Thirteen Conversations About One Thing,

Dan recently posted a trailer to this film, which in turn, prompted me to watch it this afternoon. I remember thinking how good it was when I first watched it, and upon rewatch, it only reconfirmed this notion. Many seem to label this film "a film about happiness" but the underlining thing is actually randomness. Subjects like what luck and fortune play in one's life enter in, as well as routine and spontaneity.

One dumb website calls the film "uneven" and compares it to Todd Solondz' Happiness, which is nothing at all like this film. It amazes me what critics miss. I can't disagree more, since this is one of the best plotted and tightly woven films I've seen. It's incredibly even. To reduce this film to a "search for happiness" is fairly simplistic, but it's more about how our actions can impact others, and more importantly, how they can't. There are certain things that are out of our control. Life is unfair. Not everything ties up into a little bow. There is no reason for this because that is the reason.

The film does an excellent job with its use of symbolism, where moments are brought out naturally, and not forced upon us via way of some melodramatic score. The dialogue is also insightful and flows naturally. Metaphors appear but they appear as they would in life, not like in that terrible film The Hours, where water is flowing beneath the bed that holds a crying pregnant woman to a Philip Glass score. No dying gay men with AIDS jump out of windows in this one.

The reason this film has not been given more attention is because it is so intelligent and doesn't dumb itself down. In a society that values Doprah's Book Club and The Hours, Crash, and Brokeback Mountain, what can one otherwise expect from a world of philistines? The fact that this film is not as well known and crap like the above films are is testimony to the unfairness in life--a point the film addresses well.

Miklos Jancso's THE RED AND THE WHITE

This is my second Jancso, I'm still far from having a fair perspective on his work; but I can say one thing for sure: He loves large dynamic tableaux. The dynamism of his scenes is interesting, it's based mostly on numerous (up to hundreds) actors executing different asynchronous actions coming in and out of frame. He stages his actors often in groups at different distances from the camera, giving the shot depth (3-D perspective), adding the different actions in/out screen you'll have the feel of witnessing a giant complex machine in motion.

The first film I saw of his (Electra, my love) was a re-interpretation of the legend, in an neo-operatic theme. His control of the hundreds of actors during lengthy scenes is astonishing! I couldn't escape this thought: repeating a ten-minute shot of a hundred something actor if one mistake happens sounds really painful!

Back to The Red and The White, plotwise though it's a film about the 1920's war b/w the communists (Red) and the Czarist (White), it is a plotless movie, no main actors, no heroes. Jancso would lead us to follow a main "commander" everynow and then only to arrive to his demise very soon after, and that's a smart mechanism to describe the war: no intervention, no involvement, passive observation of different war figures, and the futility of the war itself.


Like many, I knew about Jancso after reading about Tarr, and I can see where this association comes from, yet Tarr is different from Jancso despite his adaptation of this "dynamism".
Not only Tarr's image is unrealistic, contrastest shadowy grey, black, and white. But also Tarr's "dynamism" is different (and more sophisticated):

1. Tarr doesn't constantly rely on large number of actors in his scenes like Jancso, to produce an effect of motion.
2. Tarr's camera's movement is more complex, often traverses through windows into different territoires. Jancso's camera follows, tracks, observes, rarely zooms, but doesn't cross planes.

Tarr even surpasses Tarkovski in manipulation, while the latter uses a slow paced rythm and a slow flow of images to create an effect (something he called Sculpting in Time, i.e using time to enhance the memory of an image, thus sculpting). Tarr uses time and his complex camera movement to distort our perception of time AND space. At times I am "lost" in a shot, in the very opening of Man from London, the full information about the "place" is giving SLOWLY through the flow, the close follow up over stuctures, furniture... adding the "actual" action (not created by the camera movement) the camera captures. Anotonioni and Teshigahara did that at some elementary level, They would start a scene by a confusing close up, but nobody like Tarr pushed that effect to such level.

Jancso is different from Tarr and anybody else, and "The Red and The White" is worth watching for its splendid tableaux, including a hauting scene (at the end) of an army gathered on a triangular-shaped open land surrounded by water.

WASSIM

Thirteen Conversations About One Thing

This is a terrific little film from 2001 that deserved more attention- it's a great film. It's only weak section is the Matthew McConaughey section. Still, that's a good, solid tale.

Here's the trailer:

Jimmy Cagney

I grew up watching his films as a kid. My dad loved Cagney. Humphrey Bogart couldn't hold his water, and John Garfield was a wannabe. Drama, musical, comedy; what couldn't the little Mick do?

Here's a clip from The Public Enemy, where he swoons over Jean Harlow:



Here's an interview with him and Pat O'Brien:


Here's some scenes from White Heat, his last hit:


Here's the trailer for the same film:


Cagney kicked ass!

Film Critics: Gene Siskel

It's over ten years since Gene Siskel died.

Here is a cool clip of him and Roger Ebert bickering:



If Ebert was better at wordsmithing, Siskel certainly was better at understanding the art of film, and things like character development. However, he was not a great critic, either, and also seemed to fall along the like/dislike emotional axis rather than the good/bad intellectual one.

Still, 10+ years. And now Ebert seems ready to kick off.

The Limey

New review is online.

Office Space

This weekend I watched the movie Office Space, after encountering references to it a couple of times of the past couple of weeks. This is a film that is listed as a ‘great genre’ film on Cinemension’s Great Film List, though I must say that I don’t think it is a great movie, genre or otherwise. I think it is just ok. It had some funny moments, particularly at the beginning of the film, and did capture many of the inanities of office life. But it kind of petered out at the end, and overall I don’t find it to be an especially memorable film. On Dan’s list, he’s featured Annie Hall as an example of a ‘great genre’ film in the Comedy category, and I’d say that is a better example of such. It is better written, and I’d say funnier and more memorable. Yet Allen has films that went beyond it, like Stardust Memories, so you can understand the argument for it as a ‘genre great'.

Here’s a scene with Jennifer Aniston. My friend remarked that Aniston always seems to play the same character in her work, and I kind of agree that she doesn’t really make much of an impression as an actress. I find the ‘flair’ thing to be funny though, as someone who did have to wear those fucking lame buttons at this one job I had.

Elem Klimov's COME AND SEE

COME AND SEE




Mentioning Eisenstein today made me remember one fine russian movie by Elem Klimov.
One of the best movies I've seen about WW2. Seen and heard thru the eyes and ears of a young boy who decided to join the russian army. why "heard"?? after barely surviving explosions, the young boy (and us) will be hearing humming noise as a result of ears damage for the rest of the movie.
The young boy's face features will have a transition from a soft childish face to plastic-like harsh features.
I've seen it a while ago but I remember well finding the ending is little "preachy".... but overall a pretty solid work.

I'm planning to watch two Russian movies soon: Sokurov's Father and Son, and Eisenstein's Alexander Nevsky (reputedly a masterpiece).

WASSIM

Michael Haneke's FUNNY GAMES

So I found myself stuck in front of a big screen TV. Away from my DVDs I had to browse the on-demand menu and amongst the junk I decided to watch a Haneke: Funny Game (2008), a frame-by-frame American remake of the same-titled 1997 german speaking movie made by him (why the hell someone would do something like that).
I have to say that despite my dislike towards his movie, he succeeded in catching my attention. It was a painful feeling of guilt, I knew I fell in the trap Haneke had set up. Matter of fact his way of making movies is almost the same in his movies: to provoke the audience by presenting extremely disturbing situations, most often a couple or a family in crisis.

this is the synopsis of the movie by the female lead N Watts.

Haneke's "Funny Games" plays on two levels: the young guys playing games with the family, and Haneke himself playing games on the audience by letting his characters breaking the fourth wall, rewinding and fast-fwding the movie itself!

And though he makes a good point by breaking the Hollywoodian cliches formulas of violance and crime (shying away from the expected action, but spending ten minutes on after the aftermath. (the latter clip being from the original 1997 movie).

His first movie, the seventh continent received a high critical acclaim, look how he "annoyingly" goes on and on and on about the family destroying the furniture, or them flushing money bills down the toilet.
His die-hard fans always defend this as it gives strength and more reality to his scenes... I personally don't see anything of that at all. For me even if he tackles plot-wise, visually he is unimpressive at all (a crucial element in movie making)

Most of his movies either won or got special attention in Cannes: Code Unknown, Cache (Hidden), Time of The Wolf....

WASSIM

100th Post: Another Woman

Couldn't find any video for this, on of the Woodster's greatest films, a mesh of Ingmar Bergman's Wild Strawberries and Woody.

So, here's the image:


There simply is nothing to fault in this film, from the use of Erik Satie's Gymnopaedie #3 (topping its use in My Dinner With Andre), to the cinematography and screenplay. Perfect. And, as great as she was in her husband, John Cassavetes' films, this is Gena Rowlands' greatest role. Given that my mom is now in hospice care, and near death, I find that deeper, more meaningful art, as this, takes on an even greater power, because what soothes the mind ultimately soothes the soul, but the reverse is not always true.

It's always open, to me, whether this, Stardust Memories, or Crimes And Misdemeanors is Woody's numero uno film. Which do you think?

BTW- this is the 100th post, despite what it might say on the side. One of our co-bloggers has yet to officially post his first post- it's in waiting, so this is 100, despite it stating 99!