tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65484253917812332992024-02-08T10:42:25.675-05:00Diary of a Country CinephileUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger55125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-36699183908543578972011-06-30T09:22:00.003-04:002011-06-30T09:53:56.958-04:00Viewing Log: 6/1/11 - 6/30/116/28/11 <strong>LE BICHES</strong> (Claude Chabrol, 1968)<br />6/28/11 <strong>LE BOUCHER</strong> (Claude Chabrol, 1970)<br />6/27/11 <strong>FULL METAL JACKET</strong> (Stanley Kubrick, 1987)<br />6/25/11 <strong>BAD DAY AT BLACK ROCK</strong> (John Sturges, 1955)<br />6/25/11 <strong>DIRTY HARRY</strong> (Don Siegel, 1971)<br />6/23/11 <strong>HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS PT. 1</strong> (David Yates, 2010)<br />6/20/11<strong> CHLOE IN THE AFTERNOON</strong> (Eric Rohmer, 1972)<br />6/19/11 <strong>ADVISE & CONSENT</strong> (Otto Preminger, 1962)<br />6/18/11 <strong>NOTRE MUSIQUE</strong> (Jean-Luc Godard, 2004)<br />6/18/11 <strong>BODY DOUBLE</strong> (Brian De Palma, 1984)<br />6/17/11 <strong>HIGH AND LOW</strong> (Akira Kurosawa, 1963)<br />6/16/11 <strong>BADLANDS</strong> (Terrence Malick, 1973)<br />6/16/11 <strong>IMITATION OF LIFE</strong> (Douglas Sirk, 1959)<br />6/14/11 <strong>THE ACT OF SEEING WITH ONE'S OWN EYES</strong> (Stan Brakhage, 1962)<br />6/14/11 <strong>DOG STAR MAN</strong> (Stan Brakhage, 1962)<br />6/14/11 <strong>WEDLOCK HOUSE: AN INTERCOURSE</strong> (Stan Brakhage, 1959)<br />6/14/11 <strong>DESISTFILM</strong> (Stan Brakhage, 1955)*<br />6/12/11 <strong>EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL</strong> (Werner Herzog, 1970)<br />6/11/11 <strong>THE GENERAL</strong> (Buster Keaton, 1927)<br />6/11/11 <strong>MIDNIGHT IN PARIS</strong> (Woody Allen, 2011)<br />6/11/11 <strong>THE TREE OF LIFE</strong> (Terrence Malick, 2011)<br />6/11/11 <strong>BLOW OUT</strong> (Brian De Palma, 1989)<br />6/10/11 <strong>THE LADIES MAN</strong> (Jerry Lewis, 1961)<br />6/8/11 <strong>SCARLET STREET</strong> (Fritz Lang, 1945)<br />6/4/11 <strong>GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES</strong> (Howard Hawks, 1953)*<br />6/2/11 <strong>THE SOFT SKIN</strong> (François Truffaut, 1964)<br />6/2/11 <strong>SHADES OF FERN</strong> (Frantisek Vlácil, 1984)<br /><br />*rewatchUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-16262418167887978952011-06-11T23:05:00.008-04:002011-06-12T12:53:10.252-04:00BLOW OUT (Brian De Palma, 1981)<a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/blowout-1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 500px; height: 211px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/blowout-1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Previous De Palma's Seen: PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE, OBSESSION, SCARFACE<div><br /></div><div>BLOW OUT is a conspiracy thriller in the direct tradition of REAR WINDOW and THE CONVERSATION. Antonioni's BLOW-UP is an obvious citation, but De Palma's film, while harboring some semblance of cultural critique, is far less indebted to the European art-house than to bold, extravagant American genre cinema. From the gratuitous murders (one of which is so superfluous in its sadism that it lowers the film in my estimation) to the red-white-and-blue color patterning to the jarring camera movements, De Palma communicates loudly in broad visual strokes. His protagonist (John Travolta) used to wire undercover cops before a grisly accident befell the department's best officer, and he is now a sound designer for a low-budget video production company specializing in cheap exploitation films. Witness to a car accident that leads to the death of a political candidate and having recorded what appears to be a gun shot, Travolta finds a way out of the tedium of his low-rent job and back into the thrills that characterized his police-work. If his obsessive quest to revitalize his numbing existence by embarking on a murder-uncovering quest is reminiscent of James Stewart in REAR WINDOW, then the bitter lack of closure and ultimate tragedy of THE CONVERSATION defines the haunting conclusion, in which the pieces never really fall together and an emotional tragedy surmounts the resolution of the mystery. De Palma, as he did when he re-appropriated VERTIGO in OBSESSION, places the themes of REAR WINDOW in a new context. Just as the incapacitated Stewart enlisted love interest Grace Kelly in his exploits to expose the murderer, so too does Travolta send out Nancy Allen to do his dirty work as he listens from a distance. Stewart found his brand of artistic fulfillment in his own backyard, but Travolta overreaches to the tragic misfortune of his lover. And yet Travolta does achieve a form of artistic fulfillment, injecting the auditory remains of the tragic affair into the Z-grade slasher flick he derided at the film's beginning. You could say that this final image of an awe-struck Travolta mesmerized by the final outcome corresponds to De Palma himself, an artist who finds art where camp and sublimity intersect.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-32284854932463278252011-04-10T00:39:00.006-04:002011-04-10T10:48:35.923-04:00WHERE THE SIDEWALK ENDS | Otto Preminger | 1950<a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/sidewalk.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 299px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/sidewalk.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>This is a noir that hits me in the same way that <i>The Big Heat</i> hits me. it has a surface layer of film noir tropes and moods that immediately wins it over to me. The photography is dark and gloomy, the taxicabs stop right in front of the camera lens, that parking garage goes on forever, those big-city backdrops fill the eyes with luminous wonder. The title is immediately gripping, especially when matched to the illustrative opening credits. From the get-go you can tell you're in for a good noir in every superficial way that matters, and when it comes to this genre, those are often the aspects that I take most seriously.<br /><br />But there's so much more going on here. Dana Andrews is a notoriously tough cop with daddy issues, out to prove that he's the reverse of his criminal father by relentlessly going after Scalise, a mob boss the old man had helped set up. But we only get this information after Andrews has accidentally killed a suspect by knocking him out, fracturing the steel-plated skull the man had obtained during the war. From this point onward, it's impossible to see the man as a hero, and Preminger tackles the issue of whether there really is a line between 'cop and killer,' the phrase that Scalise uses in the film's harrowing climax. This isn't simply an internal morality play; the lieutenant played by Karl Malden seems equally despicable in his eagerness to close the case by pinning the murder on Gene Tierney's affable father, and while Scalise is responsible for the murder of a gambling associate, there is otherwise nothing tangible outside of his snarling charisma that gives us grounds to judge him. This latter point makes Andrews' resolution to pin him for the murder he himself committed particularly damning.<br /><br />The moment that Andrews does murder the suspect is an important one. Unlike in <i>Anatomy of a Murder</i>, another Preminger film in which the consequences of a single act of violence proliferate out and color multiple people who elude definitive moral judgment, the murder is definitively depicted, and all queries about it afterward hold little mystery for us. However, the dramatic irony and the suspense it generates are often unbearable, and it is never possible to know how things will end up. I can't think of a similar Hollywood film in which the protagonist is so clearly doomed from the start, and not because of any external or cosmic force, but because of his own fault. Preminger treats the event with such moral seriousness, that you know that there will be no Hollywood loopholes that allow everyone to get out unscathed, and so the remainder of the film had me transfixed on the screen, probing Andrews' character for damning or redemptive traits that would help guide me to some sort of opinion on how I hoped the story would end up. To the very end, not only could I not expect what would happen, but I could not determine what I wanted to happen either.<br /><br />After the murder, Preminger spends his time establishing a web of characters who have been affected by Andrews in some way. Tierney's father idolizes him; it turns out the friendly old cab driver assisted him in a case several years back. The man is endearing but overzealous in his love for his daughter and a spinner of exaggerated yarns. Andrews looks down on him for his enthusiasm and blatant fabrications, but when the man is booked for the murder, it is Andrews and not the cabbie who is withholding the truth. The owner of a shoddy restaurant who recalls Thelma Ritter's character from <i>Pickup on South Street</i> has a playfully antagonistic relationship to Andrews, who sent her husband away for wife-beating. In fact, everyone who resorts to unnecessary violence ends up getting punished, either by the law or by the mob, and Andrews is no exception.<br /><br />And finally, moral ambiguity seeps out of every crevice of the story. Does Andrews feel genuine remorse for killing the suspect, or is it simply a feeling of distaste for acting so much like the father he has a deep-seated hatred for? Is his valiant assault on Scalise, conducted as a self-sacrificial means of extricating Tierney's father, not also a cowardly and irrational way for him to settle all of his psychological issues? The ending, in which he finally confesses, even after everything has been settled, is a moment of moral transformation. His motive for doing so can no longer be linked to the demons the story has propped up to complicate our attitude towards him, and Tierney's assurance that she will give him all the chances in the world is so lovely it makes me want to cry.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-68059942770823180762011-04-09T21:42:00.002-04:002011-04-09T22:11:18.194-04:00Exploring Cassavetes: FACES<a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/faces.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 239px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/faces.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><i>Faces</i> is probably my least favorite of the four Cassavetes films I've seen, but if <i>Shadows</i> has taught me anything, it's that a re-watch will probably increase my appreciation substantially. For Ray Carney, however, <i>Faces</i> is possibly Cassavetes' grand achievement and the ultimate distillation of his philosophy of selfhood as a process of interaction and even more potent than <i>Shadows</i> because of the force of its anguish and devastation. In Carney's analysis of <i>Faces</i>, he repeats his past mistakes of exaggerating his dichotomous view of cinema and illustrating how Cassavetes is an immensely more complicated and humanistic filmmaker than the likes of Welles and Hitchcock. Outside of a few explications of quoted dialogue, Carney rarely examines specifics and instead prefers to reiterate his grand thesis ad infinitum, albeit each time with a different modification of language. Ultimately, it feels as if you have spent pages reading the same thing, that the characters can only discover themselves in relation to the people they interact with, and that the downside of self-mutability is the danger of codifying one's performance into a stultifying formula.<br /><br />Again, this is not to say that Carney does not have valuable things to say about <i>Faces</i>, but it seems as if he hopes to convince us more of his and Cassavetes' philosophy of life than the genius of his cinema. It is true that the more he writes about this perspective on human interaction, the more the film becomes clarified, but it would also be helpful if the film received more direct analysis. The most fascinating things he discusses are Cassavetes' refusal to condescend to 'lesser' characters, and his withholding of moral judgment of his characters, a key trait that removes him from the vast majority of Hollywood cinema. Also helpful for me is why he views Chet and Jeannie (Seymour Cassel and Gena Rowlands) as characters who have found out how to survive in Cassavetes' universe and are able to react to other people without attempting to dominate.<br /><br />For me personally, the film lacked the slipshod, idiosyncratic endearment of <i>Shadows</i>, nor does it drive the theme of marital collapse as far as <i>A Woman Under the Influence</i> does. However, this is not to criticize it, as it only seems lesser to me in comparison to Cassavetes' other films. It remains a visceral, furious masterpiece that may be the ideal point of entry into Cassavetes' work. Its frenetic camera, band of performers, themes of collapse and self-annihilation, and rapid-fire conversations are certainly part of a whole, and each of these things exists in the rest of his work to some extent. And yet, aside from <i>The Killing of a Chinese Bookie</i>, it's the only film of his that I have seen that didn't quite move me to the point of tears. But it is exhausting, engaging, overwhelming in its power, bleak in its view of human relationships, and, seen in the right frame of mind, potentially earth-shattering.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-47638231560951704762011-04-01T11:16:00.007-04:002011-04-01T11:58:41.588-04:00Viewing Log: 3/1/11 - 3/31/113/30/11 <b>GOOD MORNING</b> | Yasujirô Ozu | 1959<br />3/29/11 <b>PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN</b> | Albert Lewin | 1951<br />3/29/11 <b>FACES</b> | John Cassavetes | 1968<br />3/26/11 <b>CERTIFIED COPY</b> | Abbas Kiarostami | 2010<br />3/25/11 <b>THE DARJEELING LIMITED</b> | Wes Anderson | 2007<br />3/23/11 <b>TRUST</b> | Hal Hartley | 1990<br />3/19/11 U<b>NCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES</b> | Apichatpong Weerasethakul | 2010<br />3/18/11 <b>SISTERS OF THE GION</b> | Kenji Mizoguchi | 1936<br />3/14/11 <b>SECONDS</b> | John Frankenheimer | 1966<br />3/6/11 <b>KELLY'S HEROES</b> | Brian G. Hutton | 1970<br />3/5/11 <b>THE KING'S SPEECH</b> | Tom Hooper | 2010<br />3/5/11 <b>EARTH</b> | Aleksandr Dovzhenko | 1930<br />3/4/11 <b>FREAKS</b> | Tod Browning | 1932<br />3/3/11 <b>MACBETH</b> | Roman Polanski | 1971Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-85139288445917730872011-03-30T01:50:00.004-04:002011-03-30T01:58:49.004-04:00PANDORA AND THE FLYING DUTCHMAN | Albert Lewin | 1951<a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 304px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora2.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 305px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 306px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora3.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora4.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 305px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora4.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora5.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 306px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora5.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora6.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 307px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora6.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora7.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 304px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora7.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora8.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 305px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/pandora8.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-52031997078774934162011-03-27T13:35:00.012-04:002011-04-10T10:36:40.810-04:00CERTIFIED COPY | Abbas Kiarostami | 2010<a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/certifiedcopy.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 197px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/certifiedcopy.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><i>Certified Copy</i> is quite possibly the most enrapturing movie I have ever seen. It is simultaneously intellectual and deeply emotional, and unlike the more cerebral, high-concept manifestation of the puzzle film, <i>Certified Copy</i> is less about any abstract jigsaw than about the more fascinating puzzle of human behavior as it exists in finite space and time, eschewing the notion of overarching philosophy for something deeper, more mysterious, and ultimately extremely moving. No matter how you look at it you wind up with a Pandora's Box of emotional and thought-provoking consequences. <div><br /></div><div>If the couple is not a married couple then the film is about exploring the shared lives people can create without knowing each other, how their simulation of a marriage is a direct approach to an aesthetic argument of simulation and replication in art. If the couple is married, then the film is about a long-married couple attempting to recapture the springtime of their marriage both by simulating their honeymoon and by replicating themselves as they were fifteen years ago, creating copies of past lives that no longer correspond to their current selves. Or perhaps the time frames are shifting, the question of whether they are married or not can't even begin to be answered, and the couple transforms by some mysterious pirouette from new acquaintances into a married couple. But if this is the case, of course, then the continuity of their day-long dialogue becomes a surprisingly streamlined thread between two disparate time frames, so that the film is at once continuous and discontinuous. Even if you wish to forgo any such interpretation, you are still left with many hallmarks of Kiarostami's Iranian cinema (a restrictive camera that refuses to show us essential information lying outside the frame, pairing of professional and non-professional performers, various methods of implicating the audience in the narrative, etc.) and countless other points of entry (such as recurring visual motifs, the emotional rawness of the performances, references and allusions to the European art film of the past, etc.).</div><div><br /></div><div>But what primarily matters is the feeling of existing with these people in a bounded temporality, replete with ravishing visual textures and moments of pure cinematic beauty. Kiarostami not only exercises his uncanny ability to depict the changes in visual atmosphere that transpire over the course of a day, but he also synchronizes these changes to the characters' constantly shifting emotional climate. Most of the intellectual ideas of the film, as I have so rudimentarily outlined them above, take form later, after mulling the film over in your mind (believe me, I have far from exhausted all options or meanings; in fact, the more I think about the film, the more convinced I am that the possibilities are endless), but its human and emotional truths unfold moment to moment within the film itself, and once it is over it is almost impossible to recapture them.<div><br /></div><div>In other words, I believe <i>Certified Copy</i> has surmounted <i>Playtime</i> as my favorite film.</div></div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-74542127070570019412011-03-25T15:04:00.007-04:002011-03-25T18:02:13.649-04:00Exploring Cassavetes: SHADOWS<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/shadows-2.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/shadows-2.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>When I first watched John Cassavetes' <i>Shadows</i> about a year ago, I rightfully wrote that it was spontaneous, ahead-of-its-time, awkward, and unpolished. However, I also wrongfully compared it to Altman, Allen, and Scorsese, none of whom even begin to match what Cassavetes is doing in his debut film. Like in Altman films, the dialogue overlaps, but unlike in Altman films, the overlap is not calculated as being part of a style or aesthetic, and it serves a function of directing your attention to multiple things at once (think the dance hall scene early on in the film). Altman still maps his scenes with clear focal points, the surrounding noise intended to locate his main attractions in 'true-to-life' situations. I compared Cassavetes' Manhattan to Allen's, again a gross miscalculation. Allen's New York is cultured and upscale, populated by neurotic intellectuals with easily pinpointed psychological issues. There is no place in Allen's filmography for grime or poverty or ramshackle apartments. <i>Shadows</i> depicts a more subterranean New York, one of bad nightclubs and damp courtyards and overcrowded streets. Scorsese may offer the best point of comparison, if only because Cassavetes exerts a more clear influence on him than the other two, and yet Scorsese's vulgar naturalism serves a far more holistic and deterministic function than Cassavetes', which is always employed as a means of penetrating his unclassifiable and unpredictable characters.<div><br /></div><div>On viewing <i>Shadows</i> a second time I realized that I cared far less about its aesthetic merits than I did the first time: the telephoto street views, the jazz solos, and overall 'look' of the film meant far less to me than did the strength of the performances. When before I admired the film for being open-ended, now I realize that there is no real narrative that makes such a clarification necessary. The entire film is loose, freeform, devoid of linearity or purpose, and all that exists is undefined and undefinable characters undergoing crises of self that are beyond heartbreaking. When before I felt compelled to judge Tony for his racism, which causes him to reject Lelia and propels her into emotional hardness, I now found myself feeling his confusion, disillusionment and awkwardness in the face of what is undoubtedly a striking revelation, that Lelia is, in spite of her appearance, not white. I viewed him as another character in the ensemble rather than as an intruder or negative supporting player. Likewise, I found more to understand in the rest of the characters and their complicated performances. Overall, I felt an accumulation of raw experience that excited and stimulated me, and the prior conception I had of it as a loose, jazzy, independent experiment fell apart entirely. <i>A Woman Under the Influence</i> and <i>The Killing of a Chinese Bookie</i> have taught me that forming conceptions of Cassavetes films is fruitless work.</div><div><br /></div><div>Supplementing my viewing were the first sections of Ray Carney's book-length study of Cassavetes' films. Carney's devotion to Cassavetes is so passionate and exclusive that he finds himself unable to care for the rest of American cinema, which he consigns to an unwavering style that emphasizes fixed characters and transparent 'deep meanings.' Whereas most Hollywood films tell the audience what to think and how to feel, set tones and moods and emotional cues, and strive for legibility at all costs, Cassavetes' films are about shifting surfaces and frenetic behavior, plotlessness and unpredictability. This dichotomy between two schools of cinema is unfortunately and self-evidently simplistic. Carney refers to Welles and Hitchcock over and over again. He claims this is because their films are the most viewed examples that illustrate his argument, but this leads to further difficulties. First, the reader gets the impression that Carney's understanding of Hollywood cinema is confined to a mere handful of canonized classics and well-publicized names. Carney is at pains to tell us that all of Hollywood operates on certain precepts, but fails to go outside his few meager examples. Even more grating is his insistence that both Welles and Hitchcock subscribe to this directorial philosophy, when he only seems to focus on <i>Citizen Kane</i> and Hitchcock's 50s period. Given that Welles's style changed drastically after traveling to Europe, Carney appears to be committing the cardinal sin of consigning the director to his most overpraised masterwork.</div><div><br /></div><div>Thankfully, this polemic ends when he begins to write about <i>Shadows</i>, but while he has many important things to say about the film, he ends up returning to the same endless contrasts. Carney perpetually finds it necessary to prop up the rest of 'Hollywood cinema' as a negative image to illuminate Cassavetes' genius, and these comparisons prove tiresome. Even more repetitious is his inexhaustible arsenal of metaphors and explanations that emphasize the chasm between the self and its external representation, the clumsiness of his characters as they attempt to perform and express themselves, the ongoing process of revision and improvisation as the characters adjust and readjust to new events and surroundings, and various other iterations of what is essentially the same thing: the characters in <i>Shadows</i> have no fixed identity and are always changing. There comes a point where the reader wishes that Carney would write more about the specifics of the film, as opposed to Cassavetes' overarching philosophy and how this philosophy is so breathtaking and unique.</div><div><br /></div><div>This is not to say that Carney does not provide many valuable insights. He is perhaps too attached to Cassavetes for these insights not to come across as veiled adulations, but his knowledge of Cassavetes is certainly comprehensive and incontestable. I am hoping that his analysis of <i>Faces</i>, a film he seems to regard even more highly than <i>Shadows</i>, fares better.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-44102149560626797552011-03-22T01:25:00.009-04:002011-03-22T20:07:53.433-04:00Placing Movies: The Practice of Film Criticism (Rosenbaum)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/placingmovies.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 179px; height: 270px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/placingmovies.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><div>As the film critic whose work is most readily accessible to me, thanks to the work he has put into making most of his writings available online, Jonathan Rosenbaum has become a remarkable influence on the way I view cinema. Part of his achievement, and part of what makes him so appealing to me, is in his aim of disentangling film as an art form from film as an industry. As but one of many examples of this polemic that shaped the way I look at film criticism, many of the attitudes that I had once unconsciously formed on the matter of canonicity in cinema, a subject broached in the other book of his I have read, <i>Essential Cinema</i>, were instantaneously debunked upon reading his searing indictment of the American Film Institute's Top 100 Greatest Films list in conjunction with his lengthy and thoughtful reevaluations of many so-called classics that had piqued my curiosity. This skeptical and politically conscious attitude made Ebert's Great Movie essays, pieces that often equate 'greatness' with fame and influence as opposed to thoughtfulness and aesthetics and that were once my model of ideal film writing, all but obsolete.</div><div><br /></div><div>Of course Rosenbaum's effect on me has been far greater than merely shattering my simplistic perceptions of institutionally fostered concepts of 'greatness' and classicality. In addition to guiding my tastes toward relatively unknown directors, both domestic and abroad, and instilling within me a skeptical predisposition toward the powers that be (whether obvious emblems of corruption such as Hollywood big whigs or less obvious targets such as myth-making biographers and unknowledgeable academics), Rosenbaum has served as a wellspring of all kinds of artistic discourse in addition to a guidepost to other brilliant critics and specialized texts. His often heated and occasionally acerbic writing is offset by his honesty, his lack of conformity and his willingness to share personal and autobiographical information in order to situate his arguments subjectively and place himself on speaking terms, as it were, with the reader. <i>Placing Movies</i>, in covering a larger span of his career and in providing five separate introductory pieces to the different sections of his book, contains more confessions, offhand references to personal struggles, and first-hand accounts of correspondence with critics, directors and other professionals than do the cumulative pieces I have read selectively from his website and the total output of <i>Essential Cinema</i>.</div><div><br /></div><div>Almost all possible objections are directed toward his selection and categorization of pieces under separate headings, which are structured in a way that turns his introductory pieces into a sequential narrative thread. Because most of the book is a provocation in itself and very little of the writing avoids being combative in some way, a section entitled 'Provocations' seems redundant, and some pieces could have easily been swapped. For instance, a piece on Welles's <i>Othello</i> included in 'Touchstones' is lacking in the way of critical analysis on the film itself and is instead a highly informative investigation into the film's recent restoration. Perhaps, then, the piece could have functioned better as a 'Provocation' (especially considering that it begins with a blunt attack on the tendency of Corporate America to exploit the deceased Welles for its own ends) than as a 'Touchstone.' Some of the denser essays have the quality of over-analysis, and when two or more are placed consecutively with no shorter reviews to act as buffer, one gets bogged down and starts to notice how frequently Rosenbaum repeats certain terminology and lines of argument.</div><div><br /></div><div>However, these criticisms are minor when viewed in conjunction with the sheer breadth of critical discourse provided. Whereas <i>Essential Cinema</i> is mostly <i>Chicago Reader</i> columns, <i>Placing Movies</i> includes work from all across the span of Rosenbaum's career, not all of it aimed at evaluating films exclusively. Rosenbaum includes much of his writing on other critics, from Manny Farber to Roland Barthes, and one searing piece towards the end of the book takes on an entire disposition of political complacency that Rosenbaum argues has dominated in our view of the history of the cinema, and the Blacklist era in Hollywood in particular. Some of his reviews are expedient and trenchant, for example his <i>Soho News</i> piece on <i>Raiders of the Lost Ark</i> that packs in a plenitude of references, analogies and anecdotes in the brief space it occupies, and others are immense undertakings that take a more serious and research-oriented approach toward their subjects, such as the immense article on Raoul Ruiz that seeks incredibly to synopsize his prolific oeuvre and predominant directorial philosophy, even as Rosenbaum finds himself without access to much of his work. Some <i>Reader</i> pieces I had read before, for instance the analyses of <i>Mélo</i> and <i>The Manchurian Candidate</i>, grew considerably for me, and I believe that the former now most certainly warrants a re-watch.</div><div><br /></div><div>My favorite piece by far is 'The Death of Hulot,' one of the most personally affecting of the collection that is mostly a lovely account of Rosenbaum's acquaintanceship with Jacques Tati during the early 70s. This intimate portrait is not merely a series of fond recollections; it is also a tragic narrative that helps us find where Tati's life and art intersect, and how his style of direction was in many ways an extension of his everyday persona. In this piece, Rosenbaum offers a kind of critical writing that is formulated not by research or by scrutiny, but by fleeting experience, and as such it appeared to me the most valuable and touching of the many pieces offered here. And yet, due to the prevalence of bias, subjectivity, and autobiography that plays a role in every one of these pieces, the entire book contains this sense of passion and emotion to some extent, and as such it has become an irreplaceable part of my collection.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-2203529001382968262011-03-20T01:23:00.006-04:002011-03-30T01:59:14.219-04:00UNCLE BOONMEE WHO CAN RECALL HIS PAST LIVES | Apichatpong Weerasethakul | 2010<a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee14.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 223px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee14.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee1.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 222px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee1.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee3.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 223px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee3.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee4.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 223px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee4.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee5.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 222px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee5.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee6.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 223px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee6.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee13.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 223px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee13.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee7.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 223px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee7.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee9.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 223px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee9.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee12.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 223px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/boonmee12.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-4264672888372530302011-03-03T23:28:00.006-05:002011-03-27T13:51:39.456-04:00MACBETH, Take Two (Polanski)<a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/macbethpol.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 203px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/macbethpol.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Polanski's 1971 <i>Macbeth</i> is an entirely different beast than Welles's, directed with far less vigor but composed and interpreted with far more care. Polanski's alterations to the original text are preferable to Welles's simplistic reductions, and the pageantry accommodated by the budget is truly splendorous compared to Welles's slipshod reused sets. However, as a work of cinema, Polanski's film is vastly inferior. He encases all the action in detached wide-screen compositions and parcels half the dialogue into atonal voice-over. The on-location shooting slides into set-bound play-acting, and the only instances of intensity are to be found in the violent passages, which Polanski milks for all the gore he can credibly drain from his brutalized corpses. It is a 'Polanski film' in that it is as soporifically grim and pessimistic as only he can make it. It is a fine work, but it falls far short of Welles's cinematic aggression.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-29314518221618950682011-02-26T15:41:00.006-05:002011-03-27T13:51:53.621-04:00MACBETH, Take One (Welles)<a href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/macbeth.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 293px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/macbeth.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a>Consensus seems unduly weighted toward the demeaning notion that Welles's 1948 <i>Macbeth</i> is but an amateurish experiment of little worth except to film schools. Watching it, I understood instantaneously why Godard and Rivette spent eight hours on a single day watching repeated screenings. It is the grandest synthesis of theater and cinema I have yet laid eyes on. The sequence in which Macbeth, plotting with his malevolent lady, mulls over his predestined murder of the king, shot from a fiercely low angle that is transfixed on the king's cavernous quarters engraved in the side of a craggy, gothic spire even as the silhouetted performers occupy two-thirds of the frame, single-handedly renders Bazin's analysis of the staircase murder in <i>The Little Foxes</i> obsolete. It is theater at its most grand and artificial, even as the filmic space transforms the hovering themes of guilt and psychological oppression into indelible images, the cavern of the king standing for a forbidden place in Macbeth's mind where he dares not go, a moral threshold to ascend and from which he can never return. The whole film is drenched in such soundstage imagery of gargantuan thematic proportions, and the chiaroscuro lighting that is Welles's trademark forms the textures, obfuscations, and oppositions that are at the heart of Shakespeare's play and this masterful interpretation of it. It is ripe for theoretical deconstruction even as it is infinitely more visceral and intense than Olivier in his tepidity could ever hope to aspire.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-51586315843378603972011-02-24T22:16:00.009-05:002011-02-24T23:45:55.179-05:00Double Feature (Cukor and De Palma)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/sylvia.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 293px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/sylvia.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><div><div style="text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 2px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 2px;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-border-horizontal-spacing: 0px; -webkit-border-vertical-spacing: 0px; ">Most of the fun of <i>Sylvia Scarlett</i> (George Cukor, 1935) film lies in Cukor's theatrical acuity, his reliance on simple mid-level compositions and compressed space in total service to the performances and how he very quietly swivels his camera around his actors for maximum performative impact. <i>Sylvia Scarlett</i> is a bumpy ride in that it moves briskly and changes gears from scene to scene, Katharine Hepburn and her gender-bending heroine the focal point that draws the rest of the film's disparate elements into some kind of cohesion. It's an enjoyable 30s road movie, but because the film's apparently subversive elements were unable to win me over to the side of its most outspoken admirers, that's about all it remains to me.</span></span></span></div></div><div><br /></div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/phantomparadise.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/phantomparadise.jpg" border="0" alt="" /></a><i><div style="text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; ">I preferred Brian De Palma's </span><span class="Apple-style-span">Phantom of the Paradise</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-style: normal; "> (1974), a histrionic amalgamation of seminal metaphysical texts into a rock-'n-roll horror show. De Palma is like a trashy, tacky Godard, freely taking whatever he wants from the pantheon of pop culture to create something so energetic and visually ferocious that it hardly matters if it's amateurish, formless, or, in the long run, dispensable. Peering through its impenetrable outer shell of glossy wide-angle shots, split-screens, and frivolous scenery, one can still latch onto its classicist underpinnings and absorb the agony and the anguish of its Faustian protagonist, even as the absurdity flowers into infectious camp. It's just a lot of fun.</span></div></i>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-41617050293089745592011-02-23T21:34:00.010-05:002011-02-25T00:09:31.953-05:00My Return to BloggingI have returned from a long sojourn, during which I came to feel that regularly blogging, in addition to being fatiguing, was not worth my efforts. Capsule reviews can be catalogued on various forums and i am too nervous to publicize this site outside of its meager readership.<div><br /></div><div>But alas, I find myself more immersed in cinema now than ever, consuming books, journals and films themselves at an alarming rate. I need a hermitage wherein I might calmly reflect on my recent thoughts and exploits without the frenzy of a message board. As such, this blog remains a diary, a journal, a day-by-day chronicle of what is on my mind, as I continue to sail the seas and weather the winds of cinephilia.</div><div><br /></div><div>For today, I produce a small sampling of short film reviews I have penned over the last few months, many of which I take some pride in. Enjoy.</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Zabriskie Point</b> (Michelangelo Antonioni, 1970)</div><br />A worthy companion to <i>Two-Lane Blacktop</i> as an early-70s zeitgeist masterpiece of the existential anguish of fundamentally empty characters, here coping with Antonioni's favorite theme of modern malaise and the yearning for escape. As in Antonioni's <i>The Passenger</i>, the protagonist leaves his life behind to embark on a reckless odyssey that conjoins him with a similarly undefined woman. Their time together converges on a beautifully fragmented and disorienting scene of landscape lovemaking, as the film itself culminates in an extended reverie of breathtaking, picturesque destruction.<div><br /></div><div><b>Duel in the Sun</b> (King Vidor, 1946)</div><br /><i>Duel in the Sun</i> is a film simmering with volatile conflict: the clash between Texan rurality and encroaching industrialization, the heated confrontation between an old-world patriarchal rancher and his New-England-minded son, the heroine's exoticism at odds with Southern femininity and the painful coexistence of her unshakeable lust for a rotten scoundrel and her torturous yearning for civilized married life with his brother. The film is an odd production, Selznick emulating <i>Gone With the Wind</i> for more big-picture success with a lot of matte paintings and horse stampedes, while Vidor as a director seems far more attuned to the stylized intimacy that unfolds in the expressionistically lit interiors. The Technicolor seems all over the place and the acting is always at the same high pitch. If there's anything that keeps the film together it's the sense of romantic and emotional torture that seems to pang all the characters, no matter where they are, and every scene broils with so much passion that Vidor's grandest achievement is in his ability to channel it all into a climax that's more tense and electrified than all the scenes that precede it. The final image of two virtueless lovers drenched in sweat and dust and blood from each other's bullets is the ultimate hauntingly romantic capstone to one of the most unusual but breathtaking Westerns i've ever seen.<div><br /></div><div><b>Christmas in July</b> (Preston Sturges, 1940)</div><br />Capitalist competition gone haywire, miscellaneous Joes scattered around New York staring to the brightly lit Maxwell Coffee building as a heavenly monument to the wealth and success they all crave, every one of them having entered in a $25,000 slogan contest for the coffee conglomerate. It's a satirical conceit made depressing when considering Jimmy MacDonald has been submitting similar slogans in various contests for years, all in the hope that this will get him, his fiance and his mother, all barely scraping by in a dilapidated boarding house, somewhere just a little more comfortable. The misunderstandings that ensue when some mean-spirited co-workers forge a telegram informing Jimmy that he has won spark a farcical snowball of events full of the most trenchant digs at frivolous consumerism, corporate hierarchies, and commercial selectivity i've seen in any film, while the generally despondent but still resiliently optimistic conclusion is heartbreaking. A million times better than <i>The Lady Eve</i> and sure to get me coming back to Sturges in the near-future.<div><br /></div><div><b>Point Blank</b> (John Boorman, 1967)</div><div><br /></div>Ultra-slick ultra-modern semi-comic existential thriller<span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ansi-language:EN-US;mso-fareast-language:EN-US">—</span>full of hard edges, gaudy colors, vertical blinds, and reflective surfaces<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; ">—</span>about a double-crossed man out to collect $93,000 from his former partner, and by extension the corporation he works for. Part of the beauty is how the ever-stoic Lee Marvin, with his hard, blocky features, blends into the architecture. The frequent flashbacks initially have the feel of rhythmic, jolting sensations, but as Marvin ravages his way through the company's top ranks, they come to thread together his encounters with the executives into inadvertent repetitions and catchphrases, highlighting the absurdity of each one's automatic reluctance to fulfill his simple request even after he has more than proven himself a serious threat. There are tons of doubling effects and thematic symmetries, all of which are complemented perfectly by the labyrinthine, right-angle geometry of Boorman's visual schema.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-33075172095307731352010-11-04T01:09:00.001-04:002010-11-04T01:12:40.736-04:00Anatomy of a Murder (Otto Preminger, 1959)This is far better than just a 'really good courtroom drama.' This is Preminger handling obscurity of the truth and how our evaluations of what is true and our judgments of other people are wavering, nebulous things subject to impossible-to-define subjective dispositions and emotional circumstance. As in <i>Laura</i>, in which the different characters constructed their own images of the eponymous woman, the different characters in <i>Anatomy of a Murder</i> perform their own visualizations of the night of the murder, an arguably typical murder-mystery trope that ushers forth a multitude of emotional currents. The typical idealistic protagonist vs. smarmy antagonist courtroom game is subverted by the respectability of everyone's motives, the traces of opportunism on the part of the hero, and the lingering final clue that whisperingly suggests that almost all of our opinions, which have been formed through the conventions of the genre, are wrong. During all of the formality of courtroom ceremony, the stake of so many characters, already fully established as complex, ambiguous and mysterious figures, hovers peripherally over the proceedings, so that it is impossible to conceive of this film in the morally crystalized sense of, say, <i>To Kill a Mockingbird</i>, which, in confirming all pre-conditioned expectations from the beginning, is basically the complete antithesis to everything that makes this film a masterpiece.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-78108392828508517122010-08-19T17:19:00.001-04:002010-08-19T17:21:51.226-04:00The Ghost Writer (Roman Polanski, 2010)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/ghostwriter.jpg?t=1282252786"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 223px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/ghostwriter.jpg?t=1282252786" border="0" alt="" /></a>A lot of people compare <i>The Ghost Writer</i> to <i>Chinatown</i> in its grasp of paranoia and political corruption, but the most obvious reference point to me seems to be Hitchcock’s <i>The 39 Steps</i> and its subsequent pseudo-remakes. An unsuspecting nobody with a smidgeon of wit takes on a job that gets him in over his head as he stumbles into an enormous political controversy, putting him in immense danger. He is tailed by faceless henchmen, gets to the bottom of a murder mystery, and even has a tense, awkwardly funny meeting with a wickedly condescending and highly suspect intellectual in a manor on a remote estate. As far as story mechanics go, <i>The Ghost Writer</i> is a classical thriller in the best sense of the phrase. And yet it is strictly anti-Hitchcockian in its muted, unobtrusive visuals and methodical pacing. It’s drearily non-picturesque to the point of minimalism, and its absence of a hedged stylization is what sets it radically apart from its oft-noted predecessors. Politically current while still entirely old-fashioned, <i>The Ghost Writer</i> manages goofy fun in the name of genre, seriousness in the name of tone and content, and maturity in its rejection of the overwrought defeatism that has made <i>Chinatown</i> the ever-enduring hallmark of Polanski’s filmography.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-22298764690864930432010-07-13T19:58:00.004-04:002010-08-02T15:17:14.904-04:00Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/peepingtom.jpg?t=1279065457"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 239px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/peepingtom.jpg?t=1279065457" border="0" alt="" /></a>Michael Powell’s <i>Peeping Tom</i> furnishes a psychologically torturous explanation for its protagonist’s murderous impulses and on first glance the film is easily comparable to <i>Psycho</i> for charting new territory in the realm of psychological horror. But the footage that Powell places upfront of Mark as a child in the throngs of his father’s cruel experiments is only one part of a puzzle that has more to do with artistry than with trauma. <i>Peeping Tom</i> is about the mania of directing a film, and Powell begins his exploration of the medium’s underlying terror by putting us in the subjective position of our hero, who later talks of going on to be a director and who is reprimanded at his part-time job as a lurid photographer of women for making his pictures too artistic. This disconcerting opening, wherein the man holding the camera systematically murders a prostitute, makes clear the directed nature of the footage and consequently ignites all manner of thoughts concerning the act of viewing a film. But while we are called upon to ponder our own viewing habits, we are beckoned with greater urgency to understand the artist’s, and when we finally get a glimpse of the mysterious filmmaker, our first impression is of a withdrawn individual disinclined to interact with others.<br /><br />What emerges is a portrait of a man who only intervenes in life when behind the comfort of his camera, whose tripod leg constitutes a clear phallic symbol and without which Mark feels emasculated. It is a direct meditation on the concept of director as both passive observer and active manipulator, while working in various meditations on sex, murder and the cinematic voyeurism that infuses them. We may at first feel in the security of Powell’s assumedly ‘objective’ camera when removed from the vantage point of Mark’s, but as the film progresses it is Mark instead of Powell who emerges as the film’s director; he more or less states that he has willed the events leading up to his own demise as he obsessively films everything he can. Powell bravely identifies with this tortured individual, whose series of grisly murders is, in his mind, the building blocks of a grand work of art that can only achieve fruition in his death. It is one of the great films about artists, and in the running parallels between a large film crew working on an up-and-coming hit and Mark’s own directorial ventures we see in the latter a personal intimacy and nurturing instinct absent in the former (auteur theory encapsulated). Mark’s murder of one of the film’s extras places a morbid irony on the idea of directing actors, and this crops up later when the studio film’s leading actress's reaction to the corpse (placed by Mark in one of the prop suitcases) invariably becomes an extension of her own performance within the film she’s making.<br /><br />These dissolves of the line between art and reality as they apply to the voyeurism at the heart of the film medium are manifold, even among the notions the film raises about fear and sexuality and childhood trauma. Amidst this swarm of challenging ideas, what lingers longest is the horrific image of a demented perfectionist of an artist leaving corpse after corpse behind until he achieves the right result, which is almost as terrifying as the fact that we can’t help but sympathize with him.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-67349518494564093282010-07-13T15:19:00.003-04:002010-07-13T19:58:27.193-04:00Before Sunrise (Richard Linklater, 1995)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/beforesunrise.jpg?t=1279048730"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/beforesunrise.jpg?t=1279048730" border="0" alt="" /></a>When it comes to chronicling the ephemeral, Richard Linklater’s <i>Before Sunrise</i> falls somewhere in between the spiritual heights of the transcendental school of cinema and stark, neo-realistic accounts of the mundane. Leaning towards romantic precepts of destiny but never moving beyond the everyday frankness of conversation, <i>Before Sunrise</i> is more affecting than many of its imitators, many of them great, even as it comes close to outdoing its most obvious predecessors, Vincente Minnelli’s <i>The Clock</i> and Leo McCarey’s <i>Love Affair</i>, by depicting the love between its protagonists as evanescent rather than something to be instantly recognized and carved in stone forever. As in the aforementioned films (and the third act of McCarey’s <i>Make Way for Tomorrow</i>), Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy’s daylong sojourn in Vienna is a catalogue of kind strangers and evocative places and uneasy wistfulness, and these beautiful elements in harmony with the character-enriching dialogue transform the film from a self-contained romance into a breathtaking ode to love in transit.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-22480042549725311002010-06-30T03:02:00.007-04:002010-07-13T21:15:26.203-04:00White Dog (Samuel Fuller, 1982)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/whitedog.jpg?t=1277881296"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 225px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/whitedog.jpg?t=1277881296" border="0" alt="" /></a><i>White Dog</i> marks my third Fuller film because of my impulsive desire to see why there seems to be such a divide between the generally negative reaction to it I’ve observed among acquaintances and the overwhelmingly positive appraisals of it by several critics I greatly respect. It is noted in a DVD supplement that Paramount higher-ups objected to Fuller’s nakedly intense style: energetic tracking shots, crosscutting between extreme close-ups, and several low angles (not to mention how Fuller incorporates contemporary slow motion into his typically explosive style). I can only imagine, had the film been properly released, how much of a stir his technique would have caused in a period in Hollywood cinema I generally regard as tepid and conservative, descriptives that can also be applied to the country's political climate (Fuller himself remarked that Reagan and the Republicans had American morality by the balls, and the film’s censorship is one of the most egregious examples of pressure group intervention). <div><br /></div><div><i>White Dog</i> to some seems like a no-brainer anti-racist film, a view no doubt enforced by Fuller’s blunt dialogue and metaphors, but I found it absolutely brutal. Comparing Fuller’s treatments of racism in both this film and <i>The Steel Helmet</i>, the latter attacks it on both a national and distantly personal level while the former concentrates its critique into something more primal and readily identifiable. The corruption of what we never fail to understand is an innocent and pitiable creature, or, more abstractly, nature as a whole, is possibly the most incisive dramatization of the ills of forcefully embedded racism because it so aptly and simply cuts through any apologetic nonsense about racism being a natural phenomenon. Whatever the common criticisms are against the film’s datedness, overacting or exploitation stylistics, Fuller’s uncanny skill at splicing together a streamlined performance for the titular German Shepherd so that we comprehend in its visage a reflection of humanity’s vices undeniably compensates for, and greatly transcends, these petty grievances.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-60813756170402579372010-06-12T00:49:00.005-04:002010-06-12T03:17:32.569-04:00Out of the Blue (Dennis Hopper, 1980)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/outoftheblue.png?t=1276320869"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 215px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/outoftheblue.png?t=1276320869" border="0" alt="" /></a>I don’t know all that much about punk, but I’ll be damned if there’s a better movie about it than Dennis Hopper’s <i>Out of the Blue</i>, a harrowing film about a rebellious youth named Cebe (Linda Manz) whose alcoholic father (Hopper) is soon to be released from prison after a traffic collision that killed several children and whose misguided optimism for familial security withers and dies with his destructive behavior and the resurgence of repressed memories of abuse she suffered as a child. She recoils into herself as the film careens forward, not unlike the semi we see crashing into the school bus at the film's start, erupting in a blazing ball of nihilistic self-destruction. The grungy locations and use of non-actors imbue the film with a flashbulb cultural and historical relevance and Manz is such an affective performer that even the most conventional scenes—a counselor played by Raymond Burr lecturing Cebe on her delinquent behavior—are worth crying over. The film is so brutal that any proposed solution looks like childish didacticism in comparison to the real-life horrors of Cebe’s walled-in life and the final, fatalistic stab at punk poeticism achieves an elegiac inevitability that manages to transcend both manufactured defeatism and logical nonsensicality in how sadly perfect it is.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-10755314345212679872010-06-02T18:49:00.008-04:002010-07-13T15:24:58.024-04:00The Lusty Men (Nicholas Ray, 1952)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/lustymen.jpg?t=1275518909"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 300px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/lustymen.jpg?t=1275518909" border="0" alt="" /></a>In <i>The Lusty Men</i>, Nicholas Ray anticipates the concise metaphor of the chicken run in <i>Rebel Without a Cause</i> with an entire two hours worth of suspense over a character’s choice to either jump early or ride to the death. It’s the fatalistic masculine ritual of the rodeo, and Ray explores it from several angles—thrill-seeking as metaphysical rush, danger-seeking as a quick route to fame and profit, and glory-seeking as male self-absorption. Robert Mitchum plays Jeff McCloud, a washed up rodeo star who partners up with Wes Merritt, played by Arthur Kennedy, a ranch-hand eager to make it big as a rodeo star himself. Susan Hayward plays his wife, Louise, in one of the most touching, understated female performances I’ve ever seen. Just about the only clearly thinking character the whole way through, Louise embodies Ray’s feminist leanings in her sympathetic foiling against the absurdity of macho ritualism. Ray never misses an opportunity to expose Wes for his misogynistic hypocrisy, lashing out at Jeff for mooching off his winnings while failing to acknowledge his own thankless dependence on his wife’s assumed domesticity and pleasuring himself with nightclub women without a blow to his conscience before hostilely confronting Jeff for kissing his wife.<br /><br />If Wes is a brutish fame-seeker who becomes delusional about his rodeo skills and gambles away his winnings, then Jeff is harder to pin down, a wistful, tired-out man who exemplifies the lightly glimmering romance of the rodeo-circuit with all his failures behind him and who, like Dixon Steele and Jim Stark, desires some sort of family. He is seen at the beginning trekking in long shot through a rodeo graveyard and soon after goes to his childhood home in search of old belongings. It is one of my favorite Mitchum performances, confident and fragile and plaintive, and the ways Ray uses his depth of space to place him in various approximations to the other characters—triangularly in the context of Wes and Louise’s marriage and diametrically with Wes, his relationship to either ever in flux—gives the film an enrapturing formalism. The broader, poetic undertones erupt full-force when Jeff’s hard, masking exterior is shed to reveal his selfless, romantic motives and he rides off to a grand finish in a final spurt of his former glory—a heroic sacrifice, a tragic ode to what could have been between him and Louise, and a grand assertion of immortality.<br /><br />“There never was a bronc that couldn't be rode, there never a cowboy that couldn't be throwed. Guys like me last forever.”Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-75215610533322218442010-05-21T21:02:00.003-04:002010-05-21T21:07:53.098-04:00All That Heaven Allows (Douglas Sirk, 1955)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/heaven.jpg?t=1274490002"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 229px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/heaven.jpg?t=1274490002" border="0" alt="" /></a>Douglas Sirk is heralded as one of the slyest socially critical American directors of the fifties, though to be perfectly honest I find his targets in <i>All That Heaven Allows</i> to be obvious, easily compartmentalized concepts that feel only superficially representative of actual societal maladies. Rock Hudson's Ron Kirby stands as the handsome, earthy antithesis to materialism, in tune with nature and rock solid in his refusal to conform to society; his untainted ideology and handsome looks makes him some masculine ideal, less a character and more an archetypal savior. Jane Wyman stars as the disillusioned woman who falls in love with Kirby and who desires to break free from her social and domestic confinement but can’t quite summon the strength. Sirk launches attacks on class snobbishness and television sets and social prejudices with little subtlety or nuance (the daughter, espousing pop psychology and precociously toying with her glasses, is a blunt fifties construct that seems to trumpet to the viewer how socially relevant the film is). The structure of his love story, which reminded me of McCarey’s <i>An Affair to Remember</i> (possessing a remarkably similar ending), seems mechanical in its efforts to ensure a social statement at the expense of romantic passion. That said, Sirk works wonders with his visuals, telling his story in a static, Wyler-esque fashion that excels with framing devices and spatial expanses, but with an added flair for color, shifting between autumnal and wintry hues and using them to adeptly capture small-town America. Sirk seems to make his social criticisms as much through his color scheme as through his narrative, assigning cold greens to the club parties and textured reds and oranges to Kirby’s newly furnished mill. Nighttime juxtapositions between bright fluorescent orange and luminous blue moonlight achieve a romance almost over-suited to the story.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-18700914872328633772010-05-13T16:51:00.004-04:002010-05-13T17:02:47.031-04:00Obsession (Brian De Palma, 1976)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/obsession.jpg?t=1273784138"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 177px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/obsession.jpg?t=1273784138" border="0" alt="" /></a><i>Obsession</i> is Brian De Palma’s tribute to <i>Vertigo</i>, possessing less of the cosmic delirium of its source but having its own distinct eeriness. The first half hour is a mishmash of many Hitchcockian elements, many of which are from other films, but this tributary pastiche only serves as a launch pad for a story with as many haunting symmetries and parallels as its predecessor. A striking scene: Sandra’s transfixion on the painting of Elizabeth seems to mirror Judy’s transfixion of the museum painting of her ‘past’ self before we learn that she is really gazing at her dead mother. All throughout the film De Palma conflates the assumptions we make about this film as a Hitchcock rip-off with the gradual emergence of its own exclusive themes so that Freudian maternal longing becomes interfused with a more ghostly obsession, and that's but one example. The ending to <i>Vertigo</i> might be the most ambiguous conclusion to any of Hitchcock’s films, ironic because the last shot of <i>Obsession</i> depicts a conventional embrace set to Herrman’s score at its most romantic, implicitly revealing that all of the deceit has bubbled to the surface—Michael now knows all that has transpired and is finally reunited with his daughter—and making it a Hollywood capper if there ever was one, before it spirals into a carousel of psychological terror, the themes of incest, childhood trauma, and obsession now more apparent than ever. The freeze-framed ‘The End’ is gnawingly perverse.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-62614591423889220812010-04-21T01:06:00.005-04:002010-07-13T21:14:04.297-04:00Mélo (Alain Resnais, 1986)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/MELO.jpg?t=1271826389"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 246px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/MELO.jpg?t=1271826389" border="0" alt="" /></a>Many canonized directors often wind up endlessly lauded for a single work, and for Alain Resnais <i>Last Year at Marienbad</i> is that film. I had heard about it numerous times before ever once hearing about a single post-sixties film of his, or even his 1963 <i>Muriel</i>, made only two years afterwards. I suppose like many people, I started with <i>Marienbad</i>, deemed it the first experimental film I had ever seen that I simply could not get into, and then soon after billed Resnais as a pretentious French intellectual. The past few months have brought me up to speed on Resnais. I watched <i>Muriel </i>and found a painful, relevant, and all too real story, the shattered chronology a profound reflection of the characters’ shattered emotions and overall disillusionment. I then read up a bit about Resnais and among other things learned that he loves comic books, and came to a perception of him radically different from that I had formed after my novice viewing of <i>Marienbad</i>. A few weeks ago I revisited <i>Marienbad</i> and was completely absorbed; watching films on a laptop is not always an immersive experience, but I never once removed my eyes from the screen during the film’s entirely, viewing it as a hypnotic fairytale rather than a puzzle to be solved.<br /><br />Today I watched <i>Mélo</i>, a film so far off from avant-garde snobbery I would imagine people whose only familiarity with Resnais is <i>Marienbad</i> would be genuinely shocked at its melodramatic restraint. The film consists of five or six lengthy scenes with a few interludes in between, a red curtain showing up three times to mark the end of each act. Associating Resnais primarily with montage, it is something of a surprise that <i>Mélo</i> is comprised of lengthy takes filmed with an inquisitive and at times interrogative camera. His mise-en-scéne reflects the 1920s in its cubist, but otherwise non-showy, set design, and to emulate the feeling of a theatrical production, he unnaturally dims and brightens his lights during shots to heighten the drama. The story is too conventional for anyone to take notice, a love affair leading to a suicide culminating in a confrontation between the widower and his wife’s lover, both of whom happen to be best friends. Reading what Bazin says of Renoir’s <i>The River</i>, he discusses how the film’s content is conventional to the extent that a novel (either its source material or yet another adaptation) would be subpar; the reason the film is a masterpiece is that Renoir goes beyond the conventionality of his dramatic conflict to craft a film more concerned with visual relationships and analogies and thematic conveyances of the eternal cycle of life.<br /><br /><i>Mélo</i>, a film I believe to be greatly superior to <i>The River</i>, is a film based on a Henry Bernstein play I can’t imagine is much better than the Rumer Godden’s novel that formed the basis of <i>The River</i>. And yet instead of trying to transcend his source material by arriving at some kind of insight about life or painting over it with lush visuals or removing the necessity for linear plot, Resnais stays true and adheres so firmly to melodrama, the term in which the film’s title originates, that his film becomes a beautiful and more importantly unpretentious telling of a sort of typical story. Resnais directs his actors so carefully and shoots their scenes together so intimately, that the result is endlessly touching. <i>Mélo</i> is perhaps the zenith of what one might call an un-cinematic stage play, and yet, paraphrasing what Bazin said of Wyler’s <i>The Little Foxes</i>, it registers precisely as cinematic by nature of its restraint and asceticism and lack of formal exertion. This is a great film.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6548425391781233299.post-21367287300437936152010-04-20T21:45:00.002-04:002010-04-20T21:47:41.040-04:00Juliet of the Spirits (Federico Felilni, 1965)<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/juliet.jpg?t=1271814195"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 221px;" src="http://i695.photobucket.com/albums/vv314/TheForbiddenDonut/juliet.jpg?t=1271814195" border="0" alt="" /></a>If Fellini doused the story of <i>8 ½</i> with elements of the surreal then when it comes to <i>Juliet of the Spirits</i>, he submerges the film entirely in bizarre dreams and hallucinations and doesn’t let it come up for breath. What results is a cartoon under the guise of a prestigious art film. The genius of <i>8 ½</i> is that the subjective visions and flashbacks are on one level psychodrama and on another parodies of psychodrama, critiquing Guido as he tries to compartmentalize his life based on clichés of Catholic guilt and male fantasy. <i>Juliet of the Spirits</i> relies on the shopworn Fellini images and scenarios invoking similar themes—a school stage production of a martyr burned at the stake, a licentious father flying away with his young mistress and an exotic otherworldly sex party—but emboldens them until they become garish symbols and bases for the heroine’s day-to-day behavior and pseudo-meaningful Freudian determinants. Of course the film is so silly that it’s impossible to really put stock in any of them; the ending retraces <i>8 ½</i>’s steps by accumulating all the arbitrary mysticism into one big hellish mass that Juliet must rise above or surrender to, except in this case there is no real thrust or structure or suspense. That there is no delineation between reality and mysticism and that it is all just a hodgepodge of overtly psychological projections relating to Fellini’s own marriage to Giulietta Masina may make it a work of genius to some, but I found it a self-indulgent bore, a vacuous showcase for Fellini’s brand of cinema without anything to latch onto. It is some of the best mise-en-scéne I’ve ever seen, and Fellini never fails as a ringleader of his imaginative ghostly carnival, but I honestly don’t think it amounts to much more than unrestrained excess.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0