A Christmas season for me nowadays always seems like it lacks something, and that something happens to be a Tolkien film.
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I feel the need to skip the airy, demeaning preamble that usually smears the first half of my posts, but I also want to say that often with these lists there’s a need to juggle the concerns of the demographic, eschuing all manner of qualifiable films for foreign masterpieces or eschuing all of those masterpieces for crowd pleasing extravaganza’s. Many more try to dialetically merge these two modes of film appreciation with varying levels of success, often leading to compulsory choices that tick demographic boxes, from Funny Games to Mission Impossible III, resulting in a strange, tensile list that tries to please everybody and enthrals no one. The upside to this is that we often get to see the tensions of our society played out in the lists. The downside is that the lists just become a farce.

So this is the beginning of my film “list,” which will trundle on until I am satisfied.

The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship Of The Ring (Peter Jackson, 2001)

The problem publications seem to have with adding The Lord of the Rings to their lists is that they are so rife with pedantry, cynicism and cross-examination by their very nature (a nature brought to the forefront of their sensibilities now that the internet allows, even champions the feedback of idiots) that a typically po-faced genre like fantasy tends to fall out of favour because they aren’t in constant self-justification of itself. While The Lord of the Rings is by no means po-faced (as its many derivatives are) it bears a sincerity that this post-modern nastiness finds hard to swallow.

I remember the first time I saw the teaser trailer for The Lord of the Rings. I had had no interaction with any of Tolkien’s books until then – although I firmly remember my cousin, who will forever be five years my senior, mentioning it as a literary classic. After seeing the trailer, I read The Lord of the Rings, then The Hobbit, then The Lord of the Rings again, all within a matter of months – which was incredibly tough for a child of my stupidity. I read it religiously, effecting a kind of pseudo-cool position within the realms of geekdom at my school; the acceptable face of geekdom if you will, for being gifted as I was at running like a bellend and naturally skillful with the football, the rugby ball, the basketball and the tennis racket, I served as a kind of emissary to the other schoolchildren, for I could deal on their level and then retreat back into a cabal of couplet speaking outcasts and bask in their favour for a time.

But if I thought I did a good job of representing a long maligned (and long po-faced) genre, then The Fellowship of the Ring was the 9/11 of fantasy movies; it was a complete game changer (probably a more appropriate reference somewhere). People – more specifically men – more specifically men born in the late 60s/early 70s – - often go on about the first time they saw Star Wars, seeing the Blockade Runner shoot past the screen followed by a dagger shapped ship that just got bigger and bigger and bigger. After this experience, they saw, everything changed: the possibilities of cinema opened up for them. They knew then, they just knew, that they were destined to regional sales manager for Enviromow Lawnmower Delivery LTD for the rest of their lives. Well, firstly screw them for helping ensure the infantilisation of the sci-fi genre, and secondly, allow this to happen, but third and most significant, I’m going to borrow their anecdote and apply it to Fellowship: I feel The Fellowship of the Ring performed a similar ritual to the young minds of the early 00s. From the first few seconds of the first film, you just had to be impressed with what had been achieved.*

Out of the three films, the first remains my favourite. This is not a detriment to the latter two films, for they continue the journey in unrivalled quality, but the first retains a charm for me, whether it be the whistful Hobbits, the stirring formation of the Fellowship, the riotous last ditch efforts of a heroic Sean Bean as Boromir (long my favourite character) or the ethereal disquiet of Lothlorien or even the cerebral beauty of Rivendell. But most of all, what guarantees its appeal to me is probably that it’s a magnificent statement of intent from Peter Jackson. It is truly a wonderful, life-affirming achievement to have adapted a book so unwieldy and troublesome into such a deserving and worthy film, evoking the spirit of the book at the same time. I mean the prose of Tolkien is a literal nightmare; it makes mine look like that of a poet bloody laureate.

But what’s also fascinating and magnificent about the trilogy as a whole, is its construction of Middle Earth in our world (for which New Zealand will always be a place on my “to visit” list); the visualisation of all these spectacular, serene or terrifying locations; the designs of the Uruk-Hai, brutish and jagged; the men of Rohan in their rich Saxon get-up; the Elves in their brilliantly rendered, gorgeously executed armours and costumes. And all this was clear from The Fellowship of the Ring. Middle Earth was brought to life with such confidence and aplomb that any conceptions of Tolkien’s Middle Earth I gain while reading the book are articulated through what I know to be Weta’s aesthetic.

* To me this began with the prologue, a wonderfully economic but exciting look into the masses of armies clashing on the slopes of Mount Doom. In particular, the Blockade Runner moment occurs when the Elves of the Last Alliance unsheathe their massive swords and play synchronised ninja with orc.

There’s a nauseating outpouring of retrospectives on the decade that was, but still really IS, entering the public sphere at the moment, reflecting on these past 9 years with various insights, some of which are interesting, others vaguely hollow and glib but most simply leading you to a state of realisation: 10 years have past and I have achieved nothing. Literally nothing. You’ve only just started taking global warming seriously, because Leonardo DiCaprio told you to, let alone rescued the planet from it. You’ve not found a cure for AIDS yet, because lets face it, cancer was in vogue this decade, but you didn’t manage to find a cure for that either. You haven’t brought a stop to oppression, you’ve not stopped global conflict and you certainly haven’t managed to find any level of contentment. And 10 years have passed you by.

Many may have watched Big Brother, but in the end, Big Brother was watching us.

What you could do to better form some kind of contentment and happiness would be to draft a list, a countdown, a ten commandments of music, films and books that have infiltrated and successfully manipulated your decade into a kind of roller coaster ride of different emotions, all secured via financial means, that give meaning to your sad, pathetic life. This is precisely what I’ve done. I form my world view and then reinforce it with corresponding materials which give credence to my observations, from the politik of xenophobia and combating terrorism to paranoia and coincidence to the grotty halls our nocturnal selves inhabit at the weekends, gulping at malty beer and playing urban poetry in our heads as we resist and allure those of the opposite sex.

But even though I subscribe to this notion of representation and image governed by my tastes, likes and choices, I still do not like lists. Especially numbered, countdown lists, competitive lists that lift a piece of music, an album for example, out of its context and its specific time and place and supplant it in a sort of chronology of the decade, full of contrivances which all incite pedantry and naysaying because of the very nature of having lifted these albums from their belonging and putting them where they don’t. I’m struck by Paul Morley’s article. I’ve been following his series Showing Off… for a while now on the Guardian website for the Observer. I’ll readily admit that not all is to my taste, but I reserve enough humility and self-ridicule not to scoff at some of the people appearing in its many interviews in much the same way as Morley does not himself.

I’m going to write my own retrospective soon, on the music, films, games and books which have shaped my particular decade, whether they were made of this decade or not. My criteria is wide, but that’s because lists, especially competitive lists are so bloody reductive. There is no such thing as an objective list and as Morley says, even should there be great care taken with the choosing of such a list, the results will always reflect the readership and status of the publication it’s being written for, thus the Guardian’s will differ vehemently from that of Ok! magazine or the Daily Mail. So I’m going to make a consciously subjective list. No, hopefully my “list” – I would prefer to think of it as a kaleidoscope to be frank, documenting my tastes, triumphs and failings – will simply be reflective of me and my own, no one else.

I feel relatively blessed, having been born on at the fall of one decade and the eve of another. It affords me an easy way of judging such decades as they correlate with my own transitions to 30, to 40 and so on. The two decades I have spent in waking life have informed me a great deal and will, I suspect in more autumnal years, be full of nostalgia and golden meadows buried with gold and drizzled in Liefman’s Goudenband. No doubt this last decade shall appear integral to what later comes, and thus I, in the present, feel a great desire to reflect on the wanky “Noughties” – OW – while I can to learn what I can.

And if you’re wondering why we’re all become wankers, then remember to hit yourself in the face the next time you see, hear or write – OW – the “noughties.” The “noughties”…what an infuriatingly pathetic monicker for our infuriatingly pathetic days. Now I’m going to run off and grab a tissue to stop my nosebleed. It’s the step up from The Game. No only have you lost The Game, but you also live in the Noughties.

A Contribution To The

ERBzine ERB Library Project

SHE

by

H. Rider Haggard

Review by R.E. Prindle

Part I

The Framing Device

     From eighteen eighty-five to two thousand nine is one hundred twenty-five years.  The span records many changes.  In 1885 there were no movies, no radio or TV.  Movies came in c. 1900 beginning to change the literary paradigm.  The movies produced a definite class structure in literature.  With the introduction of sound in 1927-28 two classes of film developed.  A movies and B movies.  A movies employed A or literary fiction such as War And Peace, Oliver Twist and such while the developing fields of genre fiction were reduced to an inferior B status.

     Time has erased the meaning of the terms A and B pictures.  I suppose that if a younger person was told that he was watching a B movie he wouldn’t know what was meant.  Even if a devoted movie buff,  the mere classification would have no experiential significance.  You had to have been there.

     In the development of the film industry it was thought that studios had to have their own theatre chains.  Thus MGM movies wouold be shown only at Loewe’s first run theatres and so on. 

     In those glory days of the movies first run theatres were gorgeous temples, often named The Temple, the Roxy in NYC has the most spectacular reputation.  The goal of the studios was to produce 52 A movies a year to supply the ‘exhibition’ chain a new first run A film a week.  Only MGM was to reach this goal.

     Once having been exhibited for its week or period A movies were released to rerun theatres usually outside the chains where they were  shown at reduced prices.  As an added incentive a second feature was shown and this was a B movie.

     We lucky kids who inhabited Saturday matinees every week year around usually got two B movies and selected short subjects which included previews, a serial, a cartoon, a newsreel, and some sort of film usually a travelogue on deep sea fishing or water skiing matter.  These comprised an alternate reality in addition to real life and dreams.  Nor did we feel shorted by B movies.  To our young minds these movies were fraught with the most profound thoughts imaginable.  Hopalong Cassidy and Tarzan were the favorites of most kids- Gene Autry, Roy Rogers a distant second to Gene.  Unbeknownst to us of course the literary granddaddy of the B movie was H. Rider Haggard and She.

Not that Haggard movies were shown with any regularity but he managed to anticipate all the elements of B movies to perfection.  Many if not most of the key elements of B moviedom were pinched from Haggard.  What Haggard didn’t provide was tossed in by his disciple Edgar Rice Burroughs.

     Burroughs borrowed his use of the framing device from Haggard probably with the frame of She as his model.  The framing device of Tarzan Of The Apes shows emulation of that of She.  It’s a good one.

     Most writers of these tall yarns wanted the reader to believe he was reading a true story, in other words, an invitation to suspend disbelief- that is, everything fits in so he divised a framing story as persuasion.

     The first paragraph of She’s preface is perfection of its kind:

     In giving to the world the record of what, considered as an adventure only, is I suppose one of the most wonderful and mysterious experiences ever undergone by mortal man, I feel it incumbent on me to explain my exact connection with it.  So I will say at once that I am not the narrator but only the editor of this extraordinary history, and then go on to tell how it found its way into my hands.

     If one compares that to the first paragraph of Tarzan Of The Apes the similarities become immediately apparent.  Both authors claim no authorship.  In both cases the story, or history, was given to them by a second party.  Thus Haggard the author as editor can speak in the first person while making editorial comments.

     The hint is made that Allan Quatermain is the actual editor.  The editor was visiting Cambridge University one day some twenty years previously when he noticed two interesting people.  His friend knowing them offered to introduce him.

“All right,” answered my friend, “nothing easier.  I know Vincey; I’ll introduce you,” and he did, and for some minutes we stood chatting- about the Zulu people, I think I had just returned from the Cape at that time.

     So the canny reader hopefully having read King Solomon’s Mines can infer that the unnamed editor is, in fact, Allan Quatermain as a garrulous amiable gentleman.

     Twenty some odd years after that casual and very brief meeting, as improbable as it may seem, one of the two men, Vincey’s guardian, Horace Holly sends the Editor the text for She.

     Holly says: ‘You will be surprised considering the slight nature of our acquaintance to get a letter from me.’  I should say so.  What a great memory.

     Holly goes on:

     I have recently read with much interest a book of yours describing a Central African adventure.  I take it this book is partly true, and partly an effort of the imagination.  However this may be, it has given me an idea.  It happens, how you will see in the accompanying manuscript (which together with the scarab, the ‘Royal Son of the Sun), and the original sherd, I am sending you by hand) that my ward, or rather my adopted son Leo Vincey, and myself have recently passed through a real African adventure, of a nature and much more marvellous than the one which you describe, that to tell the truth I am almost ashamed to submit it to you but you should believe my tale.

     So Holly sees through Quatermain’s preposterous story as only half true while Holly’s equally preposterous story is the whole truth, the real thing.  Well, if you’ve accepted the premiss there’s no way to go but further in so, all one can say to Holly is that his story is going to have to go some to exceed Quatermain’s.

     Generously Holly offers any profits from publication as a reward while underwriting any possible loss. That was real Haggard accepting that bundle on Quatermain’s part.

     Rounding out the baloney the editor says:

     Of the history itself the reader must judge.  I give it to him, with the exception of a very few alterations, made with the object of concealing the identity of the actors from the general public, exactly as it has come to me.

     As a reader my judgement is that it is an excellent whopper but I don’t believe a word- or do I?

     The frame continues:

     With slight [five pages] preface, which circumstances make necessary, I introduce the world to Ayesha and the Caves of  Kor.

     Ready when you are, C.B.

     An excellent, convincing framing device.  The Editor must be Allan Quatermain yet the name of the editor is concealed from us as well as the identities of the actors.   Where we are going is mystery piled on mystery, the strange and wonderful lie before us, we in complete safety.

     So with Burroughs framing device of Tarzan Of The Apes.  While not copied word for word certainly idea for idea.  The influence of Haggard is apparent but not paramount.  Burroughs’ mind was a maelstrom into which innumerable influences (a slight exaggeration) are drawn to the depths of his subconscious and emerge melded into something so close and yet so different than his many, many sources.

     Having roped the reader in like a carnival barker luring the victim into his peep show Haggard begins to lay out his nearly perfect story of the type.

Part B follows.

Ultimamente sembra che il cinema ci abbia lasciati in asso, ma superato il periodo estivo, Novembre fa un boom su tutti gli schermi. Ho selezionato qualche titolo che potrebbe piacervi, cercando di accontentare tutti i gusti, eccetto i fan dell’horror, mi spiace ma su questo fronte non riesco ad avvicinarmi, ma d’altra parte non mi sembra che alcun regista famoso abbia saputo far di meglio, dopo l’immondizia di “The Eye” o “The Ring” con gli horror ho chiuso, però se può interessarvi sembra uscito un film, o forse è ancora in elaborazione, di cui un noto regista si è rifiutato di vedere il seguito di alcune scene per la paura, forse si tratta di Diary of the Dead – Le cronache dei morti viventi, già il titolo dice tutto.
Per tutti gli altri eccovi alcuni titoli per Ottobre-Novembre:

1) Nemico pubblico – Public Enemies. (Con Johnny Depp)
2) Alza la Testa (Con Sergio Castellitto)
3) Dorian Gray (Con Colin Firth, Ben Barnes)
4) Parnassus – L’uomo che voleva ingannare il diavolo. (Con Heath Ledger, Johnny Depp, Colin Farrell, Jude Law)
5) Julie & Julia (Con Amy Adams, Meryl Streep, Stanley Tucci)
6) Viola di mare (Con Valeria Solarino, Isabella Ragonese, Maria Grazia Cucinotta)
7) Bastardi senza gloria (Con Brad Pitt)

E infine a Dicembre vi consiglio uno dei più bei film da me attesi: SHERLOCK HOLMES con Robert Downey Jr. e Jude Law.

“Spectacular!” è il nuovo film di Nickelodeon. Gli attori principali sono (a partire da sinistra): Tammin Sursok, Nolan Gerard Funk, Simon Curtis e Victoria Justice. I brani principali sono: “Break my heart”, “Something to believe in”, “For the first time” e “Your own way”. Ecco i siti dove potrete trovare i video. Buona visione!!! – W Spectacular! “Break my heart”:   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YiRIKFqVD8w&feature=related “Something to believe in”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUW-Eli0ygI&NR=1 “For the first time”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHgMp1LqSDE&NR=1 “Your own way”:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TEykNWTyRvM&feature=related

La vendetta ebrea si risolleverà dall’oscura terra e si vendicherà attraverso le fiamme del marciume nazista.

Guardando Inglourious basterds non si può fare a meno di non riflettere sulla follia di tarantino, una follia che lo innalza fra i migliori registi contemporanei negli Stati Uniti. In questo suo ultimo capolavoro di immagini, di carne e sangue, è impossibile mettere in discussione il suo genio assoluto, la sua capacità di frugare a piene mani in un dramma così sfruttato, consumato, come quello della persecuzione nazista durante la seconda guerra mondiale, e di riuscire in qualche modo a incantare, rimodellando il profilo della storia, la sua forma originale, come se l’avesse ingoiata rimastica e l’avesse partorita nuovamente, differente in qualche modo, e almeno in via ipotetica riparatrice, ma ricreata, attraverso quelle condizioni irreali che solo il suo genio può operare. Ha creato la vendetta perfetta. Tarantino ha ucciso Hitler, e ce lo ha mostrato in un’esplosione di violenza assoluta, nauseante anche, ma non per questo meno consolatoria.
È difficile persino tentare di rendere la complessità e la bellezza di questo film, anche se in effetti il bello non è il termine più appropriato per descriverlo, almeno non nella sua forma più classica. Ho potuto solamente fare accenno a questo capolavoro di Tarantino, in cui l’abbinamento della musica con le immagini è come sempre estremamente ricercato, attraverso una colonna sonora sontuosa, perfetta.

Sono cinque i capitoli che scandiscono l’intera pellicola ambientata nella Francia occupata dai nazisti. Il primo, che viene rappresentato nelle campagne francesi, è di una bellezza lapidaria, quasi che Tarantino l’avesse voluto scarnificare fotogramma dopo fotogramma, rendendoci in una ventina di minuti, la tragicità, il terrore storico impresso negli occhi del contadino francese, nel movimento rallentato dei suoi gesti, in una narrazione corporea che viene rappresentata in tutta la sua crudezza, non appena la camionetta delle ss appare lontano, fin dove l’occhio può arrivare. La si vede avanzare minacciosa fra quelle colline, nella distesa magnifica, statica. Si introduce violentando il paesaggio come un pugno nello stomaco. L’aria si ferma, rimane immobile sulla scena traducendosi a presagio di morte. é in questo capitolo che si ravviva l’odio verso il nazista, la sua vigliaccheria. Il sadismo celato dalla finta disgustosa gentilezza del colonello delle ss, il cacciatore di ebrei, il sudicio nazista. La cinepresa che gira a 180 gradi intorno agli attori, in un movimento circolare come a fissare il centro dell’azione, l’incubo che si prepara. C’è una contrapposizione tra la lentezza della scena e la tragedia che si sta preparando. Ancora i gesti trattenuti, rallentati del contadino quasi che attraverso il movimento delle mani tentasse di trattenere la calma, aggrappandosi disperatamente al più piccolo squarcio di una normalità che cessa di essere tale in guerra. La scena viene portata all’estremo all’interno della stanza della piccola casa di campagna ammobiliata poveramente. Il colonello interroga il contadino, gli domanda se nasconde ‘i ratti’ ebrei. Le domande si susseguono in una persecuzione che non ha fine. Infine l’uomo crolla, gli occhi appesantiti dalla paura, nella consapevolezza di non avere altra scelta, fino ad arrivare all’ammissione finale. Poi i fucili puntati a terra verso gli ebrei nascosti, la raffica di colpi che stermina l’intera famiglia a parte Shosanna, la ragazza ebrea che fugge imbrattata dal sangue del suo stesso sangue.

È passando per gli altri quattro capitoli che la storia si risolve, si districa e ci viene presentata davanti agli occhi in una successione di scene folgoranti. L’atmosfera del film muta completamente. Lo spazio viene riempito dall’ironia di Tarantino, quella che conosciamo bene, fatta di dialoghi pungenti e sarcastici, resa attraverso il primo piano dei basterds, i soldati ebrei e il tenente Aldo Raine, gli uomini che massacreranno i nazisti portando a casa il loro scalpo, in una rivisitazione comica e ironica della vendetta Apache.
Il sarcasmo attraverso il quale le gesta dei basterds vengono rappresentate, in qualche modo riescono a sdrammatizzare le scene più violente, quelle più splatter, che accomunano tutti i lavori del regista.
Inglourious basterds è una pellicola che non avrebbe senso vedere doppiata, perché è proprio sulle lingue differenti, gli accenti e i molteplici registri linguistici, nonchè il costante paragone fra essi, che si consuma quell’umorismo che è base fondamentale del film.

E finalmente la vendetta ha inizio. Essa dovrà scattare all’interno di una sala cinematografica, durante la prima della proiezione di una pellicola intitola ‘Orgoglio nazionale’, una specie di omaggio alle gesta tedesche. Ma per il regista un attentato non è sufficiente. Esso diviene duplice, un piano ingegnato su due fronti, il primo progettato dai basterds e il secondo da Shosanna, la ragazza ebrea divenuta proprietaria del cinema dove si proietterà il film.
Nella scena finale apocalittica, si assiste a un vero e proprio giudizio universale. Il volto di Shosanna interrompe il film nazista, si introduce con arroganza appropriandosi dello schermo intero. Le risa della donna rimbombano per la sala quasi con una voluttà dalle tonalità gutturali, profonde. I suoi occhi proiettati tra le fiamme che avvolgeranno i nazisti in un delirio di grida, di morte. La vendetta perfetta.
Applausi
che risuonano per tutta la sala…

M.Chiara

Science fiction films of late have been somewhat lacking in the science fiction department.  In fact, due to the success of Independence Day, The Matrix and of course, Star Wars, the whole notion of science fiction has become somewhat blurred.  Of course, The Matrix is rife with quasi-religious cyberpunk stylings and spiritualism, but more memorable are its mammoth action set pieces and fight scenes.  So if anything, 2009 has been a year where we learned to appreciate that a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, science fiction was more than explosions in space.

Three films spring to mind this year that have recieved general acclaim and all of these films are the works of talented filmmakers making their feature length debuts, or in JJ Abrams’ case, merely their second.  Indeed, Abrams’ formula for success with Star Trek borrows heavily from the aforementioned action films, and yet the reinvention of Star Trek    captured the imagination of cinema goers all around, with its extravagant set pieces and wonderful characterisation reigniting the failing star. An excellent step for a series that never really qualified as an acceptable subject in public discussion.  Star Trek, always a cerebral entity, feels fresh, young and hip again, and as a flagship icon it can now evolve as a platform for allegorical science fiction where no well liked men have gone before.  And I didn’t even like Star Trek before I saw it.

Moon, the debut of Duncan Jones (I’m reminded by compulsion to mention he is David Bowie’s son, although he’s since proved that such trivia is unnecessary), was a highlight of the summer blockbuster season, offering a perfectly engineered alternative to the brash, throwaway bonanza’s that infiltrate the summer evenings – and became a savour for cinema against the corrupting nightmare of Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.  It featured the delight of Sam Rockwell giving two masterful, nuanced performances with pathos and quiet grief that equal or better his finest work.  Of course, Sam Rockwell wouldn’t be Sam Rockwell if, even when playing a serial killer, made you want to become his best friend, even if you were sure he was privy to an excellent joke in the room that you weren’t.

The film, set on a lunar mining installation, hangs on his performance to succeed, yet it is much more than a film of performances: Moon is atmospheric and haunting, its ethereal score permeating the sterile white labs and corridors and the grayscale deserts outside – and with its commentary on themes of identity, corporate control and cloning, Moon works on the mind and the eye.  And it was made for only five million dollars – five million fucking dollars (not even five million pounds)!  It’s a fine work of fiction, a fine homage to the great works of science fiction like A Space Odyssey and Soylent Green, and a fine debut for someone clearly in control of such fine artistic talents.  I only hope the funding arrives for his next film, Mute.

Moon was not the only film to provide a visual and mental feast.  District 9, the thinly veiled allegory of apartheid – although it would be fair to add that its sentiments stretch outside of South Africa – was a knock out effort.  Neill Blomkamp, swindled alongside Peter Jackson on their prospective Halo movie, was given a budget and freedom to create a science fiction film with $30 million, and by god did he do well.  Despite certain shortcomings, District 9 was a film that delivered on its hype, providing us with thrills, scares and awe inspiring events that allowed an audience to enjoy an action romp and still be worked upon by the films more weighty themes of intolerance and xenophobia.  With its critical and commercial success, D9 proved that audiences were able to handle allegory and even take it to heart – many times I was asked whether I had seen that “film about apartheid,” before being assured it was very good.

Discussions about Star Trek’s sequel have begun appearing on media sites all around, and the writers seem to have reached the consensus that the follow up  - while of course living up to the spectacle and adventure that the first film delivered so well – should and will incorporate the franchises hallmarks of analogy and allegory,to some capacity.  That capacity better be wide enough to prove the point of this flippin post.  I hope they realise that their sequel bears a heavy burden now.  But more to the point, they hopefully realise that the franchise they are dealing with is not just important to the purile, insolent fans – who should be forgotten, by the way* – but to the science fiction genre itself.

Audiences have shown that they will respond to science fiction that talk to the mind as well as the eyes, D9 was one of the years most successful films, and Moon, despite a horrendous absence from all but a minority of theatres, was able to recoup its budget with ease.  Both were received well by critics and both were made for extremely tight and restrictive budgets.  Will Star Trek take up their mantle? Will it be a champion of a new age of science fiction? Or will Star Trek decline? Will it become simply another action blockbuster set in space?

I feel as though I’ve been spoiled already this year.  My hunger and thirst haven’t quite been clenched, but I won’t be greedy.  Greed would only stipulate the production of lesser films and expecting Avatar to be more than a humdrum retelling of Braveheart and a more respectable, yet ultimately arbitary work, the name of which escapes me right now, would border on gluttony.

*This should include fans of ANY to-be-adapted work. Nothing they say matters.  Nothing.

“Durante lo scorso autunno un branco di anatre, almeno una quarantina, si posarono proprio al centro del lago affianco a casa nostra, e mentre stavano lì successe questa cosa stranissima. La temperatura si abbassò di colpo fino a far gelare il lago, e le anatre volarono via portandosi dietro il lago, e si dice che ora quel lago si trovi da qualche parte in Georgia”. Quando Idgie, con assoluta tranquillità, racconta per l’ennesima volta questa storia è quasi difficile non crederle. Idgie. È lei a sovrastare l’intera pellicola, protagonista indiscussa del film. Col suo uno spirito di un’arguzia considerevole, dissacratoria, la scorgiamo immensa, indecente e sboccata, l’ammaliatrice d’api a condurre la trama, il filo su cui regge il tutto, passato e presente, in un reticolo privo di importanza temporale. Ma è anzitutto il parallelismo fra le due epoche e fra le due storie a incantare nella sua semplicità, in una pellicola priva di pretenziosità. Un parallelismo retto appunto dal racconto interminabile dell’anziana signora Ninny, che attraverso i suoi ricordi lucidi e palpabili, ripercorre sotto gli occhi estasiati della signora Eveliyn, in preda alla solita crisi di mezz’età, la sua giovinezza e i tempi gloriosi del caffè di Whistle Stop, ed è proprio grazie ai racconti resi perfettamente dall’anziana, e della sua allegria contagiosa, che Evelyn riscopre piano piano quel gusto di vivere che si stava giorno dopo giorno esaurendo nel banale grigiore quotidiano.

Il caffè di Whistle Stop, che sta a simbolizzare il fulcro, il punto focale, quel nodo indissolubile che è la vita e il dolore, l’amore e la morte. Ed é in quel luogo che la memoria della signora Ninny si sofferma, luogo in cui ogni cosa accade, per mezzo di un destino ignoto e incomprensibile. E i ricordi si districano lentamente, sembra di riviverli in repliche identiche all’originale, riservandoci passo per passo la storia d’amore fra Idgie e Ruth, un amore che è nascita consequenziale alla morte stessa, donne accomunate da un lutto che si consuma all’inizio del film, la morte del fratello maggiore di Idgie.

Ed è l’affresco di un’epoca a fare da sfondo, ma esso viene quasi ripreso di striscio, con delicatezza, come cornice alla storia principale, attraverso cui la storia non viene attraversata nella sua profondità, ma in qualche modo sfiorata nel suo dolore, nella sofferenza dei grandi occhi affamati e schiavizzati dell’America del Sud degni anni trenta. La fierezza della gente Afroamerica impressa nella tragicità della violenza che gli viene inflitta, perpetuata da quel movimento che è stato il ku klux klan, ripercorsa in tutta la pellicola, in contrapposizione alla familiarità del caffè di Whistle Stop gestito da Idgie e Ruth, il caffè dei neri d’America, il rifugio dei reietti, degli emarginati, degli oppressi, che riserva il proprio riparo all’ombra di quel razzismo, come se si trovasse sospeso al di fuori di una realtà ben più ingrata e impietosa . È come se il tempo si placasse al suo interno accogliente e familiare, in una eterna consolazione.

Pomodori verdi fritti, il piatto forte del caffè di Whistle Stop, la sua specialità. È questo il titolo del film tratto dall’omonimo romanzo di Fannie Flagg. Ed è proprio nella sua genuina semplicità che il film ci colpisce, rimane impresso, malgrado non ci sia un’adeguata colonna sonora a cullarne le immagini e la storia d’amore fra le due donne venga purtroppo oscurata, celata e resa solo alla libera interpretazione.

Resta il fatto che ancora adesso ci domandiamo se il lago si trovi veramente lì da qualche parte in Georgia.

Mari

According the MarketSaw blog, there may be the possibility that the Galaxy Far, Far Away that we’ve all come to greet with apathy may be returning to cinemas.  A strong source suggests that the success (or quality) of Star Trek’s reinvention has whet George’s appetite for more Star Wars movies.  This time however, we’ll be treated to a trilogy in 3D – this all depends however on the success of James Cameron’s Avatar, which seems to be drawing on Star Wars’ legacy of infantilising the public’s perception of science fiction.

Noah Berger/AP

Good news for what would otherwise be a heinous and vile suggestion would be that Lucas is willing – or planning – to relinquish his autocratic control on the reins of the franchise.  With little production input, and no director’s chair, the iconic franchise could be in the hands of someone with a fresh angle and perspective, and someone who can write snappy dialogue.  The other side of this coin is that Lucas may only be willing to let his old chums from film school take a crack at it.  And while Spielberg taking a shot would probably lead to predictable but worthy results, the idea of the fading powers of Francis Ford Coppola controlling Star Wars is a bit of a stomach churner.

Lucas before has stated that his initial intention was for three trilogies chronologing the fall of the Empire.  This is probably a bad idea; the franchise is almost bursting from the seams with the amount of film, TV shows, comics and crap books documenting the Galactic Civil War already, with little room for a whole trilogy.  Only the pairing of the planned live-action TV show (that’s presumably still going ahead) with the word “Battlestar Galactica” piques any interest at all, for its about time Star Wars matured a little and grew a philosophical limb – and by that I mean returning to more than just Zeitgeist Jedi bollocks.

So what other period in the Star Wars timeline could possibly give enough fruit to be worthy of a 3D trilogy?  The future, envisioned with increasingly ludicrous novels, ranging in quality from shockingly bad to forgettably readable, is problematic. There will undoubtedly be question concerning the fate of Luke, Han and Leia that cinema goers will want to know, and the amount of times we see the resurgence of the Empire, the resurgence of the Sith, the resurgence of another Empire, the invasion of Star Trek villains the Vong is endemic of Star Wars playing by the same old tricks again.

The past of Star Wars – way before the fetid prequels – has been plundered before to reasonable success.  The Knights of the Old Republic era, from the first comics documenting the ancient Jedi to Bioware’s fantastic roleplaying games (including the in-development MMO, The Old Republic), are set far enough before the events of the Galactic Civil War to overcome any notion of knowing what’s going to happen before the characters do – a large problem of the prequels.

The best of these additions to the franchise borrow the fun, humour and types from the original trilogy and plant them in a mythically framed universe slightly different from the one that burst onto the screens in 1977.  But because there has been a great deal of success with the Knights of the Old Republic era – and thus many different iterations of it – one wonders whether there is enough room for more galaxy spanning wars or confrontations between robed monks at all.

Why not simply a story about a Smuggler? Everybody loves a Smuggler.

La mancanza di amore è la più crudele e abietta delle pene.

Lucida e tormentata pellicola di Herzog datata 1978. Un incommensurabile affresco partorito in onore al primo Nosferatu di Murnau del 1922. Una delle migliori rappresentazioni di quel Dracula che ormai è storia.

È un Principe della notte sofferente, umano che Herzog ci rende, perfettamente, in ogni fotogramma, attraversato  da una rassegnazione che è già catarsi.

L’Espressività maestosa di ogni ripresa viene offerta sin da subito attraverso l’assoluta ricercatezza degli interni, la mobilia e gli oggetti austeri di epoca vittoriana, in sontuoso contrasto di colori, scuri e chiari.  I gesti dei personaggi rallentati e stanchi, sono pregni di attese e significati, resi ancora più espressivi attraverso la musica solenne e catartica, come un canto mortuario.

Ma sono gli esterni a spezzare il fiato. Un castello in rovina,  aggrappato quasi disperatamente alle cime della montagna che lo sostengono appena, si staglia là in alto, solitario e immenso, risolvendosi quasi a un unico grido. Un grido straziante. Le sue mura, le sue fondamenta, sono come continuazione della  roccia stessa. In appena apparente contrasto la città di Wismar. Una Wismar riflessa nello specchio dei laghi fermi, immobili, quasi privi di vita, appesantita da una coltre di nebbia che la rende malinconica ma ancora sicura e risoluta. Un grigiore di una nitidezza quasi lucida, come un presagio di morte. Di una perfezione disarmante.

È un Nosferatu tormentato a cui assistiamo. Il tormento di un’esistenza vacua, arida, priva di amore. Una lunga e infinita agonia che si spinge oltre i secoli e le ere. E si arresta infine al cospetto della donna. La donna in questa pellicola, non è più una vittima ma ormai protagonista. Il volto emaciato, cereo di Isabelle Adjani può inizialmente rimandare a una sensazione di fragilità, debolezza,  ma man mano acquista quella forza profonda, animale, di una donna che col suo assoluto sacrificio tenta di dare alla luce una nuova nascita.

La scena madre, il fulcro dell’affresco, diviene la città stessa ingoiata dalla peste. La pallida luce violacea del cielo che albeggia, fa da sfondo alla città morente e silenziosa che riecheggia solamente dei passi della donna. Poi lentamente la piazza di Wismar si risveglia. Gli ultimi superstiti danno inizio ai festeggiamenti. La peste si nutre dei corpi, della ragione di ognuno di loro, in un macabro pasto inarrestabile. Nutrendosi della loro follia attraverso le bestia immonda per eccellenza, i topi, a migliaia a insozzare ogni angolo di una città ormai decadente, tutti bianchi, quasi a rimandare marmorei riflessi di morte. E la follia continua a farsi strada, scalciando impietosa. La si scorge negli occhi stessi degli ultimi commensali seduti al tavolo dell’ultima cena. Già cadaveri banchettano con l’inferno alle porte, in attesa. I volti immersi in uno stupore innaturale e ancora la follia, cruda, che come in un incubo visionario li afferra inesorabile. Ed ecco il fotogramma immediatamente successivo, in una splendida raffigurazione, sempre la stessa tavola, ma deserta, infestata dai topi, emblema dell’abbandono, risolta a immagine di morte e desolazione

È la figura cerea del principe a riprendersi la scena. Appare come disegnata, sospesa in un’oscurità abbagliante, quasi l’occhio ne possa venir ferito. L’antica sofferenza del principe privo di pace si scorge soprattutto in questi ultimi istanti, attraverso il bacio finale che offre alla donna. Un bacio che uccide entrambi, alle prime luci dell’alba, in un morso avvelenato. La donna dissanguata e il Principe  investito dalla luce del sole, perché attardatosi per amore dopo secoli di tenebre. Una scena che potrebbe possedere più d’una interpretazione. Il collo offerto dalla donna al male, come prova d’amore e sacrificio per ottenere la salvezza di suo marito altrimenti condannato, oppure il bacio come desiderio assoluto, abbandono ai recessi più nascosti, terrificanti, anfratti oscuri dell’anima. Rassegnazione all’unione fra bene e male, morte e desiderio.

Nella scena finale si assiste a una probabile reincarnazione del Principe nel corpo del giovane condannato, in un’estinzione ormai impossibile.

Da Mari

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Italia. Dodicesimo Secolo. Le terre del Nord sono governate da un imperatore tedesco: Federico Hohenstaufen detto “Barbarossa”.

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Last night, I lucked into the very last ticket to see David Byrne and was reminded why I prefer cinema to music venues.  At the cinema, the program starts ON TIME.  At the cinema, people don’t talk and if they do, they are scolded by the patrons.  Talking during a film is socially unacceptable and rude.  At the cinema, audiences are not constantly getting up from their seats and wandering around.  At the cinema, people don’t stand up to watch action scenes and then sit down for quiet scenes.  At the cinema, there aren’t dweeby security guards bossing the audience around.  Why is it so different?  Because at the cinema, PEOPLE PAY ATTENTION.

At the cinema, what is happening in front of the audience is all there is.  There’s no chatting up girls, no videotaping with cell phones (which makes about as much sense as videotape yourself fucking; it’s always more boring on video), no texting to your friend in the other aisle because the audience is FOCUSED, dreaming awake collectively, rapt by “The Holy Moment” of cinema.  Music venues function as backgrounds for socialization, and you know, I did not pay sixty bucks to be a guest at someone else’s party.  I came to dream, my dream of David Byrne.  I’m sorry, but I just don’t trust music venues anymore.  I’m tired of being corralled by age into specific areas and having some knuckle dragging troglodyte stamp my wrist with a beaver so I can get back in, none of which happens at the cinema.  The cinema is a place of unspoken respect for the collective experience.  So goodbye and no thanks to music.  I’ll stick to my cinema dreams where people care enough to mindfully pay full attention and respect the moment.

Now then…

Some real doozies this week.  First off, Portland’s gift to pulp cinema, Dan Halsted of Grindhouse, brings us the only surviving 35mm print of one of the most revered martial arts film ever made, 7 GRANDMASTERS (Joseph Kuo, Taiwan, 1978) shot with a glorious 2.35 super wide aspect ratio!

To quote Dan’s website, “A kung fu teacher sets out to prove that he is the greatest fighter by finding and defeating the seven Grandmasters. One by one, he fights their wide variety of animal styles (tiger, leopard, mantis, monkey, etc.) He also puts a young student through elaborate training, and is followed by a mysterious kung fu villain wearing a weird hat. Let’s be honest though, how important is the plot when a jaw-dropping kung fu fight breaks out every few minutes? Featuring all the best old school sound effects, fighting styles, martial arts weapons, and silver haired villains with maniacal laughter. Directed by the great Joseph Kuo and starring Jack Long and Mark Long (the original Ghostface Killer) This is one of the top five kung fu movies of all time!”

I’m not sure if the print is in the original Mandarin language (most HK films during this era were in Cantonese) or dubbed in English like the above trailer, but it doesn’t matter too much.  Just go.  This is an event.  Really.  I know a lot of you are fans of that Tarantino guy, but THIS is a film that Tarantino is a huuuuuuuuuuuuuge fan of.  I recommend you go to the source.

7 GRANDMASTERS plays ONE NIGHT ONLY, Saturday, June 27th at 7:45pm at The Hollywood Theatre.  Drop all your other plans and go.  If you’re new to the genre, start NOW.

Speaking of Tarantino, if anyone wants to read the script for INGLORIOUS BASTERDS (yes, that’s how he’s spelling the title), I have it so drop me a line at pdxfilm@mac.com.  I always heard he couldn’t spell worth a damn, but I had to read one of his scripts to see how bad his spelling really is.  Wow.

Also at The Hollywood Theatre starting Friday, the most dazzling, confounding, flamboyant and operatic piece of virtuoso filmmaking you’re likely to ever see, IL DIVO (Paolo Sorrentino, Italy, 2008) which won the Prix du Jury at Cannes 2008.

For the life of me, when my best friend and I saw this at PIFF last year, we couldn’t follow it at all and we really didn’t care.  It was as if we were being whisked through the history of contemporary Italian politics in a cherry red Ferrari while blaring Danse Macabre, Opus 40 by Camille Saint-Saëns with all the windows down.  We had no idea where we were or what was happening, but we were giddy like school children dizzy on lemonade.

Here.  Just watch the beginning of the movie.  It’s only two minutes long.  Watch in full screen.

And the trailer can be viewed on the official IL DIVO website HERE.

For more than 50 years, Giulio Andreotti has been Italy’s most powerful, feared and enigmatic politician. And as he begins his seventh term as Prime Minister, he and his hardliner faction take control of a country reeling from the brazen murders of several high-level bankers, judges and journalists, as well as the kidnapping and assassination of former Prime Minister Aldo Moro. But as the Christian Democrat party crumbles in a nationwide bribery scandal, suspicion begins to fall on Andreotti himself as the center of a shocking conspiracy involving the Vatican, the Mafia and the secret neo-Fascist Masonic Lodge P2. In what is called The Trial Of The Century, Italy’s legendary Senator for Life will stand accused of corruption, collusion and murder.  That’s the story, a true one, but go for the filmmaking.  MUST SEE.

IL DIVO starts Friday at The Hollywood Theatre.  Check website for showtimes.

Still playing at The Hollywood, one of the most innovative and existential thrillers you’re likely to ever see, REVANCHE (Götz Spielmann, Austria, 2008) which was nominated for Best Foreign Film last year and won countless European awards.

At once  gripping and tragic of nearly Greek proportions, REVANCHE is the stunning international breakthrough debut from Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmann. In a ragged section of Vienna, hardened ex-con Alex (the mesmerizing Johannes Krisch) works as an assistant in a brothel, where he falls for Ukrainian hooker Tamara (Irina Potapenko). Their desperate plans for escape unexpectedly intersect with the lives of a rural cop (Andreas Lust) and his seemingly content wife (Ursula Strauss). With meticulous, elegant direction, Spielmann creates a tense, surprising portrait of vengeance and redemption, and a journey into the darkest forest of human nature, in which violence and beauty exist side by side.  This is one of the best films of the year.

Revanche – Trailer - The most popular videos are here

Starting Friday at The Laurelhurst is THE PARALLAX VIEW (Alan J. Pakula, U.S., 1974) starring Warren Beatty, Paula Prentiss, Hume Cronyn and gorgeous cinematography by Gordon Willis who shot The Godfather and Annie Hall.

Of the three films that make up director Alan J. Pakula’s “paranoid trilogy” (Klute, All the President’s Men and THE PARALLAX VIEW), the latter most strongly conveys the paranoid atmosphere of the 1960s and ’70s. A stylish suspense-thriller, THE PARALLAX VIEW mirrors the political distrust Americans began to feel during the period following the Kennedy assassination and the Vietnam War, culminating in the Watergate conspiracy. The film stars Warren Beatty as investigative journalist Joe Frady, whose former girlfriend and colleague, Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), witnesses the assassination of a U.S. senator at the Seattle Space Needle. A government report declares it the work of a lone gunman, but when eyewitnesses begin showing up dead, Carter is convinced that a wider conspiracy is at work. Probing deeper, Frady uncovers the operations of the Parallax Corporation, which recruits social misfits and uses mind control techniques to turn them into assassins. In keeping with classic 1970s film, the story is a suspenseful, well-acted thriller with a surprise ending that will resound with the viewer long after the credits start rolling.  Plus the film brilliantly employs the use of montage.  Check out this sequence from the testing room.  It’s genius.

THE PARALLAX VIEW starts Friday at The Laurelhurst.  Check website for showtimes.

And don’t forget, you only have one more week to see one of the best films of the year at The Laurelhurst, Jim Jarmusch’s THE LIMITS OF CONTROL.

AND LASTLY…PDXFilm Presents this coming Independence Day weekend, TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE (Trey Parker, U.S., 2004)! Yup, this July 3rd, PDXFilm is presenting one of the most subversive comedies made this decade as we celebrate the coming of a new political era (we hope) and wave goodbye to ignorance and arrogance of the Bush Era.  Come celebrate with me July 3rd at 11pm.  This screening is only SIX BUCKS!  21 and over only as Cinema 21 now serves beer and wine.

TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE, with a $30 million budget, was made entirely using marionettes in the style of the 60’s British television series, Thunderbirds.  The puppetry is deft and creative, the production design is detailed and loaded with secret jokes (the streets of Paris are cobblestones that look like croissants, to name one of many), and in typical Trey Parker form, the film holds no alliance to any politics, vilifying all abuses of power and imperiousness.  But more than that, this is also an attack on the crappy action films made in Hollywood.  Idiotic dialogue, impossible plot points, completely neutered sex scenes and lots and lots and lots of destruction and pro-military imperialism.  And I appologize in advance but the film print does not include the famous golden showers and Hot Carl scene.

TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE plays Friday, July 3rd only at 11PM.  SIX BUCKS.  21 and over only.

I’ll see you there.

tenzispdxfilm

Per arrivare a timbrare il cartellino d’entrata alle 8 e 30 precise, Fantozzi sedici anni fa cominciò col mettere la sveglia alle 6 e un quarto: oggi, a forza di esperimenti e perfezionamenti continui, è arrivato a metterla alle 7:51… vale a dire al limite delle possibilità umane! Tutto è calcolato sul filo dei secondi: cinque secondi per riprendere conoscenza, quattro secondi per superare il quotidiano impatto con la vista della moglie più sei per chiedersi – come sempre senza risposta – cosa mai lo spinse un giorno a sposare quella specie di curioso animale domestico, tre secondi per bere il maledetto caffè della signora Pina – tremila gradi Fahrenheit! –, dagli otto ai dieci secondi per stemperare la lingua rovente sotto il rubinetto [...], due secondi e mezzo per il bacino a sua figlia Mariangela, caffellatte con pettinata incorporata, spazzolata dentifricio mentolato su sapore caffè, provocante funzioni fisiologiche che può così espletare nel tempo di valore europeo di sei secondi netti. Ha ancora un patrimonio di tre minuti per vestirsi e correre alla fermata del suo autobus che passa alle 8:01. Tutto questo naturalmente salvo tragici imprevisti…

- Soffri? E invece io non soffro più. Non bisogna soffrire tutti e due insieme: quando smetterai tu, comincerò io.

Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) all’amante Henri Serre (Jim)

Adoro Carlo Verdone e la colonna sonora di questo film:

Hal Ashby, one of the great but underrated Hollywood editors described the art and craft of editing as “…the perfect place to examine everything…everything is channeled down into that strip of film, from the writing to how it’s staged, to the director and the actors. And you have the chance to run it back and forth a lot of times, and ask questions of it – why do I like this? Why don’t I like this?”. Editing in Ashby’s broad definition, is the process of subjective scrutiny coupled with the potential to sculpt narrative arc, to forge a coherent path through a story; the editor acts as an unseen storyteller with the final elements of a film’s production at their fingertips. To put it more succinctly, Walter Murch, editor (and sound designer) for Francis Ford Coppola’s The Conversation and Apocalypse Now once proclaimed that “editing could just as easily be called film construction”. Edits should be subtle or invisible: perfect links in stories without ever drawing attention to themselves. There are exceptions of course: Ray Lovejoy’s (or possibly Kubrick’s) famous jump-cut from prehistoric man’s first piece of technology to the grand technology of space travel in 2001: A Space Odyssey, or Hugh A. Robertson’s stylish editing on Midnight Cowboy.

The point is, everything needs an edit. We edit our lives all the time. We edit what we say before we say it. Some people are better at that than others. A good edit is important. Online, where many things are perpetually in “beta”, where many things are apparently just a stream of consciousness; where newspaper clippings are riddled with typos, blogs have unchecked facts and photographs are emptied off a camera onto Flickr, is the art of reviewing, editing and crafting finished works under threat in an attempt to keep up with the pace?

I wonder because I’m prone to haste and impatience myself. Generally getting something finished is such a painful process – putting the “final touches” to something. But that’s probably why its the most important part of doing anything. Its the stage of creating something I should make more time for but never seem to. The perfect place to examine everything, the chance to run it back and forth and ask questions.

They’re dropping like flies these days. Only a fortnight ago I watched ‘Black Narcissus‘ for the first time on Blu-Ray, a revisit of one of the finest British films ever made which I haven’t seen for at least a decade. It was incredible and a major strut of its brooding tension is Cardiff’s photography, I remember thinking when his name appeared on the opening titles ‘man, he must be really old by now’……so it goes. I should do the chap a better tribute but quite honestly this week I’ve spent all day every day in front of computers writing reports and I’ve had enough, so here’s some examples of unquestionably one of the UK’s finest ever cinematographers:

As well as shooting some of the classics, he’s also earned a fondness from the cult movie brigade with some of his more esoteric efforts of direction such as:

and some strangeness, such as this:

But let’s close with a spoiler ridden clip of ‘Narcissus’, breathtaking stuff:

Ultimamente mi sto dando al cineforum,tra un lavoro e l’altro qui in reparto..fortunatamente posso sfruttare un mini lettore DVD acquistato di seconda mano da un ragazzo di un altro reparto,e un sito in streaming trovato zappingando qui e lì per la rete.Adorando Will Smith,ho sfogliato la lista di un pò di film recenti,e ho trovato questo..”Sette Anime”,l’ultimo film di Gabriele Muccino se non sbaglio..Spinto dalla curiosità ho letto un pò di commenti per la rete,e mi ritrovo davanti un film stroncato dalla critica americana che tocca argomenti delicati quali la malattia,la morte,l’amore..Ho iniziato a guardarlo un paio di giorni fa,tra una chiamata di campanello e l’altra,ora manca praticamente metà del secondo tempo..

Risulta un film un pò pesante..più che altro lento nello scorrere,ma in fondo in fondo cattura lo spettatore,in questo caso me,forse anche perchè temi delicati così li affronto tutti i giorni lavorando in un ospedale..e forse perchè anche io amo nel profondo come Ben Thomas..

What an exceptional week of cinema this is going to be!  There’s a handful of quality, first run foreign films, obscure repertory  programming and even some cheep thrills with a grindhouse film!  What’s more, most of these films you can see for less than SIX BUCKS!

Entre les murs

At last year’s Cannes, for the first time in 21 years, a French film won the top honor Palm d’Or, THE CLASS (Laurent Cantet, France), which was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film at this year’s Oscars and won Best Foreign Film at this year’s Independent Spirit Awards.  THE CLASS is based on the 2006 French novel, Entre lues murs, and is a semi-autobiographical account of the author’s experiences as a literature teacher in an inner city middle school in Paris.  Part of what makes the film a miracle is that it’s practically impossible to discern whether it’s fiction or documentary because Cantet cast real teenagers with no acting experience for the students.

Andrew Sarris of New York Observer writes, “Place THE CLASS on your must-see list and keep it there until you do.”  

David Edelstein of New York Magazine writes, “THE CLASS is a true movie miracle: fragile yet indelible.”  

Kirk Honeycutt of Hollywood Reporter writes, “A highly dramatic and candid look at the challenges facing a nation that prides itself on its egalitarianism yet is now being confronted with a multi-ethnic citizenry that does not always embrace its hallowed traditions.”

My favorite comparison comes from Jennie Yabroff of Newsweek, “THE CLASS isn’t a documentary, but the scenes have the loose, slow-cooked feel of a director turning on a camera and waiting to see what happens — think Mike Leigh meets Frederick Wiseman.”

THE CLASS opens Friday at Regal Fox Tower.

Trailer for THE CLASS

Waltz With Bashir

I’m rather surprised that I haven’t heard more people talking about WALTZ WITH BASHIR (Ari Folman, Israel), which opened in Portland a few weeks ago.  The animated documentary won Best Foreign Film at this year’s Golden Globes and was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Foreign Film at this year’s Oscars, which was the first time an animated film had been nominated for that category.  It has won countless international film awards and made many critics’ top ten list for the films of 2008.  Also, this is the first Israeli animated film that received an international release, except of course in most Arab countries where the film is banned.  In Lebanon, the Lebanese Inner Circle and nearly one thousand other cinephiles in Lebanon banned together against their government to have the film screened.  In January of 2009, it was privately screened at last.  

WALTZ WITH BASHIR documents the attempts of the director, a 1982 Lebanon War veteran, to recover his lost memories of the events revolving around the Sabra and Shatila massacre when the Israeli Defense Forces allowed Christian Phalangists to enter two Palestinian refugee camps and kill upwards of 3,500 civilians.  That’s 500 more deaths than September 11th.

Trailer for WALTZ WITH BASHIR

WALTZ WITH BASHIR is electrifying, visceral, hallucinatory and emotionally devastating.  WALTZ WITH BASHIR has moved from the crummy Fox Tower to the larger screens at The Broadway Metroplex, where most of the Portland International Film Festival took place.  I realize that a first run screening means paying about ten bucks, but this film is best experienced with the best sound system on a big screen.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.  SEE IT THIS WEEK.

Gomorrah

One of the best films of 2008 (which is at last making its way to Portland this week) was neglected by this year’s Academy Awards for Best Foreign Film.  In fact, it’s been so neglected in the United States that little Marty Scorsese has decided to help it out by giving it his formal baptism on the movie poster.  GOMORRAH (Matteo Garrone, Italy) is a sprawling tapestry based on the book by Roberto Saviano about the Camorra crime syndicate in Naples and Caserta, Italy (the author now lives under constant police surveillance for his protection).  GOMORRAH won the Grand Prix at last year’s Cannes.

GOMORRAH stands out from all the other Mafia genre pictures which play with stereotypes, flamboyancy and mythology.  Graced with truth, ferocity and an elaborate structure, GOMORRAH pulls no punches about the invincibility and tragedy of the Camorra empire.  Also, the film features the best use of Scarlett Johansson I’ve seen in years.  

Trailer for GOMORRAH

GOMORRAH opens Friday at Cinema 21.  Saturday and Sunday matinees only SIX BUCKS.

At The Laurelhurst Theater

Right now, The Laurelhurst Theater (2735 E. Burnside, 15 bus) is jam packed with great films, all for THREE BUCKS!  All of these films have been playing in Portland for months, but if you’ve been avoiding the high prices and indifference of Regal Cinemas (and who can blame you for that, really?), then this week is the time to camp out at the always friendly, attentive and cheap Laurelhurst.  By the way, some of these films are also playing at The Living Room Theaters.  I’ve said it before and I’m going to keep saying it until it closes down; The Living Room Theaters shows DVDs, not film prints, there is no one supervising the screenings because it’s operated by a PC computer in the kiosk where you buy your overpriced ticket.  DO NOT SUPPORT THE LIVING ROOM THEATERS.  IT IS BAD FOR YOUR EYES AND YOUR SOUL.  And if you’re going because you wanna drink beer and wine, you can do that at The Laurelhurst as well!

I’ve mentioned in the last few weeks that one of the best foreign films of the year finally began playing at The Laurelhurst, LET THE RIGHT ONE IN (Thomas Alfredson, Sweden), an elegant, quiet, gorgeous, phantasmagorical and at times very sweet coming of age, vampire movie from Sweden.  If you haven’t seen it yet, and you’re skeptical about the horror genre, trust that the film isn’t out to scare you or make you barf from gore but rather tell you a touching tale of two children who need each other’s companionship.  

Then after you see LET THE RIGHT ONE IN, you can sneak into see (well, actually don’t do that…support your local cinema, but do that if you’re at a Regal Theater) TWILIGHT (Some director who directed that awful tween screamer, Thirteen, and who refuses to direct the TWILIGHT sequel, U.S.), which was shot right here in Portland.  It’s silly and homogenizes the vampire genre, but it might be fun to compare it to LET THE RIGHT ONE IN…if you realllllly had nothing better to do.  I mean, even the poster for LET THE RIGHT ONE IN is better.  Ah well.

I admit to the entire world, I am head over heels smitten with Anne Hathaway.  She is dorky, funny and gorgeous in all the right ways, especially when she doesn’t pluck her eyebrows and straighten her hair.  Regardless of that bias, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (Jonathan Demme, U.S.) was one of the best American films of last year and she was worthy of her Oscar nod for Best Actress.  Yes, she clearly makes bad choices like that millionaire/con-artist she started dating when she twenty-one (live and learn, kiddo!) and that Bride Wars fiasco produced by her co-star, Kate Hudson (okay, THAT one you shoulda known better!), but RACHEL GETTING MARRIED isn’t just Hathaway’s show but rather a compelling ensemble piece.  Jenny Lumet’s screenplay (the late director, Sidney Lumet’s daughter) emotionally creeps up on you and before you know it, you’ll be reaching for a sleeve or a tissue.  Cathartic and worth repeat viewings.

Anne Hathaway, Debra Winger, Bill Irwin & Rosemarie DeWitt on the set of RACHEL GETTING MARRIED

AND NOW, the film I think I’ve seen about fifteen times, HAPPY GO LUCKY (Mike Leigh, U.K.)!  If you haven’t seen this playful, funny and yet complex character study featuring a Golden Globe winning performance by the hilarious Sally Hawkins as Poppy, and you need a little bit of relief from the recent rain and overall pessimistic outlook on the world, do yourself a favor and grab a bottle of wine and see HAPPY GO LUCKY.  I am totally in love with Poppy’s flirtatious nature, adventurousness, her attraction to the darker parts of humanity because of her unyielding curiosity and love of people.  I just adore this film so much!

Lastly, The Laurelhurst Theater presents DEAD MAN (Jim Jarmusch, U.S., 1996) starring Johnny Depp as William Blake, Crispin Glover, Gary Farmer, Lance Henriksen, John Hurt, Iggy Pop, Robert Mitchum, Gabriel Byrne, Jared Harris, Billy Bob Thorton and Alfred Molina with music by Neil Young.  Plays for ONE WEEK ONLY, starting Friday.

Trailer for DEAD MAN

So that’s four really great films at The Laurelhurst Theater!  Oh, wait there’s a fifth!  SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK (Charlie Kaufman, U.S.) which won the Golden Palm at Cannes Last year and won Best First Feature at the Spirit Awards!  Um, if you DO see SYNECDOCHE, NEW YORK, you may find that HAPPY GO LUCKY is the perfect antidote afterwards…

The Virgin Spring

Playing for this weekend only at Portland State University’s 5th Ave. Cinema is THE VIRGIN SPRING (Ingmar Bergman, Sweden, 1960), which was Bergman’s first Oscar winning film and was also Bergman’s first full collaboration with cinematographer, Sven Nykvist.  THE VIRGIN SPRING is based on a medieval sonnet about vengeance and forgiveness and represents the primary nexus between Bergman’s austere but accessibly obscure works of the 1950s and his more disciplined cinema of the Sixties.  If you’ve seen The Seventh Seal and Through A Glass Darkly, THE VIRGIN SPRING is the sinew that connects these works together.  

THE VIRGIN SPRING plays Friday and Saturday at 7pm and 9:30pm and Sunday at 3pm.  PSU students get in for free and the rest of us only pay THREE BUCKS!  And always a 35mm film print!

Madame X (UPDATED MARCH 3rd)

UPDATE:  THEY ARE  SCREENING A DVD.

In a very obscure turn, The Bagdad will be playing a 1966 remake of MADAME X (David Lowell Rich, U.S., 1966) starring Lana Turner, John Forsythe, Burgess Meredith, and  Ricardo Montalban.  This is the eighth remake of this tearjerker which was originally made in 1910.  It’s soap opera melodrama which may or may not move you to bolt for your handkerchief depending upon how cynical you are.  In fact, it’s hard to say whether this is being programmed out of irony or true appreciation of the film.  My gut tells me it’s the former, unfortunately.  

BE WARNED that over the last year, The Bagdad has become notorious for playing DVDs instead of film prints so CALL AND ASK FIRST.  The proprietors don’t see much difference between the two formats, and quite frankly, most people who frequent The Bagdad go to drink beer first and see a film second.  So tread with care.

Trailer for MADAME X

MADAME X plays weekly at The Bagdad starting Saturday at 11pm, Sunday at 10:30pm and the rest of the week at 8:30pm.

Grindhouse:  The Toolbox Murders

Already this year, the programmers of the Grindhouse Film Festival provided one of the impossible to beat best evenings of cinema for 2009.  A few weeks ago, they played a double feature of I corpi presentano tracce di violenza carnale, aka Torso (Sergio Martino, Italy, 1973) and Mil gritos tiene la noche, aka One Thousand Cries Has the Night, aka Pieces (Juan Piquer Simón, U.S.A./Spain) with glorious, strange and hilarious trailers in between.  There were film critics in the audience (there because of their love for cinema) which was enthusiastic and energetic.  It’s the one genre that plays a movie house like a rock concert.  The screenings are less about the film itself and more about the communal experience of watching with an audience.  

That said, I’m skeptical of this Saturday’s screening at The Hollywood Theatre, THE TOOLBOX MURDERS (Dennis Donnelly, U.S.A., 1978).  

Trailer for THE TOOLBOX MURDERS

Part of the attraction of the grindhouse genre is how creatively awful the making of the films can be and usually a good portion of the films are truly inspired and creative.  But when a film is clearly misogynistic, it’s hard to have a good time appreciating what is happening in the filmmaking.  As you could imagine, the first part of THE TOOLBOX MURDERS starts with a series of deaths by various tools from a toolbox and the victims are all young women.  Now I’m not condoning the programmers in any way for programming this film because the film had been banned upon its release in the U.K. and was remade by Tobe Hooper in the Eighties, so it has a place in the pantheon of the genre.  Still, I’m skeptical.  I’ll still go because it’s a film I always wanted to see as a kid, along side Microwave Massacre.  Actually, it would have been better had this been a double feature.  I think as a rule the folks running The Grindhouse Fest should only play double features, but never mind.

THE TOOLBOX MURDERS plays Saturday only at The Hollywood Theatre at 7:45pm (That’s awful early for grindhouse, i’n't?)

Anyway, if you’re not into grindhouse, The Hollywood Theatre is also showing a rom com which premiered this month at The Portland International Film Festival, MOSCOW, BELGIUM (Christophe Van Rompaey, Belgium).  MOSCOW, BELGIUM won three awards at last year’s Cannes including Best Screenplay and it starts this Friday. 

Trailer for MOSCOW, BELGIUM

PHEW!  That’s a lot of great cinema!  Enjoy!  There’s more playing around town, of course, but these are the films I recommend.  You really can’t miss with any of these.  But if you’re totally broke, there is a terrific online opportunity…

THE AUTEURS PRESENTS…

In a partnership with IFC Films and The Criterion Collection, gatekeepers to the Janus Films catalog, the website for theauteurs.com is featuring SIX FREE foreign films which all won Best Foreign Film upon their release.  

The films are LA STRADA (Federico Fellini, Italy, 1954), one of my personal favorites CLOSELY WATCHED TRAINS (Jiri Menzel, Cz., 1966), BLACK ORPHEUS (Marcel Camus, Brazil, 1959), the hilarious film MON ONCLE (Jacques Tati, France, 1958), THE SHOP ON MAIN STREET (Ján Kadár & Elmar Klos, Cz., 1965) and well…you can see the following this weekend at the Fifth Avenue Cinema so I’m hesitant to mention the last one, THE VIRGIN SPRING.

To watch these films FOR FREE, click here!

 

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Presa diretta per l’intervista di Sofia Loren

sul set di “Nine” di Rob Marshall

un film in lavorazione con Nicole Kidman, Kate Hudson, Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz, Judi Dench, Marion Cotillard, Sophia Loren.

Cinecittà, sala Fellini: Sofia Loren

l'intero cast femminile di Nine

First and foremost, HAPPY 63rd BIRTHDAY, DAVID LYNCH!!!

Now down to business…The 32nd Portland International Film Festival launches February 5th! Yes, that’s right, it’s the one month of the year when foreign films play in Portland. Sad to think that there was a time when foreign films made up more than three percent of the U.S. box office. Don’t believe me? According to the New York Times, in 2005, only ten foreign language films had ticket sales of more than $1 million nationwide and according to a 2007 report by the U.S. Department of Commerce, foreign films make up only 3% of movie theater revenue in the U.S. Pretty depressing, ain’t it?

But like I said, February is the one month of the year when you can see films that are made outside of the U.S. That said, The Portland International Film Festival at best is a Reader’s Digest version of the international festivals that actually have an impact. PIFF kind of pecks and hunts through what played at Berlin and Cannes and Toronto and Venice and all the rest of the international fests, but never does the festival discover a film or filmmaker. But a thirsty man refuses no drink, so we take what we can get.

Even still, the festival has a reputation of not seeking the best of these festivals, but rather catering to a very specific demographic of blue haired retirees, who grew up during the reign of the art house cinema and are willing to invest $250 for an annual Silver Screen Membership every year, by selecting sentimental, cloying, formulaic international films. Now I personally feel that people over the age of sixty are interested and capable of appreciating challenging cinema, the kind to which they were exposed during the post World War II era when the art film was at its peak, as well as throughout the Sixties, and not films that placate and pacify, but then again I’m not an ageist. Great cinema transcends age and furthermore, aging doesn’t automatically mean that a person becomes less angry, concerned or passionate about the very X-rated state of the world, but I digress. In the past, PIFF has been mostly a disappointment, especially in the past two years.

HOWEVER…this year’s first week of press screenings, which are available to any press member or Silver Screen Members, is showing four of the most important, challenging and widely discussed films of 2008 (The actual festival schedule will become available soon)!

Rather than try to convince you through my own opinion and passion, I have uploaded trailers for nine of the films which will be playing at the festival (and the week of January 27th-January 30th for Silver Hair, er I mean Screen, Members). The first four are HUNGER, GOMORRAH, OF TIME AND THE CITY (which are all on the Film Society of Lincoln Center Best Of list for 2008) and BAADER MEINHOF COMPLEX. The rest are pandering crap, but don’t take my word for it…watch the trailers!

CLICK HERE FOR PIFF PRESS SCREENING TRAILERS

With any luck, the Portland International Film Festival will be as great as those first four films.

By the way, all PSU students! Throughout the year, you can attend ALL films at The Northwest FIlm Center FOR FREE. That’s a $250 value! So start paying attention to their scheduling and see great films all year round for free!

PIERROT LE FOU

Tomorrow and Thursday night ONLY are the last two nights to see Jean Luc Godard’s 1967 masterpiece, PIERROT LE FOU (Jean Luc Godard, 1967, France)! If you give a shit whatsoever about Cinema with a Capital C, you’ll go. This is a brand new 35mm print which explodes with color, humor, subversion, politics and passion.

Pierrot Le Fou Trailer 1

Pierrot Le Fou Trailer 2

BONUS TO ALL GODARD FANS! Godard, who is still alive and active, made the trailer for last year’s Viennale Film Festival, which played in 100 cinemas throughout Austria: 

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY

Liked GRAND TORINO didya???

THURSDAY, JANUARY 29TH at 7PM, ONE NIGHT ONLY at The Whitsell Auditorium, Sergio Leone’s masterpiece, THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (Sergio Leone, 1967, Italy/Spain)!!! This is the greatest Spaghetti Western ever made and stars CLINT EASTWOOD, Eli Wallach and Lee Van Cleef, featuring an iconic music score by Italy’s most prolific composer, Ennio Morricone.

If you are under thirty or have never seen a Western on the big screen, you MUST GO. It’s epic, funny, riveting and great storytelling.

THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY TRAILER

BUFFALO ‘66

One of the best films of 1998 is playing at The Fifth Avenue Cinema at PSU this weekend. Vincent Gallo, a voluptuous, jiggly Christina Ricci (before she became rail thin and boring), Mickey Rourke (who by now you’ve probably been convinced is worth reassessing because of an overly aggressive marketing campaign for The Wrestler), Ben Gazzara, Rosanna Arquette, Jan-Michael Vincent, Anjelica Huston and Kevin Pollak and Kevin Corrigan, as Rocky the Goon, star in BUFFALO ‘66 (Vincent Gallo, 1998, U.S.). For as arrogant and insane as Gallo is, this really is a great film and has aged very well, for those of you who saw it upon its release. It’s promotional tools were also special; the poster displayed the name of the film in sky blue glitter and the trailer is as amazing as the film.

CLICK HERE TO VIEW BUFFALO ‘66 TRAILER

BUFFALO ‘66 plays Friday and Saturday at 7pm and 9:30pm, Sunday at 3pm.

And remember…films at the 5th Ave Cinema are only THREE BUCKS, and even better, they are FREE to PSU students, always shown on 35mm film and always FREE POPCORN! Last Saturday night’s screening of Forbidden Planet was standing room only! How cool is that?

ALIEN

One of the greatest sci-fi films of the Seventies will be playing at The Bagdad SATURDAY ONLY at 11pm. Tom Skerritt, Sigourney Weaver, Veronica Cartwright, Harry Dean Stanton, John Hurt, Ian Holm, Yaphet Kotto star in ALIEN (Ridley Scott, 1979, U.K.)!

Again, if you’re under thirty and you’ve never seen ALIEN or if you’ve only seen it on a little television screen, do yourself a favor and go. It’s only THREE BUCKS.

ALIEN TRAILER

* * * * *

What’s that you say? The economy got ya down? Can’t afford three dollars for a movie even? Well, how about staying at home and watching great international cinema FOR FREE!

Yes, that’s right! You heard right! theauteurs.com is a new website which has partnered with distributor The Criterion Collection to bring you six free films every month from their international collection. Their first festival, two months ago featured five truly amazing coming of age films: Ratcatcher (Lynne Ramsay, 1999, U.K.), Au Revoir Les Enfants (Louis Malle, 1987, Fr.), Sweetie (Jane Campion, 1989, NZ), Lord of the Flies (Peter Brook, 1963, UK) and The Spirit of the Beehive (Victor Erice, 1973, Spain).

This month’s theme is Killer Movies! Go to this link to watch six great international films FOR FREE!

*     *     *     *     *     

You may be wondering why I’m not reporting on any first run films this time. We’re in an annual slump when the studios are aware that everyone is in a mad dash to see the films released in December or earlier in preparation for the Oscars and so don’t really release anything worthwhile. But you can still catch great films at The Laurelhurst like HAPPY GO LUCKY and French thriller, TELL NO ONE, or at The Hollywood Theatre, I’VE LOVED YOU SO LONG, RACHEL GETTING MARRIED, SYNEDOCHE NEW YORK and WENDY AND LUCY, all of which I’ve mentioned in previous emails. So if you’re not in the mood for rep cinema programming, the second run cinemas are lookin’ good!

And again, there’s six great films for free at The Auteurs!

But still…here is the PDXFilm recommended film schedule:

WEDNESDAY/THURSDAY: Pierrot Le Fou at The Clinton St, 7pm only
FRIDAY: Buffalo ‘66 at 5th Avenue Cinema at PSU
SATURDAY: Alien at The Bagdad
Next THURSDAY: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly at The NW Film Center
ONLY ELEVEN MORE DAYS UNTIL TRON!!! Just found this myspace page promoting the soundtrack by Walter (now Wendy) Carlos. GORGEOUSNESS.

CLICK HERE FOR TRON MUSIC ON MYSPACE

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