I had to for school. Maybe Alexander Payne's best? I struggle with that one.
Vera Cruz features Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster as the two different types of Western heroes (the classy, John Wayne archetype and the Wild Bunch anti-hero, respectively) forced together to transport a Mexican princess hiding gold in the middle of the Mexican Civil War. It's wonderfully violent and sexual for it's time (1954), as well as great vehicle for the aforementioned screen legends.
I'll keep that promise in the most minimal way possible.
2010:
Piranha 3D was a surprising, trashy, gory blast. Adam Scott might be my hero. Seriously, what can't he do? I can, without any reservation, confirm that this is better than Mirrors.
Winter's Bone featured some fantastic performances, and a couple not great ones, along with some superb direction from Debra Granik. It's too bad the tension she builds magnificently mostly dissipates by the end.
Soul Kitchen is Fatih Akin's new comedy. It's broad and conventional, predictable and silly, but damn if it isn't sincere and heartwarming enough to forgive it everything. The joy of life conveyed in this film is pure cinema-magic at its best.
Japan:
Memories, from 1995, features three different stories from three different anime greats (supposedly). Like any omnibous film, the entries are of varying quality, but at least they're all good. The highlight is the first entry, The Magnetic Rose, from Koji Morimoto and a screenplay from the very recently departed Satoshi Kon (Millenium Actress, Paprika). It keeps with Kon's usual themes of memories and dreams to create a haunting story of eternal love, with the help of a beautiful, classical score that ties in wonderfully with the narrative.
Taboo, Nagisa Oshima's latest film (it's been 10 years), is elegant and visually stunning; but it may be a bit too ambiguous for it's own good. The narrative explores ambiguity in a black and white scenario, featuring a character of possibly ambiguous sex. The narrative itself at a certain point becomes quite ambiguous as Oshima really starts to force the viewer to work things out.
Criterion (and affiliates):
Ingmar Bergman Makes a Movie is the final piece to Criterion's Bergman box-set which includes The Silence, Through a Glass Darkly, and Winter Light. It's a TV documentary series following Bergman through the production process of 1961's Winter Light, beginning with the script stage and ending with viewer reactions following the film's premiere. I don't love Winter Light, and the 5 episodes each run a longer than they need to; but it is informative, at least.
The Act of Seeing with One's Own Eyes is on the By Brakhage anthology. I hear the guy made all kinds of films, even pioneered styles. That's great. I don't like autopsies in their full, unblinking eye glory. It's totally silent, really forcing you to feel whatever it is an autopsy makes you feel. I couldn't take it.
Le Jour se Leve is available on Criterion's Essentials line, a cheap bare-bones brand they use to reprint some of their films and release other acclaimed classics they don't have time to release regularly. Marcel Carne's pre-noir, bleak love story is clunky and awkward, but features some fantastic shots and some palpable atmosphere to make it worth your time. I prefer his earlier Port of Shadows and i absolutely adore his post-war Children of Paradise.
Rivette:
Jacques Rivette has to be one of the most challenging directors whose work I've had the pleasure of viewing. In my limited experience, they are very wordy, very long, and extremely strange. The three I've seen have involved some sort of puzzle and each has treated it's own very differently. Hopefully more of his films become available in The U.S. soon. Come on, Criterion, how are you not all over Celine and Julie Go Boating?
The Story of Marie and Julien ( 2003) is by far the strangest of his films I've seen, but also the least successful. It doesn't quite earn its length, but it does maintain an effective eeriness and ambiance that I enjoyed.
Le Pont du Nord (1981) easily became my favorite of Rivette's films. It features a real life mother/daughter duo as a two mysterious characters with a mysterious relationship over the course of four days. It's something of a female Quixotic tale around the Paris underground. It becomes an engrossing urban fantasy. Rivette purposefully and brilliantly leaves elements of his puzzle hanging at the end of the film because he knows it might not really be important anyway. (This isn't on DVD, but it is on youtube. Search for PDN1 to find it.)
Misc. :
Election. 4th time seeing it. I had to for school. Maybe Alexander Payne's best? I struggle with that one.
Vera Cruz features Gary Cooper and Burt Lancaster as the two different types of Western heroes (the classy, John Wayne archetype and the Wild Bunch anti-hero, respectively) forced together to transport a Mexican princess hiding gold in the middle of the Mexican Civil War. It's wonderfully violent and sexual for it's time (1954), as well as great vehicle for the aforementioned screen legends.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Horror/Thriller Battle #1
Watching Scott Pilgrim and then going back into Starz's epic Pillars of the Earth miniseries is quite jarring. Alison Pill is frighteningly different in the two of them. Her delivery as the new queen, of "I would like a toy too. 100 pounds from the each of you" was chilling. The series itself is far from perfect, but it boasts several fantastic performances from the likes of Ian McShane and Hayley Atwell (future Captain America love interest). But Pill owns it in her small role that has brilliantly seen her from wronged royalty all the way to power-mad devil; and we still have three hours left.
Today gives us a much closer battle. I'm well aware that horror and thriller are two very different genres, but for the purpose of these battles they're similar enough that they'll have to compete together. The films are written in the order I watched them, not by my preferences or anything else.
Let's begin!
The first film is French skin master Jean-Jacques Beineix's 2001 thriller Mortal Transfer. A psychiatrist treating a sexy, mysterious thief falls asleep during their session and awakes to find her strangled to death. He spends the rest of the film trying to hide then dispose the body, as well as figure out who killed her. Beineix relies on melodramatic blues and dodged camera angles to evoke the sleek urban mood he seems to desperately want, but the narrative falls flat after the initial discovery of the body. The doctor spends 90 minutes running around pointlessly and without any dramatic impact. The last 30 minutes are meant to discount a very visual film as suddenly characters decide to sit down and tell us all the twists in the form of painfully long monologues. It's a terrible decision that finally sinks a mediocre thriller.
This next film made a very surprising showing in the battle. Joe Johnston's The Wolfman is supposed to be an awful film, at least according to the overwhelming majority of critics. The trailers didn't look great, but I didn't think they made the film look bad either. Turns out it's both good and bad. In Devin Faraci's review over at CHUD.com (he likes it a lot more than I do), he likens it to the classic B-movies where you'd have to sit through all the boring crap for those few minutes of great material. Unfortunately we don't live in that era anymore so Johnston's film will probably be remembered as just bad. But I agree more with Devin. Every sequence involving an actual werewolf is exhilarating and scary, and expertly executed. Every other scene in the film is clearly racing to the next werewolf attack, robbing these scenes of any actual worth and really fucking with the pace. Then there's the forced, chemistry-free romance between leads Benicio del Toro and Emily Blunt. I know this film went through hell every step of its long road to the theater. It feels cut to hell. Maybe there's a lot of footage that makes these forced elements better? But as it stands, the long action sequences make the film worth a look.
Shutter Island, on the other hand, does not feature any bad anything. I've heard people calling Leonardo DiCaprio's performances here and in Inception very similar, but I'm surprised I haven't really heard anyone noting the similarities between the movies themselves. To go further would be to spoil, but trust me, they're similar. And I'll call Shutter Island the winner. It's a beautiful and frightening walking nightmare. Martin Scorcese has constructed a formalist, visual treat. People complain about the twists, but they seem almost irrelevant to me. Scorcese had no intention of hiding where the story was going. Instead it's a great character examination filled with great, creepy performances. One scene performances from Jackie Earle Hailey, Patricia Clarkson, and Elias Koteas are particularly memorable. We have our front runner, people.
Roman Polanski does his best to make a pretty standard thriller great with The Ghost Writer. He gets close. It often feels more like a drama than a suspense thriller, but it's an effectively cutting condemnation of Tony Blair, and I think to some extent, a man on the run from a shameful past. Shoe seems to fit. Polanski does successfully wring ropes of tension out of some conversations that feel about a few ticks to the left of normal. Ewan McGregor's interview with Tom Wilkinson is probably the example, but Olivia Williams gets the best material overall as Pierce Brosnan's former prime minister's suffering wife/femme fatale. I also enjoyed how not every aspect of this film is about its central mystery. The narrative flows in and out of it so efficiently that by the film's fantastic and subtly exhilarating climax, how the mystery wraps itself up isn't even the most interesting part.
The results:
Shutter Island claims 1st place with an 8.7/10
The Ghost Writer takes 2nd with a 7.9/10
The Wolfman is 3rd with a 6.5/10
Mortal Transfer comes in 4th place with a 5.2/10
Outside of the battle, IFC released a couple of VOD exclusive films in the past couple of weeks. Both were pretty good films from much better directors. Making Plans with Lena is far from Christophe Honore's best, but it is mostly successful as a darker, less sentimental imitation of Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale. One of my personal favorites Johnnie To made the decision to have most of his Vengeance dialogue spoken in English. Having everyone stuck in their second language sucks the air out of what would have been some fantastic exchanges. I think he picked the wrong film to scale back on his normally extravagant but mesmerizing action choreography. I know he's got more in him than action (someone please fucking release Sparrow, it's got to be one of the best films of the last decade!), but this film could have used more.
I think I'm about as close to caught up with2010 films as I possibly can be at this point. Hopefully I'll finally get around to Greenberg soon.
Today gives us a much closer battle. I'm well aware that horror and thriller are two very different genres, but for the purpose of these battles they're similar enough that they'll have to compete together. The films are written in the order I watched them, not by my preferences or anything else.
Mortal Transfer
vs.
The Wolfman
vs.
Shutter Island
vs.
The Ghost Writer
vs.
The Wolfman
vs.
Shutter Island
vs.
The Ghost Writer
Let's begin!
The first film is French skin master Jean-Jacques Beineix's 2001 thriller Mortal Transfer. A psychiatrist treating a sexy, mysterious thief falls asleep during their session and awakes to find her strangled to death. He spends the rest of the film trying to hide then dispose the body, as well as figure out who killed her. Beineix relies on melodramatic blues and dodged camera angles to evoke the sleek urban mood he seems to desperately want, but the narrative falls flat after the initial discovery of the body. The doctor spends 90 minutes running around pointlessly and without any dramatic impact. The last 30 minutes are meant to discount a very visual film as suddenly characters decide to sit down and tell us all the twists in the form of painfully long monologues. It's a terrible decision that finally sinks a mediocre thriller.
This next film made a very surprising showing in the battle. Joe Johnston's The Wolfman is supposed to be an awful film, at least according to the overwhelming majority of critics. The trailers didn't look great, but I didn't think they made the film look bad either. Turns out it's both good and bad. In Devin Faraci's review over at CHUD.com (he likes it a lot more than I do), he likens it to the classic B-movies where you'd have to sit through all the boring crap for those few minutes of great material. Unfortunately we don't live in that era anymore so Johnston's film will probably be remembered as just bad. But I agree more with Devin. Every sequence involving an actual werewolf is exhilarating and scary, and expertly executed. Every other scene in the film is clearly racing to the next werewolf attack, robbing these scenes of any actual worth and really fucking with the pace. Then there's the forced, chemistry-free romance between leads Benicio del Toro and Emily Blunt. I know this film went through hell every step of its long road to the theater. It feels cut to hell. Maybe there's a lot of footage that makes these forced elements better? But as it stands, the long action sequences make the film worth a look.
Shutter Island, on the other hand, does not feature any bad anything. I've heard people calling Leonardo DiCaprio's performances here and in Inception very similar, but I'm surprised I haven't really heard anyone noting the similarities between the movies themselves. To go further would be to spoil, but trust me, they're similar. And I'll call Shutter Island the winner. It's a beautiful and frightening walking nightmare. Martin Scorcese has constructed a formalist, visual treat. People complain about the twists, but they seem almost irrelevant to me. Scorcese had no intention of hiding where the story was going. Instead it's a great character examination filled with great, creepy performances. One scene performances from Jackie Earle Hailey, Patricia Clarkson, and Elias Koteas are particularly memorable. We have our front runner, people.
Roman Polanski does his best to make a pretty standard thriller great with The Ghost Writer. He gets close. It often feels more like a drama than a suspense thriller, but it's an effectively cutting condemnation of Tony Blair, and I think to some extent, a man on the run from a shameful past. Shoe seems to fit. Polanski does successfully wring ropes of tension out of some conversations that feel about a few ticks to the left of normal. Ewan McGregor's interview with Tom Wilkinson is probably the example, but Olivia Williams gets the best material overall as Pierce Brosnan's former prime minister's suffering wife/femme fatale. I also enjoyed how not every aspect of this film is about its central mystery. The narrative flows in and out of it so efficiently that by the film's fantastic and subtly exhilarating climax, how the mystery wraps itself up isn't even the most interesting part.
The results:
Shutter Island claims 1st place with an 8.7/10
The Ghost Writer takes 2nd with a 7.9/10
The Wolfman is 3rd with a 6.5/10
Mortal Transfer comes in 4th place with a 5.2/10
Outside of the battle, IFC released a couple of VOD exclusive films in the past couple of weeks. Both were pretty good films from much better directors. Making Plans with Lena is far from Christophe Honore's best, but it is mostly successful as a darker, less sentimental imitation of Arnaud Desplechin's A Christmas Tale. One of my personal favorites Johnnie To made the decision to have most of his Vengeance dialogue spoken in English. Having everyone stuck in their second language sucks the air out of what would have been some fantastic exchanges. I think he picked the wrong film to scale back on his normally extravagant but mesmerizing action choreography. I know he's got more in him than action (someone please fucking release Sparrow, it's got to be one of the best films of the last decade!), but this film could have used more.
I think I'm about as close to caught up with2010 films as I possibly can be at this point. Hopefully I'll finally get around to Greenberg soon.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Criterion #309
Kenji Mizoguchi is a director whose movies you will always see on everybody's best of lists, but he has very few films available on DVD in North America. I'm sick of reading about how great The Story of the Late Chrysanthemums is, I wanna see it, goddamnit! When Criterion finally released one of his films, I immediately got excited and queued it up on Netflix. I soon put it on the backburner when a friend told me it was just "okay". This film was his 1953 ghost story Ugetsu, Criterion #309. I'm now going to call my friend an idiot. Another few months later, Criterion released his 1954 period masterpiece Sansho the Bailiff, which I immediately watched and loved. I was left seriously moved by its beautiful, and somehow realistic-seeming optimism. It's manufactured sentimentality at its greatest, its most sincere and affecting.
I mention Sansho only because the two films seem like they purposefully complement each other. Indeed, only one year separates them. Criterion should have looked into a nice box set release. Both films chronicle the struggles of the peasant class in 17th century Japan. Sansho sees some of the rich take a fall down the economic ladder. Ugetsu sees some of the poor briefly flirting with the top, and is definitely the more somber of the two.
Ugetsu follows two poor men and their families during a destructive civil war. One of the men is a potter who realizes he can make a minor fortune selling his pots in a nearby town because of the war economy. The other man decides to accompany him in the hope that he can become a samurai by apprenticing himself to one traveling through the town. Both men end up finding their selfish success both to different degrees, but both at a large cost to their wives and families.
This is where I would like to discuss how Mizoguchi's work tends to deal heavily with wronged women and how he masterfully aligns the audiences sympathy with them. Of course I know nothing of his large filmography, but this is what people tend to discuss in regards to Mizoguchi. Regardless of whatever he usually did, that is certainly what he ha done to great success here.
I can't give away much more plot without giving away major secrets, but I can repeat that it is a ghost story, however a non-traditional one. Mizoguchi proves to be a master at blending realities seamlessly. A ghost appearance in Ugetsu is not meant to spook or scare, but is such an organic part of the narrative that their presence could even be missed if you weren't paying enough attention.
The film quietly moves to its deeply affecting conclusion, even ending with a little bittersweet hope. But aside from the ending, the film is another near perfect entry into the two movie filmography I've had the pleasure of experiencing.
Ugetsu: 9.3/10
The film disc has a couple of interviews with frequent Mizoguchi crew members. I learned that the director was most definitely a perfectionist. I saw the run-time of the documentary Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director on the second disc and got scared. The film itself looks and sounds beautiful, as most Criterion releases do.
I'll keep from giving the who release since I clearly skipped out on the majority of the special features.
I mention Sansho only because the two films seem like they purposefully complement each other. Indeed, only one year separates them. Criterion should have looked into a nice box set release. Both films chronicle the struggles of the peasant class in 17th century Japan. Sansho sees some of the rich take a fall down the economic ladder. Ugetsu sees some of the poor briefly flirting with the top, and is definitely the more somber of the two.
Ugetsu follows two poor men and their families during a destructive civil war. One of the men is a potter who realizes he can make a minor fortune selling his pots in a nearby town because of the war economy. The other man decides to accompany him in the hope that he can become a samurai by apprenticing himself to one traveling through the town. Both men end up finding their selfish success both to different degrees, but both at a large cost to their wives and families.
This is where I would like to discuss how Mizoguchi's work tends to deal heavily with wronged women and how he masterfully aligns the audiences sympathy with them. Of course I know nothing of his large filmography, but this is what people tend to discuss in regards to Mizoguchi. Regardless of whatever he usually did, that is certainly what he ha done to great success here.
I can't give away much more plot without giving away major secrets, but I can repeat that it is a ghost story, however a non-traditional one. Mizoguchi proves to be a master at blending realities seamlessly. A ghost appearance in Ugetsu is not meant to spook or scare, but is such an organic part of the narrative that their presence could even be missed if you weren't paying enough attention.
The film quietly moves to its deeply affecting conclusion, even ending with a little bittersweet hope. But aside from the ending, the film is another near perfect entry into the two movie filmography I've had the pleasure of experiencing.
Ugetsu: 9.3/10
The film disc has a couple of interviews with frequent Mizoguchi crew members. I learned that the director was most definitely a perfectionist. I saw the run-time of the documentary Kenji Mizoguchi: The Life of a Film Director on the second disc and got scared. The film itself looks and sounds beautiful, as most Criterion releases do.
I'll keep from giving the who release since I clearly skipped out on the majority of the special features.
This week's Comedy Battle
No, I do not plan on hosting a weekly comedy battle, but I'm backed up on several and thought this would be a more interesting way to recap. All the movies will be unleashed into the pit for ultimate death match. Exciting!
This week's fighters:
This week's fighters:
The Extra Man (2010)
vs.
Colin Fitz Lives! (2010
vs.
Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
vs.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)
vs.
Colin Fitz Lives! (2010
vs.
Hot Tub Time Machine (2010)
vs.
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (2010)
The Extra Man swings out the gate with the immediate advantage of one of Kevin Kline's best performances. Unfortunately, Kline doesn't provide the legs to keep the film at the forefront for long. And holy bajeezus, Paul Dano does everything he can to stop the movie dead. The guy's been great in a few good films, but between this and Gigantic, I'm really starting to not like him very much. From the directors of American Splendor, Dano plays a shy and quiet aspiring writer new to New York City. He finds an unlikely roommate in Kevin Kline's mysterious playboy. Kline takes Dano on as a protege. The film is fun and a touch moving when it keeps to this main plot. A side story of Dano's interactions with hot co-worker Katie Holmes feels like it's from a different, crappier movie, and it occupies too much time without really going anywhere. But Kevin Kline, I must say again, is at his manic, hilarious best. Will the competition be weak enough for Kline to sail this flawed ship all the way to the end?
Based on Colin Fitz Lives! alone, Kevin Kline won't break a sweat. Fitz supposedly made a pretty significant splash at Sundance in 1997. The director, Robert Bella, went into debt making the film, and no distribution company offered enough money for him to pay it off. 13 years later, he's paid off his debt and IFC has swooped in to finally release the film VOD, where it will at least get an eventual DVD release. Here's all you really need to know about the film. It's a Clerks knockoff. It's two mismatched buddies, working a nightmare shift at a shitty, dead end job. I don't really like Clerks... Fitz has a semi mockumentary angle that shows up periodically, and this part is actually pretty funny. William H. Macy shows up briefly for an enjoyable performance, and then is wasted. The rest is all very derivative, '90s indie comedy crap. Maybe 13 years ago this was a hilarious movie. It's a shame that there probably isn't much of an audience for this kind of humor anymore.
The Extra Man almost finds a competitor in Hot Tub Time Machine, a sad case of wasted title that still includes many hilarious bits, before its conclusion kills the whole thing. 3 best friends and one dude's nephew are transported back 20-something years to a weekend the 3 shared partying at a ski lodge. It's pretty typical second chance, wish fulfillment stuff. Rob Corddry steals the show as the asshole fuck-up. John Cusack gets to hog the screen time with an annoying kill-joy that gets to hang out with an epically wasted Lizzy Caplan. Craig Robinson continues to able to sell almost any line he delivers. Clark Duke doesn't get anything to do besides make witty comments in the background. I know this isn't much of an endorsement so far, but the film throws up a thousand jokes per minute, and a large enough percentage of them land for the film to be worth a watch.
Sorry Kevin, I'm sure you weren't counting on a ringer like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to show up today. Edgar Wright adapts Bryan Lee O'Malley's fantastic comic to great success. I feel like my writing from the past few weeks reads a bit hyperbolic, but I really have been watching things I've never experienced before, and Scott Pilgrim is another one. Wright uses so many visual techniques and ideas to create the video game obsessed and music-inspired world that these characters inhabit. He also crams six books into two hours in a mostly seamless way. The film never stops moving, or even slows down, but it also doesn't ever feel rushed. The large cast of supporting characters is uniformly fantastic, with Chris Evans and Kieran Culkin as a couple highlights. Unfortunately the two characters who lose the most in translation are Scott Pilgrim, himself, and love interest Ramona Flowers. Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, respectively, are great, but we lose a lot of the time, and thus a lot of the nuance to their relationship. That's one of the only problems I had with this hilarious and heartfelt film. Definitely one of my favorites of the year.
And so Scott Pilgrim wins in a rude landslide. Here's the battle's final results:
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: 1st place with an 8.9/10
The Extra Man: 2nd place with a 6.6/10
Hot Tub Time Machine: 3rd place with a 6.1/10
Colin Fitz Lives!: 4th place with a 4.8/10
Honorary award:
Sadly, Road to Morocco was just too old to compete in today's Battle. Although a great, timeless comedy, it didn't really fit in with the competition. It's timeless, but definitely of a different time. It's sometimes hard to even create an evolutionary thread of comedy from the joyful bickering between Bob Hope and Bing Crosby to the gross out humor of something like Hot Tub Time Machine. If it were in it's prime though, it would have landed in a solid second place slot with a 7.8/10.
Tomorrow we have a horror/thriller battle planned with another set of widely varied films within the genres. Tentatively.
Based on Colin Fitz Lives! alone, Kevin Kline won't break a sweat. Fitz supposedly made a pretty significant splash at Sundance in 1997. The director, Robert Bella, went into debt making the film, and no distribution company offered enough money for him to pay it off. 13 years later, he's paid off his debt and IFC has swooped in to finally release the film VOD, where it will at least get an eventual DVD release. Here's all you really need to know about the film. It's a Clerks knockoff. It's two mismatched buddies, working a nightmare shift at a shitty, dead end job. I don't really like Clerks... Fitz has a semi mockumentary angle that shows up periodically, and this part is actually pretty funny. William H. Macy shows up briefly for an enjoyable performance, and then is wasted. The rest is all very derivative, '90s indie comedy crap. Maybe 13 years ago this was a hilarious movie. It's a shame that there probably isn't much of an audience for this kind of humor anymore.
The Extra Man almost finds a competitor in Hot Tub Time Machine, a sad case of wasted title that still includes many hilarious bits, before its conclusion kills the whole thing. 3 best friends and one dude's nephew are transported back 20-something years to a weekend the 3 shared partying at a ski lodge. It's pretty typical second chance, wish fulfillment stuff. Rob Corddry steals the show as the asshole fuck-up. John Cusack gets to hog the screen time with an annoying kill-joy that gets to hang out with an epically wasted Lizzy Caplan. Craig Robinson continues to able to sell almost any line he delivers. Clark Duke doesn't get anything to do besides make witty comments in the background. I know this isn't much of an endorsement so far, but the film throws up a thousand jokes per minute, and a large enough percentage of them land for the film to be worth a watch.
Sorry Kevin, I'm sure you weren't counting on a ringer like Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to show up today. Edgar Wright adapts Bryan Lee O'Malley's fantastic comic to great success. I feel like my writing from the past few weeks reads a bit hyperbolic, but I really have been watching things I've never experienced before, and Scott Pilgrim is another one. Wright uses so many visual techniques and ideas to create the video game obsessed and music-inspired world that these characters inhabit. He also crams six books into two hours in a mostly seamless way. The film never stops moving, or even slows down, but it also doesn't ever feel rushed. The large cast of supporting characters is uniformly fantastic, with Chris Evans and Kieran Culkin as a couple highlights. Unfortunately the two characters who lose the most in translation are Scott Pilgrim, himself, and love interest Ramona Flowers. Michael Cera and Mary Elizabeth Winstead, respectively, are great, but we lose a lot of the time, and thus a lot of the nuance to their relationship. That's one of the only problems I had with this hilarious and heartfelt film. Definitely one of my favorites of the year.
And so Scott Pilgrim wins in a rude landslide. Here's the battle's final results:
Scott Pilgrim vs. The World: 1st place with an 8.9/10
The Extra Man: 2nd place with a 6.6/10
Hot Tub Time Machine: 3rd place with a 6.1/10
Colin Fitz Lives!: 4th place with a 4.8/10
Honorary award:
Sadly, Road to Morocco was just too old to compete in today's Battle. Although a great, timeless comedy, it didn't really fit in with the competition. It's timeless, but definitely of a different time. It's sometimes hard to even create an evolutionary thread of comedy from the joyful bickering between Bob Hope and Bing Crosby to the gross out humor of something like Hot Tub Time Machine. If it were in it's prime though, it would have landed in a solid second place slot with a 7.8/10.
Tomorrow we have a horror/thriller battle planned with another set of widely varied films within the genres. Tentatively.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Remember, kid, you're BFABB
I just typed a 1,250 word review of Step Up 3D. Then Blogger made it go away. Fuck that.
I liked it.
UPDATE: found it!
So today I present to you a couple of normal films; not the pretentious foreign, expensive-to-purchase, and/or IFC films available to a very small percentage of the population. This blog really does not represent my love for popular cinema and summer blockbusters, partially because it's been a dry year for that kind of film.
First up is William Friedkin's wilderness-survival heavy The Hunted. Benicio del Toro is a psychopathic, man hunter escaped from a military holding cell. Tommy Lee Jones does his best Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive impression, brought out of retirement to catch the psycho, but with an awesome beard and a stubborn unwillingness to untuck his shirt. The movie is slight, and often stupid, but Friedkin makes his action scenes big and exciting, and the fight scenes brutally ugly, raw, and personal. It's well worth the 94 minutes for those few great scenes. Tommy Lee Jones also kind of prances around while trying to track del Toro, whose frequent mini PETA rants really work to kill his already shaky performance.
The Hunted: 5.9/10
I now realize my next review will not make me seem normal.
Here's what's up: I loved Step Up 3D. I sat in the theater tapping my feet to the music and smiling through the whole thing. I loved it almost as much as I loved Step Up 2 the Streets. The third film doesn't have the amazing final dance sequence that Streets provided, but it has a plethora of varied styles of dance scenes, all brilliantly staged, filmed, and edited, and some truly amazing performers to execute them.
(This is almost wholly SPOILER-free. As though you'd care)
In the third film, returning character Moose (Adam G. Sevani) is starting college at NYU, having given up dancing to face the real world. He brings along his best friend Camille (Missy Elliot video vet, Alyson Stoner).
Moose literally follows a pair of shoes to a small dance battle down the sidewalk, and within 2 minutes of the film starting, is dancing again. Moose was the surprise character in the second film, but here he gets more chances to show off his considerable talent and Michael Jackson moves. Unfortunately, it seems that Disney didn't trust a scrawny 18-year-old to anchor their film. So in comes Luke (Rick Malambri), a dancer/filmmaker who owns an insanely expensive loft where his crew of eclectic dancers all live and rehearse. Luke notices Moose and takes him to the loft where he is quickly accepted as a new member. WHAT ABOUT SCHOOL? MOOSE, YOU GAVE UP DANCING! The problem, Luke and the crew can't afford the mortgage, and the club (WHAT!) isn't bringing in the bills anymore. When the crew goes downstairs to Luke's insanely expensive dance club (maybe if you got any of your fucking adult patrons to buy a goddamn beer...) they meet Natalie (Sharni Vinson), a mysterious dancer who looks and sounds exactly like the hotter Briana Evigan of Streets. With these new members, Luke and his crew set out to win the World Jam and it's prize money to save the loft.
Whoah, that's a lot of set up for 15 minutes. But with it finally out of the way,we can really start dancing.
Before I get to what I loved, I suppose I'll continue with what I didn't. I'm sure you could tell from my plot description that I care little for this story. I believe story in this franchise is an obstacle the films have to constantly wrestle with. Streets struggled and eventually crushed its poorly developed opponent. 3D eventually wins out, but it's got a nasty limb walking out of the ring.
The film really suffers from not having a well-defined lead. In Streets, we had Briana with the blond dude as an inspiring love interest, and Moose as the quirky side-kick. Here we have Luke and Moose. Luke gets the love interest. Moose gets the only attempts at conflict outside of dancing. Unfortunately both are underdeveloped and feel silly. Moose's plot seems weird because he's meant to be balancing his two mutually exclusive worlds of school and dance, but ends up not being seen enough in either for us to feel much for him. It seems more like he was just accidentally left out of scenes until one of the dancers is like "Where's Moose?". Then he shows up.
Luke's development is more than minorly annoying. In fact Luke, along with Natalie, threaten to kill the whole thing. They're both charisma vacuums who take up too much screen time. Luke is just so pretentious, and stupid. Traffic makes him feel like he's part of something bigger. He invented the phrase "Born From a Boom Box" (BFABB), and he never shuts up about it. Natalie is just nothing more than a stand-in for Briana Evigan. She even wears outfits that I swear remember Briana wearing also. These problems, though, are not the mortal sins. No. The problem is that we rarely even see these two robots dance. (The actual robot guy was great) These two seem like the least talented of the larger group. Is the crew just using Luke for his sweet crib? The movie says no, but it makes little sense if they're not. But really, this is a problem because our love interests/complications aren't directly related to the dancing and what's at stake. It feels more forced and tacked on than any other part of the ridiculously stupid story.
Okay. That's it for the bad. 700 words in, I'm ready to talk about the good stuff. Dancing. Camera work, editing. Even pacing, to a lesser extent. The film uses all these qualities in great ways. Director Jon Chu might be incapable of telling a decent story, I wouldn't care; but his staging and execution of the dance sequences is a marvel to watch. I can't begin to imagine how difficult these are to pull off, much less piece together coherently. Well, this ain't no Michael Bay film. These basically are just action scenes, and Chu must know his way around one. The spatial continuity and orientation remains intact throughout each sequence. The editing helps make each successive scene bigger more emotional than the last. And the choreography. Holy cow. Most of these dances display talent levels only hinted at in 2 the Streets. Another great thing is these dances never feel repetitive, and they occur at all the right places. I only got bogged down in stupid dialogue one time in the 2nd act.
This leads me to my next point. What am I supposed to actually think of a film like this, and how do I compare it to other films?
It's magnificently stupid, but also a pure joy to sit through. Do we forgive a weak story, and crummy acting when it has so much else to offer. Chu is well aware of the many genres that have influenced the dance film and the choreography that goes into it. One scene has the lead love birds (their only good scene) rehearsing a routine hinged on perfectly and interwoven spin kicks and martial arts-styled moves. Moose hears a Fred Astaire song blasting from an ice cream truck and commences to dance down the street with Camille in a funny, successful send up of the classic Astaire/Rogers musicals.
There are several more of these moments, making me feel good about thinking this might display an absolute love of cinema more than most films I've seen this year.
And here's where people kill me. I felt after this film similar to how I felt after leaving Inception for the second time. I haven't wrote about Christopher Nolan's dreamfest as I've felt unsure about my initial opinion that it was amazing. I enjoyed every minute, but could not help feeling that it lacked important elements, like a significant emotional core or developed supporting characters. I realized that Inception is the perfect summer spectacle. It's insanely entertaining, sparks conversation, and has people thinking even though most of the debates about plot and such feel absurdly pointless. (whether it was a dream the whole time or not feels wholly irrelevant today since it doesn't affect the stakes either way.) Nolan obviously tells a more compelling, intelligent and imaginative story than Step Up 3D, but at their core they are both huge spectacle, that assault the senses on all fronts, meant to entertain more than incite deep thoughts.
Inception is a much better film, but Step Up 3D is an 100% joyful cinematic experience worth your time (and the silly glasses).
I liked it.
UPDATE: found it!
So today I present to you a couple of normal films; not the pretentious foreign, expensive-to-purchase, and/or IFC films available to a very small percentage of the population. This blog really does not represent my love for popular cinema and summer blockbusters, partially because it's been a dry year for that kind of film.
First up is William Friedkin's wilderness-survival heavy The Hunted. Benicio del Toro is a psychopathic, man hunter escaped from a military holding cell. Tommy Lee Jones does his best Tommy Lee Jones in The Fugitive impression, brought out of retirement to catch the psycho, but with an awesome beard and a stubborn unwillingness to untuck his shirt. The movie is slight, and often stupid, but Friedkin makes his action scenes big and exciting, and the fight scenes brutally ugly, raw, and personal. It's well worth the 94 minutes for those few great scenes. Tommy Lee Jones also kind of prances around while trying to track del Toro, whose frequent mini PETA rants really work to kill his already shaky performance.
The Hunted: 5.9/10
I now realize my next review will not make me seem normal.
Here's what's up: I loved Step Up 3D. I sat in the theater tapping my feet to the music and smiling through the whole thing. I loved it almost as much as I loved Step Up 2 the Streets. The third film doesn't have the amazing final dance sequence that Streets provided, but it has a plethora of varied styles of dance scenes, all brilliantly staged, filmed, and edited, and some truly amazing performers to execute them.
(This is almost wholly SPOILER-free. As though you'd care)
In the third film, returning character Moose (Adam G. Sevani) is starting college at NYU, having given up dancing to face the real world. He brings along his best friend Camille (Missy Elliot video vet, Alyson Stoner).
Moose literally follows a pair of shoes to a small dance battle down the sidewalk, and within 2 minutes of the film starting, is dancing again. Moose was the surprise character in the second film, but here he gets more chances to show off his considerable talent and Michael Jackson moves. Unfortunately, it seems that Disney didn't trust a scrawny 18-year-old to anchor their film. So in comes Luke (Rick Malambri), a dancer/filmmaker who owns an insanely expensive loft where his crew of eclectic dancers all live and rehearse. Luke notices Moose and takes him to the loft where he is quickly accepted as a new member. WHAT ABOUT SCHOOL? MOOSE, YOU GAVE UP DANCING! The problem, Luke and the crew can't afford the mortgage, and the club (WHAT!) isn't bringing in the bills anymore. When the crew goes downstairs to Luke's insanely expensive dance club (maybe if you got any of your fucking adult patrons to buy a goddamn beer...) they meet Natalie (Sharni Vinson), a mysterious dancer who looks and sounds exactly like the hotter Briana Evigan of Streets. With these new members, Luke and his crew set out to win the World Jam and it's prize money to save the loft.
Whoah, that's a lot of set up for 15 minutes. But with it finally out of the way,we can really start dancing.
Before I get to what I loved, I suppose I'll continue with what I didn't. I'm sure you could tell from my plot description that I care little for this story. I believe story in this franchise is an obstacle the films have to constantly wrestle with. Streets struggled and eventually crushed its poorly developed opponent. 3D eventually wins out, but it's got a nasty limb walking out of the ring.
The film really suffers from not having a well-defined lead. In Streets, we had Briana with the blond dude as an inspiring love interest, and Moose as the quirky side-kick. Here we have Luke and Moose. Luke gets the love interest. Moose gets the only attempts at conflict outside of dancing. Unfortunately both are underdeveloped and feel silly. Moose's plot seems weird because he's meant to be balancing his two mutually exclusive worlds of school and dance, but ends up not being seen enough in either for us to feel much for him. It seems more like he was just accidentally left out of scenes until one of the dancers is like "Where's Moose?". Then he shows up.
Luke's development is more than minorly annoying. In fact Luke, along with Natalie, threaten to kill the whole thing. They're both charisma vacuums who take up too much screen time. Luke is just so pretentious, and stupid. Traffic makes him feel like he's part of something bigger. He invented the phrase "Born From a Boom Box" (BFABB), and he never shuts up about it. Natalie is just nothing more than a stand-in for Briana Evigan. She even wears outfits that I swear remember Briana wearing also. These problems, though, are not the mortal sins. No. The problem is that we rarely even see these two robots dance. (The actual robot guy was great) These two seem like the least talented of the larger group. Is the crew just using Luke for his sweet crib? The movie says no, but it makes little sense if they're not. But really, this is a problem because our love interests/complications aren't directly related to the dancing and what's at stake. It feels more forced and tacked on than any other part of the ridiculously stupid story.
Okay. That's it for the bad. 700 words in, I'm ready to talk about the good stuff. Dancing. Camera work, editing. Even pacing, to a lesser extent. The film uses all these qualities in great ways. Director Jon Chu might be incapable of telling a decent story, I wouldn't care; but his staging and execution of the dance sequences is a marvel to watch. I can't begin to imagine how difficult these are to pull off, much less piece together coherently. Well, this ain't no Michael Bay film. These basically are just action scenes, and Chu must know his way around one. The spatial continuity and orientation remains intact throughout each sequence. The editing helps make each successive scene bigger more emotional than the last. And the choreography. Holy cow. Most of these dances display talent levels only hinted at in 2 the Streets. Another great thing is these dances never feel repetitive, and they occur at all the right places. I only got bogged down in stupid dialogue one time in the 2nd act.
This leads me to my next point. What am I supposed to actually think of a film like this, and how do I compare it to other films?
It's magnificently stupid, but also a pure joy to sit through. Do we forgive a weak story, and crummy acting when it has so much else to offer. Chu is well aware of the many genres that have influenced the dance film and the choreography that goes into it. One scene has the lead love birds (their only good scene) rehearsing a routine hinged on perfectly and interwoven spin kicks and martial arts-styled moves. Moose hears a Fred Astaire song blasting from an ice cream truck and commences to dance down the street with Camille in a funny, successful send up of the classic Astaire/Rogers musicals.
There are several more of these moments, making me feel good about thinking this might display an absolute love of cinema more than most films I've seen this year.
And here's where people kill me. I felt after this film similar to how I felt after leaving Inception for the second time. I haven't wrote about Christopher Nolan's dreamfest as I've felt unsure about my initial opinion that it was amazing. I enjoyed every minute, but could not help feeling that it lacked important elements, like a significant emotional core or developed supporting characters. I realized that Inception is the perfect summer spectacle. It's insanely entertaining, sparks conversation, and has people thinking even though most of the debates about plot and such feel absurdly pointless. (whether it was a dream the whole time or not feels wholly irrelevant today since it doesn't affect the stakes either way.) Nolan obviously tells a more compelling, intelligent and imaginative story than Step Up 3D, but at their core they are both huge spectacle, that assault the senses on all fronts, meant to entertain more than incite deep thoughts.
Inception is a much better film, but Step Up 3D is an 100% joyful cinematic experience worth your time (and the silly glasses).
Saturday, August 14, 2010
Criterion #82
Shakespeare has always been a troubling author for me. In my more stupid youth, I would read, barely comprehend and then proclaim so that every person knew how dumb i was "Shakespeare's not even good!" Very silly, I know. I soon realized the error of my ways, and though I have not read nearly all, I have read and enjoyed many of his works. Unfortunately I still don't hold some of his plays as high as others do. I love King Lear, even as it descends into barely comprehensible madness at the end, but Julius Caesar kind of bores me. Much Ado About Nothing makes me down right giddy, but A Midsummer Night's Dream tends to annoy me. But most importantly, while I believe Macbeth is truly one of history's greatest tragedies, Hamlet has never done much for me. I should also be quick to add that I know how important an influence this has on a great many works of art that have come since. Akira Kurosawa's semi adaptation, The Bad Sleep Well, is definitely one of my favorite films from the master. And Jesus, The Lion King has 29 credited writers listed on its IMDB page. Apparently they each only read one scene of Hamlet and made each character a lion. I fucking love The Lion King.
Criterion #82 is, of course, Laurence Olivier's 1948 adaptation of Hamlet. I (like the rest of the planet) consider Laurence Olivier to be one of cinema's greatest actors, and his work as the titular Danish prince really is spectacular. His melancholy is palpable, and his possible madness much more subtle than, say, Mel Gibson's future take on the role in the 1990s.
But it's not Olivier the actor I really care about here; it's Olivier the director. Every visual aspect of this film is so meticulously calculated and aesthetically moving. From the Escher-like, gigantic sets to the extremely hard (and sometimes unnerving) lighting. The frames are filled with glorious details, and the command over the constantly changing depth of field could be orchestrated by no less than a master. Their are great slow pans, a great many beautiful scene transitions. His shot angles work in a wonderfully harmonious manner. I also love the decision to internalize some of the monologues, proving that this stage-born actor really knew what translated into a great film. I believe Olivier deserved the directing Oscar he lost to John Huston that year. (Really, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger earned it for the magical The Red Shoes, but were not even nominated.)
Of course, even with all these compliments, I still don't love this film. Olivier seems to do everything right. All the characters are perfectly cast and acted. I loved Jean SImmons as Ophelia. I just cannot get into this story. Why couldn't Shakespeare have actually written it with lions in mind? Adaptations can work, but Olivier uses only Shakespeare's dialogue, and that's apparently what doesn't do it for me. (Just writing this, I feel like I should be shot by every other intelligent or well-read individual on the planet.) What's wrong with me?
Hamlet (1948): 7.9/10
I watched this on Netflix Instant, so obviously I had no special features to watch. This disc doesn't have any anyway. The picture quality was excellent. The film was a joy to look at.
The Plan:
I have the Criterion films set up in my queue so that I receive one from the early releases in the catalog, and then one from the more recently released end. I have them ordered like that until they meet in the middle, with future releases being tacked on at the end. This order is not set in stone. If I suddenly want to watch one low in my queue, I'll move it to the top. I also have gotten back in the habit of checking out films from my local library which are often Criterion releases. I'm using a checklist website to chart how many Criterion films I've seen in my slow pursuit to finally have them all under my belt. (I've seen 62% already)
Disclaimer:
I don't just love every film Criterion release. There have been a great many I've not cared for, and a few I've flat out loathed. I seek out the Criterion label because they put so much care and time into putting together these discs, and the unequaled quality really shows it. They also do a great job introducing American audiences to directors and films that have never been released on home video here, sometimes films that have never been released theatrically (Pedro Costa's trilogy, for example). How else could I find Akira Kurowsawa's pre-WWII films? or John Lurie's surrealist television program Fishing With John? Criterion releases films from foreign masters from a vast array of countries, films from the Golden Age of American Cinema, more challenging or barely released recent films, cult and camp classics from all over the time line, and even a couple of Michael Bay films. They show a love for all films.
Criterion #82 is, of course, Laurence Olivier's 1948 adaptation of Hamlet. I (like the rest of the planet) consider Laurence Olivier to be one of cinema's greatest actors, and his work as the titular Danish prince really is spectacular. His melancholy is palpable, and his possible madness much more subtle than, say, Mel Gibson's future take on the role in the 1990s.
But it's not Olivier the actor I really care about here; it's Olivier the director. Every visual aspect of this film is so meticulously calculated and aesthetically moving. From the Escher-like, gigantic sets to the extremely hard (and sometimes unnerving) lighting. The frames are filled with glorious details, and the command over the constantly changing depth of field could be orchestrated by no less than a master. Their are great slow pans, a great many beautiful scene transitions. His shot angles work in a wonderfully harmonious manner. I also love the decision to internalize some of the monologues, proving that this stage-born actor really knew what translated into a great film. I believe Olivier deserved the directing Oscar he lost to John Huston that year. (Really, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger earned it for the magical The Red Shoes, but were not even nominated.)
Of course, even with all these compliments, I still don't love this film. Olivier seems to do everything right. All the characters are perfectly cast and acted. I loved Jean SImmons as Ophelia. I just cannot get into this story. Why couldn't Shakespeare have actually written it with lions in mind? Adaptations can work, but Olivier uses only Shakespeare's dialogue, and that's apparently what doesn't do it for me. (Just writing this, I feel like I should be shot by every other intelligent or well-read individual on the planet.) What's wrong with me?
Hamlet (1948): 7.9/10
I watched this on Netflix Instant, so obviously I had no special features to watch. This disc doesn't have any anyway. The picture quality was excellent. The film was a joy to look at.
The Plan:
I have the Criterion films set up in my queue so that I receive one from the early releases in the catalog, and then one from the more recently released end. I have them ordered like that until they meet in the middle, with future releases being tacked on at the end. This order is not set in stone. If I suddenly want to watch one low in my queue, I'll move it to the top. I also have gotten back in the habit of checking out films from my local library which are often Criterion releases. I'm using a checklist website to chart how many Criterion films I've seen in my slow pursuit to finally have them all under my belt. (I've seen 62% already)
Disclaimer:
I don't just love every film Criterion release. There have been a great many I've not cared for, and a few I've flat out loathed. I seek out the Criterion label because they put so much care and time into putting together these discs, and the unequaled quality really shows it. They also do a great job introducing American audiences to directors and films that have never been released on home video here, sometimes films that have never been released theatrically (Pedro Costa's trilogy, for example). How else could I find Akira Kurowsawa's pre-WWII films? or John Lurie's surrealist television program Fishing With John? Criterion releases films from foreign masters from a vast array of countries, films from the Golden Age of American Cinema, more challenging or barely released recent films, cult and camp classics from all over the time line, and even a couple of Michael Bay films. They show a love for all films.
Don't Panic
In Stephen Aubier and and Vincent Patar's low-tech animation explosion, A Town Called Panic, three platic figures, Horse, Cowboy, and Indian, all share a little plastic house. None of them come with any the cultural baggage that their names would imply, they just simply exist together. Horse is a love-sick, level-headed guy who drives a little yellow car. Cowboy and Indian seem to exist mostly just to give Horse and all of the other town folk hell. The lack of baggage could just be the directors appealing to our inner child, but it feels planned, like seeing those characters is meant to to make us sense an unjust innocence.
But really that's not important. What is is how cleverly these directors have strung together a series of stream of consciousness plot points and dialogue to make an incredibly engaging and hilarious 75-minute laugh-fest. It's like the coolest 5-year-old ever told the story. It's so "So they buy too many bricks, and then... they fall through the earth, and then...they land in the north pole, and then... a giant penguin robot, and then... snowballs!" It's beautiful in its simplicity.
I don't know what else really to say. This is just a magical and unique experience of a movie to see. It's on Netflix Instant. Get to it.
A Town Called Panic: 8.6/10
Since I've recently begun actually watching my Netflix DVDs again, I've been working on my effort to watch every film released by the wonderful Criterion Collection.
Yesterday it was Carol Reed's 1940 spy thriller Night Train to Munich, Criterion #523. It's clever, and the ending is amazingly tense in its silence; but I really felt that if you've seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, released only one year before, you've basically seen Reed's film. They share a screenwriter, and even those two hilarious British train passengers. Rex Harrison plays an English spy infiltrating the Nazi upper-crust to help a Czech scientist and his beautiful daughter escape Nazi capture. Most of the action takes place on the titular train.
I still really enjoyed the film, but who can compete against Hitchcock when the premise is so similar?
Night Train to Munich: 7.5/10
I'm going to try to make it through the special features on each Criterion disc (Netflix Instant available films obviously excluded), especially when they include short films and such. Night Train to Munich has only a conversation with a couple film scholars about Carol Reed and screenwriters Frank Launder and Sidney Gillat. It's informative, though not very interesting. This disc is surprisingly sparse on the features, especially for a very recent Criterion release. Usually these discs are packed.
The restored, High-Def transfer was solid, though the sound was patchy in a few places. They did not give this one a Blu-Ray release, as they have been doing for most of their releases now.
Overall, a solid entry in the Criterion cannon on an underwhelming disc.
Criterion #523: 6.3/10
And finally, my girlfriend and I started Grant Heslov's The Men Who Stare At Goats, but I have to say I may not finish this one. Half an hour in, I'm still waiting for it to start. Ewan McGregor seems to be continuing a boring streak, while George Clooney seems 100% invested in his wacky character, but his wacky character isn't too compelling.
Hopefully I come back and it surprises me with a great hour. Doesn't seem likely at this point.
But really that's not important. What is is how cleverly these directors have strung together a series of stream of consciousness plot points and dialogue to make an incredibly engaging and hilarious 75-minute laugh-fest. It's like the coolest 5-year-old ever told the story. It's so "So they buy too many bricks, and then... they fall through the earth, and then...they land in the north pole, and then... a giant penguin robot, and then... snowballs!" It's beautiful in its simplicity.
I don't know what else really to say. This is just a magical and unique experience of a movie to see. It's on Netflix Instant. Get to it.
A Town Called Panic: 8.6/10
Since I've recently begun actually watching my Netflix DVDs again, I've been working on my effort to watch every film released by the wonderful Criterion Collection.
Yesterday it was Carol Reed's 1940 spy thriller Night Train to Munich, Criterion #523. It's clever, and the ending is amazingly tense in its silence; but I really felt that if you've seen Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes, released only one year before, you've basically seen Reed's film. They share a screenwriter, and even those two hilarious British train passengers. Rex Harrison plays an English spy infiltrating the Nazi upper-crust to help a Czech scientist and his beautiful daughter escape Nazi capture. Most of the action takes place on the titular train.
I still really enjoyed the film, but who can compete against Hitchcock when the premise is so similar?
Night Train to Munich: 7.5/10
I'm going to try to make it through the special features on each Criterion disc (Netflix Instant available films obviously excluded), especially when they include short films and such. Night Train to Munich has only a conversation with a couple film scholars about Carol Reed and screenwriters Frank Launder and Sidney Gillat. It's informative, though not very interesting. This disc is surprisingly sparse on the features, especially for a very recent Criterion release. Usually these discs are packed.
The restored, High-Def transfer was solid, though the sound was patchy in a few places. They did not give this one a Blu-Ray release, as they have been doing for most of their releases now.
Overall, a solid entry in the Criterion cannon on an underwhelming disc.
Criterion #523: 6.3/10
And finally, my girlfriend and I started Grant Heslov's The Men Who Stare At Goats, but I have to say I may not finish this one. Half an hour in, I'm still waiting for it to start. Ewan McGregor seems to be continuing a boring streak, while George Clooney seems 100% invested in his wacky character, but his wacky character isn't too compelling.
Hopefully I come back and it surprises me with a great hour. Doesn't seem likely at this point.
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
My Couch is so Comfy
I've had quite the day of being sick. It's a lot of fun. And so is the movie binge I've been cruising on the past few days. Real quick, in ascending order of greatness.
Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950) - The first Rossellini/Ingrid Bergman match-up that apparently like the tabloid world on fire during its production when the two began an extramarital affair. Sounds like it was much more interesting than the film itself. Bergman is a petulant, spoiled and whiny woman stuck on a little island with her new husband and some Italians that don't like her. There's a volcano. Usually Rossellini's neo-realist visual style works, but here it does an already uninteresting story no favors. 5.8/10
Don't Look Back (Marina de Van, 2010) - Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci. Seriously beautiful ladies. That's all you really need to watch this movie. Marceau starts physically transforming into Monica Bellucci. It's as weird as it sounds, but it does end up working as an effective story about intense identity crisis. The transformation between the women is slow, and it really is hard to tell when Bellucci actually takes over. Did I mention how beautiful these two actresses are? 6.5/10
Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz, 2010) - In his sequel to the fantastic 1998 film Happiness, Solondz has brought in new actors to play the old characters. Ciarin Hinds is a particularly brilliant work of casting. The film is very up and down, but every scene with Hinds as the just released from prison pedophile (previously Dylan Baker) is fantastic. Other scenes don't work as well, but the film is a mostly enjoyable whole. But damn is it dark and twisted. 6.8/10
The Magic Flute (Ingmar Bergman, 1975) - A filmed stage-play of Mozart's opera. The camera work is pretty great, and the sound is downright magical. I can't really recommend it, though. It's 135 minutes of people on a stage, singing in Swedish. I have friends that think Bergman's film are of the "good but boring" variety. This film will do nothing to dissuade anyone of that feeling. 7.0/10
L'Age d'Or (Luis Bunuel, 1930) - Bunuel's first feature and second collaboration with Salvadore Dali. It's got more of a plot than Un Chien Andalou, but it's still just a surrealist, strange dream sequence. It's got the master's trademark themes of sex, religion, and the bourgeoisie, but it's ultimately a minor work in comparison to his later films. 7.3/10
35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis, 2009) - A great film about a strong father/daughter relationship and the hardships that come with love and aging. The plot is very similar to Ozu's Late Spring, but Denis is all about the extreme close ups and hand-held camera, giving us a stylistically polar opposite version of the Japanese classic. 8.0/10
Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2009) - He usually makes films that creep the shit out of me but Kurosawa's latest is more of a social satire, or something. It's so subtly weird and then over-the-top at the same time, while also being incredibly moving and funny. A corporate drone is fired, but doesn't tell his family. He spends his days walking around in his suit, sitting in the library and on park benches. The whole family starts to fall apart, and soon every member is on their own strange odyssey through Tokyo. 8.4/10
Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2010) - Speaking of The Odyssey, Refn's story of a one-eyed, mute viking named One-Eye (a fear inspiring Mads Mikkelsen) shares some similarities, but it's a lot more violent, compact, and glacially paced. It features a stand-off worthy of Sergio Leone; the beautiful landscape cinematography to rival Terrence Malick; it's got a mist shrouded chapter clearly inspired by Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. Between the Pusher trilogy, last year's Bronson and now this, Refn is clearly an exciting, (relatively) new directing talent to keep your eyes on. 8.9/10
Stromboli (Roberto Rossellini, 1950) - The first Rossellini/Ingrid Bergman match-up that apparently like the tabloid world on fire during its production when the two began an extramarital affair. Sounds like it was much more interesting than the film itself. Bergman is a petulant, spoiled and whiny woman stuck on a little island with her new husband and some Italians that don't like her. There's a volcano. Usually Rossellini's neo-realist visual style works, but here it does an already uninteresting story no favors. 5.8/10
Don't Look Back (Marina de Van, 2010) - Sophie Marceau and Monica Bellucci. Seriously beautiful ladies. That's all you really need to watch this movie. Marceau starts physically transforming into Monica Bellucci. It's as weird as it sounds, but it does end up working as an effective story about intense identity crisis. The transformation between the women is slow, and it really is hard to tell when Bellucci actually takes over. Did I mention how beautiful these two actresses are? 6.5/10
Life During Wartime (Todd Solondz, 2010) - In his sequel to the fantastic 1998 film Happiness, Solondz has brought in new actors to play the old characters. Ciarin Hinds is a particularly brilliant work of casting. The film is very up and down, but every scene with Hinds as the just released from prison pedophile (previously Dylan Baker) is fantastic. Other scenes don't work as well, but the film is a mostly enjoyable whole. But damn is it dark and twisted. 6.8/10
The Magic Flute (Ingmar Bergman, 1975) - A filmed stage-play of Mozart's opera. The camera work is pretty great, and the sound is downright magical. I can't really recommend it, though. It's 135 minutes of people on a stage, singing in Swedish. I have friends that think Bergman's film are of the "good but boring" variety. This film will do nothing to dissuade anyone of that feeling. 7.0/10
L'Age d'Or (Luis Bunuel, 1930) - Bunuel's first feature and second collaboration with Salvadore Dali. It's got more of a plot than Un Chien Andalou, but it's still just a surrealist, strange dream sequence. It's got the master's trademark themes of sex, religion, and the bourgeoisie, but it's ultimately a minor work in comparison to his later films. 7.3/10
35 Shots of Rum (Claire Denis, 2009) - A great film about a strong father/daughter relationship and the hardships that come with love and aging. The plot is very similar to Ozu's Late Spring, but Denis is all about the extreme close ups and hand-held camera, giving us a stylistically polar opposite version of the Japanese classic. 8.0/10
Tokyo Sonata (Kiyoshi Kurosawa, 2009) - He usually makes films that creep the shit out of me but Kurosawa's latest is more of a social satire, or something. It's so subtly weird and then over-the-top at the same time, while also being incredibly moving and funny. A corporate drone is fired, but doesn't tell his family. He spends his days walking around in his suit, sitting in the library and on park benches. The whole family starts to fall apart, and soon every member is on their own strange odyssey through Tokyo. 8.4/10
Valhalla Rising (Nicolas Winding Refn, 2010) - Speaking of The Odyssey, Refn's story of a one-eyed, mute viking named One-Eye (a fear inspiring Mads Mikkelsen) shares some similarities, but it's a lot more violent, compact, and glacially paced. It features a stand-off worthy of Sergio Leone; the beautiful landscape cinematography to rival Terrence Malick; it's got a mist shrouded chapter clearly inspired by Akira Kurosawa's Throne of Blood. Between the Pusher trilogy, last year's Bronson and now this, Refn is clearly an exciting, (relatively) new directing talent to keep your eyes on. 8.9/10
Monday, August 9, 2010
This Dig Would Be All Too Obvious
Let's just go ahead and get the hard part out of the way. I did not like Lisa Cholodenko's lesbian family drama The Kids are All Right. Everyone seems to disagree with me on every point, but I stand firm in my opinion that it's a meandering, stereotyped affair, without much of a story to tell.
Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson are the teenage children of a homosexual married couple (Annette Benning and Julianne Moore) who decide to contact and meet their sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo). Predictably, this sets off a chain of strained relations and lots of yelling. Every beat of actual plot movement is predictable, which wouldn't be a problem if any other aspect of the film rose above its premise. Instead we have several characters that never rise above their very broadly painted stereotypes, and a slew of little scenes probably meant to be character development, but are actually scenes that go nowhere and mean nothing and probably shouldn't be in the film at all.
There's also the problem of whose story the film is trying to tell. I don't mean to get all Screenwriting 101 here, but this really contributes to the films aimlessness. We start out with the perspective of both kids, then it quickly narrows to just Mia Wasikowska's. But once Ruffalo becomes a part of the film, the kids cease to mean much and could easily disappear entirely without affecting the plot. It remains a film about adults through the eyes of adults until the very end when they decide it's Wasikowska's eyes again. I thought this back and forth was mostly a way to manipulate my emotions. If you bookend the film with an innocent kid's perspective, it's like, duh, how could you not cry? She's watching her moms fall apart and have to work things out, and it's just sooo sad. But this is not even my biggest problem.
No. My biggest problem is that this family is unbelievable from the get-go. I have a hard time blaming the adult actors, as I know all three of them are some of the best actors working right now, but something is off. Do Moore and Benning really have absolutely no on-screen chemistry, or is the dialogue just so achingly stiff and without any natural flow? I found most verbal interaction in The Kids are All Right to be just that: stiff, flat, fake. And so much of it was horribly over-obvious exposition anyway. To be fair, Lisa Cholodenko is skilled behind the camera, and she does a great job of visually expressing her character's feelings. This really makes all the on-the-nose dialogue just that much more frustrating.
I think there is a good movie to mined from this premise, and Cholodenko's camera almost has it. A scene late in the film when Benning discovers a few secrets is absolutely chilling. A shallow focused close-up with Carter Burwell's score quietly building really works as a great scene. But it's also Cholodenko who works against the film. She's a co-writer, and the script feels uncomfortable with its characters. Half of the first act interactions really shoe-horn in the fact that our leads are lesbians, as if it were hard to figure out. Someone should right something for this talented director.
The Kids are All Right: 5/10
So I haven't written about any music lately, but I haven't stopped listening. Arcade Fire's new album, The Suburbs, is good. I actually think it's about half great/half bad, with every great song followed by a boring one. 16 songs tackling the same thing starts to feel a bit overwhelming. Los Campesinos! did this early this year with Romance is Boring, but the album is a good twenty minutes shorter, and almost every song is bursting with life. Arcade Fire also have seem to be dealing with a problem of not having their own sound anymore. This album suffers from how much it resembles any number of '80s groups; from Depeche Mode to Kenny Loggins, The Cure to generic '80s stadium rock. To compare again to a superior album released this year, Titus Andronicus' The Monitor is only 10 songs over the course of an hour, all about one young man's love/hate relationship with his small hometown. They also go for an '80s rock sound, even yelling "Baby, we were born to die" in the opening track. The difference is they mix their love for Bruce and the '80s with punk, country, folk, and other things to make music that feels new and original. Arcade Fire just kind of sounds like the '80s filtered through current indie rock.
But I still like it anyway.
Oh, and the track "Month of May" is embarrassingly terrible.
Mia Wasikowska and Josh Hutcherson are the teenage children of a homosexual married couple (Annette Benning and Julianne Moore) who decide to contact and meet their sperm donor (Mark Ruffalo). Predictably, this sets off a chain of strained relations and lots of yelling. Every beat of actual plot movement is predictable, which wouldn't be a problem if any other aspect of the film rose above its premise. Instead we have several characters that never rise above their very broadly painted stereotypes, and a slew of little scenes probably meant to be character development, but are actually scenes that go nowhere and mean nothing and probably shouldn't be in the film at all.
There's also the problem of whose story the film is trying to tell. I don't mean to get all Screenwriting 101 here, but this really contributes to the films aimlessness. We start out with the perspective of both kids, then it quickly narrows to just Mia Wasikowska's. But once Ruffalo becomes a part of the film, the kids cease to mean much and could easily disappear entirely without affecting the plot. It remains a film about adults through the eyes of adults until the very end when they decide it's Wasikowska's eyes again. I thought this back and forth was mostly a way to manipulate my emotions. If you bookend the film with an innocent kid's perspective, it's like, duh, how could you not cry? She's watching her moms fall apart and have to work things out, and it's just sooo sad. But this is not even my biggest problem.
No. My biggest problem is that this family is unbelievable from the get-go. I have a hard time blaming the adult actors, as I know all three of them are some of the best actors working right now, but something is off. Do Moore and Benning really have absolutely no on-screen chemistry, or is the dialogue just so achingly stiff and without any natural flow? I found most verbal interaction in The Kids are All Right to be just that: stiff, flat, fake. And so much of it was horribly over-obvious exposition anyway. To be fair, Lisa Cholodenko is skilled behind the camera, and she does a great job of visually expressing her character's feelings. This really makes all the on-the-nose dialogue just that much more frustrating.
I think there is a good movie to mined from this premise, and Cholodenko's camera almost has it. A scene late in the film when Benning discovers a few secrets is absolutely chilling. A shallow focused close-up with Carter Burwell's score quietly building really works as a great scene. But it's also Cholodenko who works against the film. She's a co-writer, and the script feels uncomfortable with its characters. Half of the first act interactions really shoe-horn in the fact that our leads are lesbians, as if it were hard to figure out. Someone should right something for this talented director.
The Kids are All Right: 5/10
So I haven't written about any music lately, but I haven't stopped listening. Arcade Fire's new album, The Suburbs, is good. I actually think it's about half great/half bad, with every great song followed by a boring one. 16 songs tackling the same thing starts to feel a bit overwhelming. Los Campesinos! did this early this year with Romance is Boring, but the album is a good twenty minutes shorter, and almost every song is bursting with life. Arcade Fire also have seem to be dealing with a problem of not having their own sound anymore. This album suffers from how much it resembles any number of '80s groups; from Depeche Mode to Kenny Loggins, The Cure to generic '80s stadium rock. To compare again to a superior album released this year, Titus Andronicus' The Monitor is only 10 songs over the course of an hour, all about one young man's love/hate relationship with his small hometown. They also go for an '80s rock sound, even yelling "Baby, we were born to die" in the opening track. The difference is they mix their love for Bruce and the '80s with punk, country, folk, and other things to make music that feels new and original. Arcade Fire just kind of sounds like the '80s filtered through current indie rock.
But I still like it anyway.
Oh, and the track "Month of May" is embarrassingly terrible.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Julie Christie #9 and #10
Shampoo - Hal Ashby, 1975
Warren Beatty is very cool, women are very stupid.
That's about it.
Shampoo: 5.0/10
Julie Christie in Shampoo: 6.0/10
And now, Demon Seed. I read up on the premise of this film. Very intriguing, and it did not disappoint. i'm on the verge of napping so I'll wrap this marathon up quickly.
Julie Christie's husband builds a supercomputer born with an existential crisis named Proteus IV , which kidnaps Christie in her own home while she is alone, commences to psychologically abuse her and plans on impregnating her.
It's themes of immortality, a man's need to procreate no matter how, and how far the human race will go to complete silly goals can be over obvious, but are effective none the less. Things that happen in this film make little to no sense, but it still manages to work quite successfully.
And Julie. The last Julie performance of the program is among her best. Locked away by herself for the vast majority of the run-time, she's fantastic acting against a creepy offscreen voice. Her fear is palpable, and the slow transition from mania to almost a Stockholm Syndrome state is excellently handled.
Demon Seed: 8.6/10
Julie Christie in Demon Seed: 8.5/10
And now we rank her performances in order from the best.
1. The Go-Between
2. Darling
3. Demon Seed
4. Petulia
5. Billy Liar
6. Far From the Madding Crowd
7. The Fast Lady
8. Shampoo
9. Young Cassidy
10. In Search of Gregory
So her performance average in this marathon of Christie performances is 7.0. It's amazing how heavily that Gregory movie affects her average.
So today's TCM star is Ingrid Bergman, another actress I love. I decided to record a few of the films, nothing like with Christie. On the plate will be Roberto Rossellini's Stromboli, Hitchcock's Spellbound, famous noir Gaslight, Europa '51, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
These will roll out much slower, as I take time to actually do other things. Hopefully Cox On Demand will start working again.
Warren Beatty is very cool, women are very stupid.
That's about it.
Shampoo: 5.0/10
Julie Christie in Shampoo: 6.0/10
And now, Demon Seed. I read up on the premise of this film. Very intriguing, and it did not disappoint. i'm on the verge of napping so I'll wrap this marathon up quickly.
Julie Christie's husband builds a supercomputer born with an existential crisis named Proteus IV , which kidnaps Christie in her own home while she is alone, commences to psychologically abuse her and plans on impregnating her.
It's themes of immortality, a man's need to procreate no matter how, and how far the human race will go to complete silly goals can be over obvious, but are effective none the less. Things that happen in this film make little to no sense, but it still manages to work quite successfully.
And Julie. The last Julie performance of the program is among her best. Locked away by herself for the vast majority of the run-time, she's fantastic acting against a creepy offscreen voice. Her fear is palpable, and the slow transition from mania to almost a Stockholm Syndrome state is excellently handled.
Demon Seed: 8.6/10
Julie Christie in Demon Seed: 8.5/10
And now we rank her performances in order from the best.
1. The Go-Between
2. Darling
3. Demon Seed
4. Petulia
5. Billy Liar
6. Far From the Madding Crowd
7. The Fast Lady
8. Shampoo
9. Young Cassidy
10. In Search of Gregory
So her performance average in this marathon of Christie performances is 7.0. It's amazing how heavily that Gregory movie affects her average.
So today's TCM star is Ingrid Bergman, another actress I love. I decided to record a few of the films, nothing like with Christie. On the plate will be Roberto Rossellini's Stromboli, Hitchcock's Spellbound, famous noir Gaslight, Europa '51, and Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
These will roll out much slower, as I take time to actually do other things. Hopefully Cox On Demand will start working again.
Julie Christie #8
"You have a very superior pelvis."
Imagine that line as one of cinema's great heartbreaking moments, because it is. I had doubts going into Richard Lester's Petulia, expecting a stereotypical 60s, counterculture romp. The first few minutes did nothing to ease my anxieties, but after the initial (and strange) meet cute, with leads Julie Christie and George C. Scott, the movie veers off into several wild directions. It's no 60s romp.
Scott and Christie make for a very strange, then believable, then fantastic couple after they both leave their spouses to start spending time together. They're both looking for a bit of freedom (Scott from his marriage and responsibilities, and Christie from a dark recent past shown in some flashbacks) and San Francisco, a budding countercultural melting pot, seems for them the right place to do it. With that much story set up, Lester feels free to throw in all kinds of side-stories and sub-plots to keep us from the end, and they work magnificently to create a whole.
And again, thank you, Mr. Nicolas Roeg, for existing. Anything you film is among the most aestheically pleasing ever produced on film.
As for Christie, she really takes a backseat to Scott's heart and soul character of the film, but she's great as the fish-out-of-water looking for anything to set her free (whether it be a man, or a tuba). This film fits nicely into my whole "we don't get to know Christie's characters very well" shpeel from a couple days ago. Petulia, I must note, was released in 1968, right in between Far From the Madding Crowd and The Go-Between.
Petulia: 9.3/10
Julie Christie in Petulia: 8.5/10
There are only two more films left in the Christie marathon: Demonseed (Yay!) and Shampoo (not too excited,really).
Imagine that line as one of cinema's great heartbreaking moments, because it is. I had doubts going into Richard Lester's Petulia, expecting a stereotypical 60s, counterculture romp. The first few minutes did nothing to ease my anxieties, but after the initial (and strange) meet cute, with leads Julie Christie and George C. Scott, the movie veers off into several wild directions. It's no 60s romp.
Scott and Christie make for a very strange, then believable, then fantastic couple after they both leave their spouses to start spending time together. They're both looking for a bit of freedom (Scott from his marriage and responsibilities, and Christie from a dark recent past shown in some flashbacks) and San Francisco, a budding countercultural melting pot, seems for them the right place to do it. With that much story set up, Lester feels free to throw in all kinds of side-stories and sub-plots to keep us from the end, and they work magnificently to create a whole.
And again, thank you, Mr. Nicolas Roeg, for existing. Anything you film is among the most aestheically pleasing ever produced on film.
As for Christie, she really takes a backseat to Scott's heart and soul character of the film, but she's great as the fish-out-of-water looking for anything to set her free (whether it be a man, or a tuba). This film fits nicely into my whole "we don't get to know Christie's characters very well" shpeel from a couple days ago. Petulia, I must note, was released in 1968, right in between Far From the Madding Crowd and The Go-Between.
Petulia: 9.3/10
Julie Christie in Petulia: 8.5/10
There are only two more films left in the Christie marathon: Demonseed (Yay!) and Shampoo (not too excited,really).
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Julie Christie #6 and #7
Finally, my most anticipated Julie Christie film, Billy Liar. The film that got everybody talking about her really barely features her. She's in three scenes, eleven minutes. Two of these scenes constitute the best scenes in this film, a very good film at that.
Tom Courtenay (Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner) is a young man constantly hiding from reality in his daydreams of a nation he is in charge of. He dreams of moving to London and being a screenwriter, but he doesn't write and he's gone ahead and old everyone he got a job anyway. He's also managed to get himself engaged to two very annoying girls, while really being in love with his long-time, flighty friend Julie Christie.
This is the first film Christie made with John Schlesinger (followed by Darling and Far From the Madding Crowd), and it's the closest we've been able to get to one of her characters. Christie tries to convince Courtenay to move away to London just for the hell of it and marry her, and in doing so reveals the inner workings of her character in a beautiful and fanciful way. So much so that it almost feels like another of Courtenay's day dreams.
Courtenay himself is nothing short of a revelation. The brooding, working class mug of Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner disappears so completely to reveal a joyful, oblivious, working class optimist.
And special notice to the opening credits sequence, which visually sets up the class conflict setting perfectly.
The film wasn't quite as great as I was hoping it would be, but it was still a joy to sit through
Billy Liar: 7.9/10
Julie Christie in Billy Liar: 8.5/10
The same cannot be said for her next collaboration with Schlesinger. Darling won her an Academy Award in 1965, but I had a hard time opening up to a movie with such an unsympathetic protagonist. I don't think there was a scene that didn't feature Christie, something that would normally be my dream. Here, though, she's ladder climbing, aspiring actress who just wants more, more, more.
I know Darling is meant to be a critique of the then modern superficial era, and I guess it's pretty successful, but the exploits and self-destructive decisions of "Darling" Diana Scott just are not interesting enough to successfully fill up the 129 minutes that it does. The film is incredibly entertaining right out the gate, and remains so for a while. It just lets itself sag in the back half, and fails to present much of a compelling conclusion to sweeten the taste right at the end
Julie Christie is clearly giving this her all, sinking into this horrible character. She definitely deserved this Oscar, I might call it her best performance so far in this marathon, but it's too bad they couldn't do a little snip snip to script to make Darling a bit more lean and outright enjoyable.
Darling: 7.3/10
Julie Christie in Darling: 9.o/10
Next up: The director of Superman III supposedly makes a good movie with Petulia. We'll see about that.
(Shut up, I don't care about those Beatles movies he made.)
Tom Courtenay (Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner) is a young man constantly hiding from reality in his daydreams of a nation he is in charge of. He dreams of moving to London and being a screenwriter, but he doesn't write and he's gone ahead and old everyone he got a job anyway. He's also managed to get himself engaged to two very annoying girls, while really being in love with his long-time, flighty friend Julie Christie.
This is the first film Christie made with John Schlesinger (followed by Darling and Far From the Madding Crowd), and it's the closest we've been able to get to one of her characters. Christie tries to convince Courtenay to move away to London just for the hell of it and marry her, and in doing so reveals the inner workings of her character in a beautiful and fanciful way. So much so that it almost feels like another of Courtenay's day dreams.
Courtenay himself is nothing short of a revelation. The brooding, working class mug of Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner disappears so completely to reveal a joyful, oblivious, working class optimist.
And special notice to the opening credits sequence, which visually sets up the class conflict setting perfectly.
The film wasn't quite as great as I was hoping it would be, but it was still a joy to sit through
Billy Liar: 7.9/10
Julie Christie in Billy Liar: 8.5/10
The same cannot be said for her next collaboration with Schlesinger. Darling won her an Academy Award in 1965, but I had a hard time opening up to a movie with such an unsympathetic protagonist. I don't think there was a scene that didn't feature Christie, something that would normally be my dream. Here, though, she's ladder climbing, aspiring actress who just wants more, more, more.
I know Darling is meant to be a critique of the then modern superficial era, and I guess it's pretty successful, but the exploits and self-destructive decisions of "Darling" Diana Scott just are not interesting enough to successfully fill up the 129 minutes that it does. The film is incredibly entertaining right out the gate, and remains so for a while. It just lets itself sag in the back half, and fails to present much of a compelling conclusion to sweeten the taste right at the end
Julie Christie is clearly giving this her all, sinking into this horrible character. She definitely deserved this Oscar, I might call it her best performance so far in this marathon, but it's too bad they couldn't do a little snip snip to script to make Darling a bit more lean and outright enjoyable.
Darling: 7.3/10
Julie Christie in Darling: 9.o/10
Next up: The director of Superman III supposedly makes a good movie with Petulia. We'll see about that.
(Shut up, I don't care about those Beatles movies he made.)
Julie Christie #5
And here we have the first film on the program that I can wholeheartedly embrace, without reservation. It's also the first on the bill that I was actively looking forward to. I forget why; most likely some offhand comment by Glenn Kenny or someone. The film is Joseph Losey's 1970 Cannes Grand Prix winner The Go-Between. It's a pretty standard story of class conflict in the English countryside in 1900, before class distinctions were questioned. But what could be standard and simple is elevated by several things: Losey's organic and fluid direction, in which not a single shot, camera angle or cut is wasted or takes away from the whole; Michael Legrand's building and melodramatic classical piano score; pristine sets and art direction; brilliant performances by Julie Christie, Alan Bates (again), Margaret Leighton, Dominic Guard, and Michael Redgrave; and, most importantly, one of my new favorite scripts ever by Harold Pinter, adapted from L.P. Harltley's novel of the same name.
Leo (Dominic Guard), gets invited to his rich friend's estate and is taken in very graciously by the whole family for the summer. He quickly befriends his friend's older sister Julie Christie (I love not giving her characters names). He quickly falls in love with her, and she begins using him to carry messages and letters to the neighboring tenant farmer (Alan Bates) with whom she's carrying on a secret relationship, despite being promised to a wealthy viscount. Slowly Leo begins to understand what's happening around him and his fantasy summer unravels into traumatizing ends. The whole film is told in flashback by an old Julie Christie and an impotent, chubby, older Leo (a brilliant Michael Redgrave).
What makes the film so special is what's not shown on screen, and how all those components listed above make what isn't shown perfectly clear. We never need to see Bates and Christie on the screen together to feel the sexual tension and chemistry between them. Without ever saying anything, it becomes so clear that maybe Christie's mother (Margaret Leighton) and the rest of the house no more than they're letting on.
As for Christie, she is so perfectly lovely and sweet, cold and abusive, innocent and knowing all at the same time. In a film full of near perfect components, Christie truly does stand still stand out as amazing. I do find it interesting though that both The Go-Between and Far from the Madding Crowd feature Christie in the lead role but don't exactly tell stories about her. Instead they both seem to use her characters as centers and catalysts around which to tell the stories. This was more Leo's perspective and story; Madding Crowd liberally switched perspectives between her 3 suitors. And if we throw out the horrid In Search of Gregory, all of the Christie films so far have featured her as unobtainable and mostly unknowable characters. We've failed to get close to her time and time again. It's amazing that she's made these difficult characters so easy to watch and so three dimensional. I firmly believe her farmer in Far From the Madding Crowd would have been just an attention obsessed, annoying stereotype rich girl in most others' hands.
The Go-Between: 9.5/10
Julie Christie in The Go-Between: 9.0/10
Next up: seriously, it's going to be Billy Liar this time.
Leo (Dominic Guard), gets invited to his rich friend's estate and is taken in very graciously by the whole family for the summer. He quickly befriends his friend's older sister Julie Christie (I love not giving her characters names). He quickly falls in love with her, and she begins using him to carry messages and letters to the neighboring tenant farmer (Alan Bates) with whom she's carrying on a secret relationship, despite being promised to a wealthy viscount. Slowly Leo begins to understand what's happening around him and his fantasy summer unravels into traumatizing ends. The whole film is told in flashback by an old Julie Christie and an impotent, chubby, older Leo (a brilliant Michael Redgrave).
What makes the film so special is what's not shown on screen, and how all those components listed above make what isn't shown perfectly clear. We never need to see Bates and Christie on the screen together to feel the sexual tension and chemistry between them. Without ever saying anything, it becomes so clear that maybe Christie's mother (Margaret Leighton) and the rest of the house no more than they're letting on.
As for Christie, she is so perfectly lovely and sweet, cold and abusive, innocent and knowing all at the same time. In a film full of near perfect components, Christie truly does stand still stand out as amazing. I do find it interesting though that both The Go-Between and Far from the Madding Crowd feature Christie in the lead role but don't exactly tell stories about her. Instead they both seem to use her characters as centers and catalysts around which to tell the stories. This was more Leo's perspective and story; Madding Crowd liberally switched perspectives between her 3 suitors. And if we throw out the horrid In Search of Gregory, all of the Christie films so far have featured her as unobtainable and mostly unknowable characters. We've failed to get close to her time and time again. It's amazing that she's made these difficult characters so easy to watch and so three dimensional. I firmly believe her farmer in Far From the Madding Crowd would have been just an attention obsessed, annoying stereotype rich girl in most others' hands.
The Go-Between: 9.5/10
Julie Christie in The Go-Between: 9.0/10
Next up: seriously, it's going to be Billy Liar this time.
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Julie Christie #4
There are many reasons to be excited about watching 1967's Far From the Madding Crowd: director John Schlesinger, of Billy Liar and Darling fame; legendary actor Peter Finch; fantastic actor Terrence Stamp; cinematography by one of the all-time greats Nicolas Roeg; and, of course, Julie Christie.
Thankfully, this three hour film, based on a Thomas Hardy novel about English farm life in the 19th century, is not a waste of time like some other films in this marathon. In fact, it's really good.
For three hours the film really doesn't have too much in the way of plot. A headstrong, young woman (Christie) inherits a large sheep farm, and also the attention of three different bachelors: the poor sheep farmer who's just lost everything (Alan Bates); the crotchety rich farmer who's never loved (Finch); and the violent, romantic bad-boy sergeant (Stamp). Romances and complications unfold very slowly over the course of the film. It confidently abandons a character for large stretches to really let another relationship flourish.
Every performance is fantastic, and Schlesinger handles a new genre very well. The scene where Stamps sergeant displays his sword skills for an amazed Christie was brilliantly erotic. But the real amazing aspects here are Nicolas Roeg's phenomenal camera work and Richard Rodney Bennett's haunting score. It's the camera and music that really draw out and emphasize the emotions of all the characters on screen.
As for Christie, she's great. Apparently, people didn't like this bit of casting, as she was then a huge movie star, but I thought she handled the headstrong/vulnerable tightrope walk with ease to burn.
Far From the Madding Crowd: 7.8/10
Julie Christie in Far From the Madding Crowd: 7.4/10
next up: the film that made Julie a star, Billy Liar
Thankfully, this three hour film, based on a Thomas Hardy novel about English farm life in the 19th century, is not a waste of time like some other films in this marathon. In fact, it's really good.
For three hours the film really doesn't have too much in the way of plot. A headstrong, young woman (Christie) inherits a large sheep farm, and also the attention of three different bachelors: the poor sheep farmer who's just lost everything (Alan Bates); the crotchety rich farmer who's never loved (Finch); and the violent, romantic bad-boy sergeant (Stamp). Romances and complications unfold very slowly over the course of the film. It confidently abandons a character for large stretches to really let another relationship flourish.
Every performance is fantastic, and Schlesinger handles a new genre very well. The scene where Stamps sergeant displays his sword skills for an amazed Christie was brilliantly erotic. But the real amazing aspects here are Nicolas Roeg's phenomenal camera work and Richard Rodney Bennett's haunting score. It's the camera and music that really draw out and emphasize the emotions of all the characters on screen.
As for Christie, she's great. Apparently, people didn't like this bit of casting, as she was then a huge movie star, but I thought she handled the headstrong/vulnerable tightrope walk with ease to burn.
Far From the Madding Crowd: 7.8/10
Julie Christie in Far From the Madding Crowd: 7.4/10
next up: the film that made Julie a star, Billy Liar
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Julie Christie #2 and #3
Apparently TCM was well aware that no one would be watching at 6 AM, and so they programmed accordingly. Instead of showing Billy Liar, Christie's next (star-making) film, they jumped ahead a couple years and showed Young Cassidy. Christie's only got a few minutes of screen time so I'll keep this short, even though it's a perfectly adequate film.
Directed by Oscar-winning cinematographer Jack Cardiff, after John Ford got ill three weeks into shooting, Young Cassidy is based on the early years of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey. Here he's John Cassidy, played very well by Rod Taylor. Christie is a local prostitute/Cassidy's friend.
The film's structure is extremely loose, and it takes a long time for everything to get going. Cassidy seems like just a normal laborer, ready to fight for Irish independence. He occasionally throws out lines, like "I'm very clever with words" so that we know he's smart, but we never really see it until BAM all of a sudden he's writing.
Maggie Smith is good as Cassidy's love interest, but nothing special. No one else does anything very interesting.
Christie, though, with her 2 scenes, does leave quite an impression on the film. She comes in, looks beautiful, and sleeps with Cassidy. Not much, but her magnetism and presence is palpable.
Young Cassidy: 6.1/10
Julie Christie in Young Cassidy: 5.5/10
Next up is Peter Wood's 1969 drama In Search of Gregory. This is a terrible movie. Holy fucking terrible. Much worse than The Fast Lady. Christie's character, who lives in Rome, travels to Geneva for her father's latest wedding. Outside the airport she sees an advertisement depicting Gregory Mulvey (Michael Sarrazin), an autoracer everybody in her family seems to know. Her (I think) mentally disabled brother tells her stories about his adventures.
She becomes obsessed with meeting him and won't stop talking about him. She walks around sulking, waiting for this guy to show up. It's not a performance. It's just Christie in front of a camera. John Hurt acts dumb and confused. Michael Sarrazin, who gave up a lead role in Midnight Cowboy for this piece of shit, just acts ridiculous and child-like. Although, if I had to choose between winning an Oscar and (SPOILER) banging Julie Christie, I know I'd choose the latter.
In Search of Gregory: 2.1/10
Julie Christie in In Search of Gregory: 2.0/10
Next up: 3 hours of Christie deciding between 3 men in Far From the Madding Crowd
Directed by Oscar-winning cinematographer Jack Cardiff, after John Ford got ill three weeks into shooting, Young Cassidy is based on the early years of Irish playwright Sean O'Casey. Here he's John Cassidy, played very well by Rod Taylor. Christie is a local prostitute/Cassidy's friend.
The film's structure is extremely loose, and it takes a long time for everything to get going. Cassidy seems like just a normal laborer, ready to fight for Irish independence. He occasionally throws out lines, like "I'm very clever with words" so that we know he's smart, but we never really see it until BAM all of a sudden he's writing.
Maggie Smith is good as Cassidy's love interest, but nothing special. No one else does anything very interesting.
Christie, though, with her 2 scenes, does leave quite an impression on the film. She comes in, looks beautiful, and sleeps with Cassidy. Not much, but her magnetism and presence is palpable.
Young Cassidy: 6.1/10
Julie Christie in Young Cassidy: 5.5/10
Next up is Peter Wood's 1969 drama In Search of Gregory. This is a terrible movie. Holy fucking terrible. Much worse than The Fast Lady. Christie's character, who lives in Rome, travels to Geneva for her father's latest wedding. Outside the airport she sees an advertisement depicting Gregory Mulvey (Michael Sarrazin), an autoracer everybody in her family seems to know. Her (I think) mentally disabled brother tells her stories about his adventures.
She becomes obsessed with meeting him and won't stop talking about him. She walks around sulking, waiting for this guy to show up. It's not a performance. It's just Christie in front of a camera. John Hurt acts dumb and confused. Michael Sarrazin, who gave up a lead role in Midnight Cowboy for this piece of shit, just acts ridiculous and child-like. Although, if I had to choose between winning an Oscar and (SPOILER) banging Julie Christie, I know I'd choose the latter.
In Search of Gregory: 2.1/10
Julie Christie in In Search of Gregory: 2.0/10
Next up: 3 hours of Christie deciding between 3 men in Far From the Madding Crowd
Monday, August 2, 2010
Julie Christie
TCM is running a marathon of Julie Christie's filmography, beginning with her debut The Fast Lady and ending with 1977's Demonseed. I've always loved the actress so I have cleared out all the room on the DVR, and will be watching these films all week. I didn't record Dr. Zhivago, The Go-Between, or Shampoo; the latter because they're available through Netflix Instant, and the former because it is just too fucking long.
McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Don't Look Now are two of my all-time favorites, and Julie Christie is a large part of why. She's amazing. She absolutely kills in every role I've seen her, and she's truly stunning. It's a shame (but not surprising) then that her film debut isn't up to her later standards. The Fast Lady is not good. At all. The title comes from a sports car Stanley Baxter stupidly purchases to get the attention of Christie's superficial, spoiled daughter of an auto tycoon. It's an attempt at silly comedy that fails 100% at being remotely funny.
As with every character in The Fast Lady, Julie Christie's has no arc, or any seeming emotional investment in anything going on. But, wowww. In 1963, the 22 year old actress was looking good. The two scenes of Christie in a swimsuit made all 106 minutes worth it. Besides her looks though, Christie acts just like everyone else here: not very well. She doesn't embarrass herself or anything. It's more likely that director Ken Annakin (SERIOUSLY) had no interest in telling her to do anything except look incredibly sexy. She does have much more presence than anyone else onscreen. Thank God someone recognized that and gave her more and better roles.
The Fast Lady: 3.0/10
Julie Christie in The Fast Lady: 6.0/10 (expect these to always be bloated, my love is my bias)
Next: Jack Cardiff's 1965 biopic Young Cassidy
McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Don't Look Now are two of my all-time favorites, and Julie Christie is a large part of why. She's amazing. She absolutely kills in every role I've seen her, and she's truly stunning. It's a shame (but not surprising) then that her film debut isn't up to her later standards. The Fast Lady is not good. At all. The title comes from a sports car Stanley Baxter stupidly purchases to get the attention of Christie's superficial, spoiled daughter of an auto tycoon. It's an attempt at silly comedy that fails 100% at being remotely funny.
As with every character in The Fast Lady, Julie Christie's has no arc, or any seeming emotional investment in anything going on. But, wowww. In 1963, the 22 year old actress was looking good. The two scenes of Christie in a swimsuit made all 106 minutes worth it. Besides her looks though, Christie acts just like everyone else here: not very well. She doesn't embarrass herself or anything. It's more likely that director Ken Annakin (SERIOUSLY) had no interest in telling her to do anything except look incredibly sexy. She does have much more presence than anyone else onscreen. Thank God someone recognized that and gave her more and better roles.
The Fast Lady: 3.0/10
Julie Christie in The Fast Lady: 6.0/10 (expect these to always be bloated, my love is my bias)
Next: Jack Cardiff's 1965 biopic Young Cassidy
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