World Cup

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.