Un prophète or A Prophet won the Grand Prix award at the 62nd Cannes Film Festival. Jacques Audiard’s interesting prison drama takes place in a global, multilingual world. The film’s polyglot use of French, Arabic and Corsican accurately portrays multicultural chaos and the multilingual matrix that exists in most global cities.
Slumdog Millionaire started the current multilingual cinematic revolution, by using Hindi to convey the story during signifcant portions of the film. More recently, Quentin Tarantino’s Inlourious Basterds’ juggled German, English and French.
Using technology (Mojolingual) and tools from Mojofiti and other companies, we can expect to see more multilingual creative works and eventually, live multilingual performances.
Listen: Never done a piece quite like this before…
Towards the top of Rick’s list of exciting, dynamic happenings in Milwaukee’s creative community, I found the film noir series being presented as part of the Street Seen photography exhibit at the Milwaukee Art Museum. Sounded good. Two of those screenings are going to be accompanied by a guest lecturer from UWM, so we even had an obvious interview built into the concept. Even better!
Unfortunately, when you’re working on a tight deadline, sometimes you can’t get every interview. I called and called and called with no response, so we had to come up with a Plan B. We had to think, what can we do to somehow present the film noir series? How can we convince 88Nine listeners and the general public that it’s worth checking out?
We found our solution, whether it’s effective or not, on www.youtube.com and in our own amateur voice acting abilities:
The clips of dialogue are all from films being screened during the upcoming series: Murder My Sweet, The Big Sleep, Out Of The Past, Killer’s Kiss, and Double Indemnity.
Scene from Out Of The Past. Wouldn't you like to see that picture move?
To learn more about the Milwaukee Art Museum’s awesome Street Scene Exhibit, follow this link. Also, the first movie in their Film Noir series is showing tomorrow! Get down there! Produced by: Adam Carr
Assim que a atendente da lotérica, que fica aqui do lado do hotel, se despediu de mim. Ela achou muito engraçado o fato de eu ter um livro na bolsa, achou isso um habito “de paulista”. Nem precisei falar da onde era para as pessoas da fila, quando o casal começou a falar comigo, a mulher logo falou com toda a sua lógica “vc é de são paulo, não?” num tipo de pergunta que mais tinha tom de constatação que outra coisa. Resignei-me ao fato de que meu sotaque me denuncia.
Nunca tinha pensado na maneira de falar paulista como algo tão marcado, mas, segundo outro mineiro com quem conversei (um diretor de curtas), paulista tem um ritmo meio cantado. Estranho, sempre achei isso dos mineiros. É, deve ser algo de meu ouvido! Ou não…
Aqui na Mostra o que é mais comum é se encontrar pessoas dos mais variados sotaques do país conversando juntas em alguma mesa dos restaurantezinhos. Na área de imprensa então, parece a torre de babel. Misturam-se cearenses, pernambucanos, bahianos, mineiros, paulistas, cariocas [e fluminenses], paranaenses, goianos e gaúchos. Além disso, temos ainda uns sotaques de franceses falando em ingles, ou em um francês tão rápido que, mesmo se soubesse a língua, não saberia decodificar. Um desses franceses me concedeu uma entrevista (Fabien Gaffez, faz parte de um dos olheiros da semana da crítica, do Festival de Cannes, a entrevista tá aqui), a chuva caía muito forte na parte de fora, foi um caos para entender o inglês dele com sotaque gravado no meu mp4.
Em uma das entrevistas coletivas, um desenhista de som – sim, existe essa profissão – foi para a frente falar sobre Terras, o documentário que tinha ajudado a produzir [junto de Maya Da Rin, outra pessoa com quem falei, veja aqui]. Ele começou a falar do universo sonoro do documentário, e de como tinha sido a pesquisa para tornar o filme o mais natural possível, e como ele mexeu com universos sonoros desconhecidos para desenhar os ritmos do filme. Pois bem, Tiradentes é assim para mim.
Podem falar como quiserem, e não entender algumas de minhas gírias. Eu mesma posso não entender muitas outras gírias, ou achar estranha a maneira como o ritmo mineiro desenha ondulações no ar. Mas, aqui, por aqui, é como se todos falassem uma língua só, o cinema. E ela consegue conectar a todos.
I’ve been a bit slack with this one… I saw The Tooth Fairy maybe two weeks ago.
I don’t know, I was kind of expecting The Tooth Fairy to be incredibly awful, you know, like one of those Disney-type G-rated movies the teachers get you to watch at primary school when it’s the day before the holidays and they’re sick of teaching. The movies everybody cringes at and talks over the top of. And I guess it was a bit like that. It had the same kind of message as those movies – dreams are good, you can do exactly what you want in life, everybody can be somebody, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Not that they’re bad messages, just a little cliche. But The Tooth Fairy was… different.
It was funnier than most of those films. Like, it had that geeky guy from the English The Office who’s also in Pirates of the Caribbean - you know, the wooden eyeball guy – and he was quite hilarious. There was one bit where he and the main character were discussing Facebook, and if they could ‘poke’ one-another, and it was so funny.
And the acting wasn’t fantastic, like in those school-movies, but it did have some great actors, like Julie Andrews. I have no idea how they managed to get her to do this movie.
And all in all, even though it was a little predictable, and a little cliche, The Tooth Fairy was lots and lots of fun to see. 3/5.
Alas, it’s been an exceedingly long time since I’ve written something, that I am not happy about. But last week, the first week in which Avatar was not sold out, unlike the four previous to it, I was able to see it.. In 3D!
The cinematic spectacle Avatar, directed by James Cameron, topped the box office charts the best-selling film of all time this week, knocking Titanic (also of Cameron’s work) off the pedestal, and it shows no signs of stopping now! But what made the film so worthy of praise?
When Cameron and co got the green light for production, they were given a $200 million budget, and surprisingly, that’s not the largest budget for a film to date. The $200 million was well invested in ground breaking cinematic technology which has set a cornerstone for the film industry. Cameron was inspired by on-screen characters such as Gollum, King Kong and Davy Jones, which gave him an unsettling but surprising confidence in the creation of the Na’vi.
Cameron's 'Hammerhead Titanothere'
The film took just over two years to make, but it seems the time and money, was well invested. Cameron didn’t create just another film, he created an entire diverse and stunning universe. Using not only relatively new technology for facial recognition, but lighting technology for Pandora, which is prominently seen in its radiating flora and forestry.
Despite the distracting scenery however, performances from Sam Worthington (Terminator Salvation, The Great Raid, Dirty Deeds), Zoe Saldana (Star Trek, Guess Who, Pirates of The Caribbean: Curse of The Black Pearl), Michelle Rodriguez (Resident Evil, Fast And Furious, Lost), Sigourney Weaver (Alien, Holes, Ghostbusters) and Joel David Moore (Dodgeball, Grandma’s Boy, The Shaggy Dog), made the film. With good, but not exceedingly so performances from Stephen Lang (Gods And Generals, Public Enemies, The Men Who Stare At Goats) and Giovanni Ribisi (Public Enemies, Saving Private Ryan, Lost In Translation). Throughout, Worthington and Weaver seem to perfectly bounce off of each other’s roles with wit and sarcasm, whilst on the other hand, Worthington and Saldana have been dubbed the ‘Jack and Rose of Space.’
Despite scepticism in regards the lack of a plot line, or even the idea in which the inter-racial battle between the Humans and Na’vi is a reflection on Modern Americans VS Native Americans, the plot was surprisingly pleasing. It was a refreshing and unexpected take on the typical ‘boy meets girl, boy falls in love with girl, boy uses advanced futuristic technology to switch race‘ genre, but with all seriousness, Avatar comprises of a rich, luxurious visual utopia, an arguably original plot spanning over three hours (unlike The Curious Case of Benjamin Button), and a fantastic cinematic experience, enhanced by the new 3D technology which has come to light, or possibly seeing it in IMAX. Fans of Avatar may be glad to know that Avatar 2 will be coming in 2011-2012 as a sequel, and possibly Avatar 3 as either a sequel or prequel. Avatar is a must see.
The Fall of Fujimori, 2005, documentary, directed by Ellen Perry, originally in English
Alberto Fujimori was the very controversial president of Peru from 1990 to 2000. He was controversial because although he built many roads and schools, ended the terrorist threats of the Shining Path and the Tupac Amaru Revolutionary Movement, he also suspended parliament, created very harsh anti-terrorism laws, severely restricted human rights in Peru, and headed a government accused of corruption and far worse. Currently, he is sitting in a prison in Peru for crimes against humanity.
Who is Fujimori really? He portrayed himself as the funny little “Chinaman” who was always friendly and looking out for the people. His wife reported on camera that he was a better actor than the professionals in Hollywood. His right-hand man, Vladimiro Montesinos, is undoubtedly a bad guy – who is certainly responsible for death squads, embezzlement, drug trafficking, assassinations, bribery, and arms running. It could be argued that Fujimori was willfully ignorant of Montesinos’ activities; one testimony said that when Montesinos reported to Fujimori about these illicit activities, Fujimori responded that he “didn’t want to know.” It could also be argued that Montesinos had to run everything by Fujimori, or it could be said that Montesinos had complete free reign and even Fujimori didn’t know what he was up to.
This documentary is a very thought-provoking account of what happened in the 1990s in Peru. What the climate was when Fujimori stepped into office, his reaction to terrorism, the emergence of scandals, and the evolution of his presidency are all laid out in a fairly neutral manner that really leaves the viewer to form their own opinions about what is and what can never be, justified. An excellent movie, although a bit graphic at times.
Around a year ago, a well-known Irish recruitment agency began advertising its latest service – how to offload staff in an effective and legally acceptable manner. Now, they put it in a much nicer way than that, of course. However, the subtext was only too clear. In a similar manner, lawyers and accountants make a fortune putting big deals together and then are able to make even more money when those deals go sour a few years later on. In other words, capitalism has proven to be a highly resilient beast for one very good reason. It will always have its acolytes who do not vacillate about the morality of how they make their money.
Therefore, if Daniel Plainview and Gordon Gekko represent the unashamedly greedy faces of capitalism, then Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) aspires to being its perfectly perfunctory one instead. Indeed, this polished business executive is the ideal instrument of his trade – an unemotional, smooth, and assertive loner who is in absolute thrall to the perks of his job and who can also relish what many would consider to be its spirit-crushing lows. In other words, Bingham can happily spend his days informing people that they are being made redundant and his evenings in the blessed anonymity of airports, airplanes, and hotels. His only problem in life is the forty-odd days of the year that he has to spend back home in his depersonalised apartment in Omaha. That said, a psychiatrist might also like to chat to him about his highly questionable philosophy on life…
Now, on paper, there was the potential here for this to be an interesting examination of the sort of person prepared to do a job that demands great personal sacrifices. Equally, this film from director and co-writer Jason Reitman does begin in promising enough fashion. One can even be tolerant of the fact that it turns some people’s reactions to the trauma of being made redundant into light comedy sketches…
More troubling, though, are moments such as when a person gets ignored when she has just calmly expressed her intention to kill herself or when the likes of Bingham can get away with dishing out ridiculous advice to people who have just been made redundant about how the world is now their oyster again and how this can be a moment of “rebirth” for them. As Bingham himself admits, not only will he never meet these people again, he is definitely not going to be following up on what becomes of them either. He has a quick and dirty job to do and, once it is done, he washes his hands of it.
Nevertheless, this film is able to dedicate plenty of time to examining the emotional impact that such encounters have on the people who are showing these employees the door. Hence, a middle-aged man can wander off a lonely, broken, and sobbing figure, whilst Bingham instead busies himself with making sure that his young colleague (Anna Kendrick) is okay following her “ordeal”. Indeed, it is testimony to her compassion for others that she does require several seconds afterwards to regain her composure before crossing the man’s name off of her list! In taking this approach, the film thus reduces the many ordinary victims of this recession down to being little more than bells and whistles on just another stylish yet cock-eyed Hollywood romantic comedy with a good-looking cast and an unconventional lead character.
For sure, Mr. Clooney is both charismatic and convincing as Bingham. On the other hand, a one-note performance is all that is demanded of him. Indeed, this entire offering comes across as being a glossy mediocrity of a film – something that is really just a couple of notches better than the usual insipid fare that this genre has to offer. It also trumpets no-brainer lessons in life, whilst saying nothing about how unfettered capitalism has destroyed the lives of so many ordinary Americans…
Lightly entertaining, if you do not think too hard about it; something of a monstrosity when you do.
Nearly being finished with Cinemageddon’s list of over 40 dystopian films, (some amazing like Le Darnier Combat, The Lathe of Heaven, and The Handmaid’s Tale and some completely awful, like Nirvana and Casshern.) I’ve been thinking about what to watch next. Last night I got around to a couple films I’d been meaning to watch for a while.
If you were around in the early 90’s, you probably remember the pinnacle of Robbie Van Winkle, A.K.A. Vanilla Ice’s career in which they let him make a movie called Cool As Ice (1991), as if he was Elvis or some shit like that. And while Vanilla Ice did share the ability to steal black music for white audiences, much like Elvis, he could not make a movie a success merely by merit of him being in it. The scenes of him and his “homeboys” relaxing at a bizarre bike repair depot/house are not only dated, I have to say most people probably found them ridiculous even 19 years ago when this movie first came out. Ice moves through all the bizarre colors and badly written music acting like a complete douche in the first half of the film and a stoic hero for the latter half. He carries off the douche part way better, since his acting acumen for the rest of the film falls neatly into the “Keanu Reeves” as neo slot. Robby should have really played a villain and played up the douche angle more. Andrew Dice Clay could have taught him a few lessons, I think.
On a much more fun note, I watched Dark Star (1974), another film I’d been meaning to get to for a while. I’d both read about it and had many people mention it to me as a great space comedy. Dark Star is indeed everything I expected and more. It’s basically a cross between a cartoon and Dr. Strangelove in space.
However, this film isn’t just a great comedy. Anyone looking to make a movie about space and convey a sense of isolation and claustrophobia should watch this film and take some serious notes. Almost immediately upon the start of the film I got a little anxious due to the cramped feeling of the control room. If you can make your viewers really feel the sensation you want to convey like that, you’ve definitely met with huge success. Dark Star is wonderful.
What now? Well I have a few things I want to watch in the meantime. I started Jason and the Argonauts (1963) before falling asleep last night. I think I got through about a third of it. It’s a pretty neat movie so far.
I think next I’m going to watch all the movies which got four “slime drops” on badmovies.org. Badmovies.org is one of my favorite review sites and the four slime ratings are all “must see” films, according to the site proprieter Andrew Borntreger. I’ve seen a few of them, but not nearly enough. Here’s the list I’ve compiled from badmovies.org of the four slime rated films. (* after the film means I’ve seen it. % means I’ve seen part of it.)
The Abominable Dr. Phibes
Attack of the Killer Tomatoes
Bad Taste
The Brain That Wouldn’t Die
The Champions of Justice
The Crippled Masters
Dawn of the Dead%
Dead Alive
Death Race 2000*
Destroy All Monsters
Dolemite
Drunken Wu Tang
The Educational Archives: Driver’s Ed
El Topo
Evil Dead 2: Dead by Dawn%
Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill!
Fiend Without a Face
Fist of the North Star
Flash Gordon*
The Fly*
Forbidden Zone%
Gamera: Guardian of the Universe
Gamera vs Guiron*
The Giant Claw*
Godzilla vs. Monster Zero
Greaser’s Palace
Gymkata
Hawk the Slayer
Hundra
Infra-Man
Killer Klowns from Outer Space*
The Killer Shrews%
Maniac
Master of the Flying Guillotine
Meet the Feebles
Planet of the Apes*
Plan 9 from Outer Space*
Raiders of Wu Tang
Reptilicus
The Resurrected
Return of the Living Dead
Robot Monster*
The Rocky Horror Picture Show*
Rodan
Rollerball*
Santa Claus%
Slither
Starcrash*
Story of Ricky
Streets of Fire
Terror Beneath the Sea
The Terror of Tiny Town
There’s Nothing Out There
Uninvited
Wizards
So that’s over 40 movies for me to watch. Yee haw. I’ll update you on what I think of them as I watch. If you haven’t checked out badmovies.org, I highly recommend you do so. If you worry about spoilers, don’t read reviews of movies you haven’t seen, because he’s not worried about spoilers at all. Andrew is hilarious and I like poking through there for some of my favorite bad films to see his take on them.
I know, I know — I need to try a little harder, don’t I? Not just to post more often(my apologies for the absence the last few weeks, busy times here at TFG “headquarters”), but to come up with some better titles when I do get around to it. Putting “bloody” in the title of a review about a vampire movie is just too damn obvious. Why, you might even say it’s too bloody obvious. In which case, you’re just as guilty of stark unoriginality as I am, and I suddenly feel a whole lot better. Even if the “you” in this case is wholly metaphorical and I am, in reality, having an imaginary conversation with myself here. In which case I shouldn’t be worrying about my lack of creativity, but rather my sanity, which some — like the imaginary “you” I’m talking to here — might argue is a much more serious concern. But I don’t think so. Being unoriginal requires no effort, while insanity — well, folks, that takes real work. And wouldn’t you — whether “you” are real or imagined — rather be crazy than dull?
But back to our actual order of business here. I went out and caught “Daybreakers” today, which I actually meant to get around to last weekend, but didn’t get the chance. Incidentally, did you know that there are movies other than “Avatar” playing right now? I swear to God there are, it’s just that no one is seeing them. And less than nobody is seeing “Daybreakers,” apparently. It’s absolutely tanked at the box office. Which is a shame, because it’s really pretty damn good.
First off, I should confess to an editorial bias here — I’m tired of all these romanticized portrayals of vampires we’ve been getting ever since the heyday of Ann Rice. She really set the table for that genre, but crap like the “Twilight” series and HBO’s “True Blood” have piled it up on us like a Vegas buffet. I’m not sure what makes so many people thinksomebody who wants to kill you and drink all your blood is sexy, but it definitely fits in with my overall view that society as a whole has a serious goddamn death wish. Sorry, but vampires were better when they were scary. Just ask Bela Lugosi. And they were way better when they didn’t live in the South. Louisiana and Alabama really aren’t good for much of anything at all, much less as settings for vampire stories. Sorry, but that’s just a fact.
To be fair, there have been a handful of movies in recent years that have tried to combat this sorry trend and give us a new angle on genuinely scary vampires. John Carpenter’s “Vampires” and 2008’s “30 Days Of Night” spring immediately to mind. But to date this reviewer thinks “Daybreakers” does the best job of reintroducing the audience to the classic, frightening vampire in a new and unexpected context.
The year is 2019. A plague of vampirism has consumed almost the entire human race. Sure, people you always suspected were vampires anyway — cops, bosses, politicians — have succumbed, but most everyone else has, too. What few humans do remain are hunted and stored to be drained of their blood, which has become the most precious commodity on Earth (okay, so basically what we’ve got here for a premise is “28 Days Later” with vampires instead of zombies, but hey, it works). Unfortunately, all us regular folks have been reduced to near-extinct levels, and that spells trouble for both the few of us who do remain as well as our vampire overlords, being that they, you know, need us to survive and all that.
Wait. Vampires are undead. So can we really call whatthey do “survival?” I guess so, we just can’t call it “living.” But I digress.
Anyway, the powers that be figure that inventing a synthetic blood substitute is the best way to keep on (un)living, so to that end research scientist Edward Dalton (Ethan Hawke) is busy trying to come up with just such a concoction for his boss, ultra-wealthy vampire industrialist Charles Bromley (Sam Neill).
Which brings us, rather directly, at least in a thematic if not linear fashion(can something be both direct and nonlinear at the same time?), to the film’s one glaring weak point : while things start off in a very promising fashion, with the opening scene portraying a young girl of about 10 or 12 years old who has decided to committ suicide by going out and facing the sunrise, thus ensuring that she burns to a crisp, after that the movie resorts to some pretty bulky and clumsy expository info-dump dialogue, not too terribly dissimilar to the kind of plot recap you just read above, in order to fill in as many of the “blank spots” in terms of its backstory as possible.But since we’re not quite done with the plot recapping yet —
Dalton isn’t all that thrilled about his vampirism and falls in with a human resistance group due to an accidental set of circumstances that results in him meeting one of the few remaining regular people out there, one Audrey Bennett (played by Claudia Karvan). Soon the two of them are on the run from the entire vampire military-industrial complex, and along the way pick up another human rebel, Lionel “Elvis” Cormac (Willem Dafoe, essentially playing the exact same type of character he did in David Cronenberg’s “eXistenZ”), who it turns out actually used to be a vampire but was able to regain his humanity through a set of circumstances I really shouldn’t (and therefore won’t) give away, and the three of them hook up with the rest of Audrey’s little “insurgent cell,” who have holed up at what used to be her parents’ winery.
Once (semi-) safely ensconced there, Dalton, now knowing that vampirism can be reversed, sets about the task of not only curing his own condition, but mass-relicating said cure for the public at large. It won’t be an easy task, though, not with thousands of troops, lead by his own brother, heading for them like — well, like thousands of troops tend to.
So we’ve got pretty solid tension, an interesting enough plot premise, certainly solid if unspectacular performances from the leads (although Sam Neill stands out as the evil vampire version of Daddy Warbucks), and really some pretty cool visual effects throughout, as well. The movie was directed by Australia’s Spierig Brothers (and filmed Down Under, as well, even though the setting is obviously supposed to be the US), who last gave us 2003’s criminally underappreciated zombie flick “Undead,” and seem to be doing their level best to resurrect the Ozsploitation genre, all wrapped up visually arresting muted hues.
"We're the guys with the crossbows."
If that’s all not enough, we’ve got crossbows penetrating vampires through the heart and making them explose. We’ve got humans being devoured raw. We’ve got lots of gore and viscera and, most importantly, lots and lots — and lots — of blood. And we’ve got vampired who are in no way sexy, dangerous rogues, and are, instead, bloodthirsty monters. As they fucking well should be.
Sure, “Daybreakers” has its flaws in terms of some clumsy, wooden, overly-expository dialogue, and the pace lags in some spots where it shouldn’t, so while it doesn’t rise to the level of a new genre masterpiece, it definitely helps balance the scales with all the lovey-dovey, misty-eyes portrayals of vampirism that are polluting the cinematic landscape, and it’s an effectively atmospheric, damn solid little piece of work.
Oh, and it’s a hell of a lot better than “Avatar,” too.
Há quanto tempo! Eu queria voltar antes, mas foi um começo de ano muito atribulado e com muito trabalho chato para fazer Ainda bem que tenho meus colabs e frilas para distrair. Inclusive é sobre uma colaboração em especial que estou curtindo muito em fazer e quero falar. Quer dizer, não posso falar muito mas é a tradução de algumas histórias em quadrinhos. Histórias curtas, cinco páginas no máximo. Eu já faço algumas traduções junto com o Gus Lanzetta principalmente. Tradução, transcrição, enfim. Como nerd que sou amo HQ’s e ajudar na tradução e por vezes adaptação da história é incrível! Uma experiência ótima. Quem sabe não me especializo e ganho dinheiro com isso \o/
Ainda não consegui assistir Avatar, que quero ver no IMAX, claro. Mas acho que só conseguirei parar para ir ao cinema na próxima semana. O que é péssimo porque também NECESSITO assistir Onde Vivem Os Monstros! Mas esse assunto de cinema fica para o Direto do Cinema.
Quero recomendar dois podcasts que conheci nessas semanas. O Blablaismo, do Wagner. É um podcast sobre música e se você realmente gosta de música essa é uma ótima dica pois eles trazem muita informação sobre o tema. informação e descontração na medida certa. O outro é o Comicpod, podcast de quadrinhos muito bom que conheci ontem #ficadica.
Eu ia escrever rápido sobre Lost mas ficou enorme, então vai aí um outro post em seqüência
“July Flame” is: A destructive force, lamplight on a cold night, Oregon peach variety, intense summer love, fireworks, war, sunlight trapped in wood, renewal, spooky will-o-the-wisps, desire, pain, ephemera.
♦ The video has 1,804 individual images in it.
♦ The fireworks were made from over 180 individual peaches.
♦ The puppets are painted paper glued to a backing.
♦The puppets/set took 3 weeks to design and build. Shooting took 2 weeks.
♦ Watch for cameo performances from the Phantom Mountain chicken and paper clip.
It is both serendipitous and unfortunate that In the Loop and The Hurt Locker, two of the best films of 2009, were released on DVD and Blu-ray the same week. Serendipitous because the two movies exist under the umbrella of the Iraq war (though they focus on different facets and feature wildly disparate tones); unfortunate because they were released amid a post-holiday flood of films.
Due to their subject matter, The Hurt Locker and In the Loop already faced an uphill battle despite widespread critical acclaim (filmgoers in general have not been kind to movies dealing with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan). Modestly budgeted and lacking a big-studio push, the two also had limited theatrical releases.
But in their own distinctive ways, these movies—one a rapid-fire political satire of the prelude to war, the other a pinpoint-precise action-thriller about an Army bomb squad working the literally explosive streets of Baghdad—are rousing affairs that deserve a larger audience.
In the Loop
An exhilarating symphony of profanity and a brutal skewering of political mores, In the Loop focuses on the backroom dealings of largely second-tier British and American officials as the threat of war in the Middle East looms (the film slyly never refers to Iraq or Afghanistan specifically, always “the Middle East”).
Tensions and verbal conflict between British and U.S. politicians arise when the bumbling Minister for International Development Simon Foster (the fine Tom Hollander, perhaps best known stateside for his roles in the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) says in a radio interview that “war is unforeseeable.”
This launches the Prime Minister’s Director of Communications Malcolm Tucker (a tightly wound Peter Capaldi, eyes bulging, veins throbbing and mouth carpet-f-bombing) into an apoplectic fit. Not only were Foster’s words ill-advised as they did not follow the party line, but they were ill-timed as a veritable armada of Washington, D.C., big-wigs is in London when the soundbite breaks.
“We’ve got enough Pentagon goons here to stage a fucking coup d’etat,” Tucker rages at Foster.
Foster digs a deeper hole when he tells a TV crew after the meeting with D.C. elite that: “To walk the road of peace, sometimes we need to be ready to climb the mountain of conflict.”
This further irks Tucker (who tells Foster he sounds “like a fucking Nazi Julie Andrews”), and it positions Foster as a pawn between war-mongering U.S. Assistant Policy Secretary Linton Barwick (the invaluable David Rasche) and Assistant Secretary of State Karen Clark (veteran character actor Mimi Kennedy), who is trying to avoid armed conflict.
Meanwhile, the overwhelmed Foster laments, “I really hope there is no war. It’s going to be a nightmare. It’s bad enough having to cope with the fucking Olympics.” Foster, who continually tries to talk his way out of trouble (at one point saying he’s “on the verge of taking a stand”) brings to mind that great line from The Lady Vanishes in which British foreign policy is described thusly: “Never climb a fence when you can sit on it.”
As the situation unravels amid the endlessly quotable (well, depending on the company) war of words, director and cowriter Armando Iannucci aims his crosshairs at the U.S.-U.K. culture clash (Americans insist on referring to the British as “English”), governmental obsession with acronyms (the film’s MacGuffin, a report outlining the cons of war, is known as PWIP-PIP, though no one can recall what it actually stands for), Washington’s power-hungry youth (“It’s like Bugsy Malone, but with real guns,” observes a British aide) and the very real fears of politicians (while in D.C., Foster is desperate to get out of the hotel “rather than just sitting in my room trying to spank one out over a shark documentary ’cause I’m scared if I watch a porno it’ll end up in the Registry of Members’ Interests”).
Note: The DVD and Blu-ray feature a brilliant slate of deleted scenes, including more of my favorite character, Chad (the trouser-wettingly funny Zach Woods), a squash racquet-toting aide desperately trying to thrust himself into the orbit of Barwick. This is one of the rare instances in which the deleted scenes are not only worth watching, but as entertaining as what made the final cut.
The Hurt Locker
Although The Hurt Locker opens with a quote from former New York Times war correspondent Chris Hedges that states, in part, “… war is a drug” and takes place in Baghdad just a year after the U.S. invasion, it is a war movie only indirectly.
There are no sociopolitical soliloquies, no implied guilt or jingoism.
The movie is almost microscopically focused on the three soldiers who comprise an Army Explosive Ordnance Disposal squad and whose job it is to disarm or safely detonate improvised explosive devices. It’s a task that requires surgical precision in the best circumstances.
The conditions faced by these soldiers are far from ideal. They are operating with limited time and little to no back-up in unforgiving heat while surrounded by people, not all of whom are sympathetic to their plight.
The suspense is as unforgiving as the IEDs, and it is amplified by the film illustrating the effects of a blast; the soldiers know what the relative safety radius is, how the explosion’s shockwave will move up or down a street, and the distance and direction shrapnel will spray. Much of this is depicted in the white-knuckle opening sequence in which director Kathryn Bigelow slows down a blast, lingering on gravel and rubble rising from the street, rust and dirt blowing off abandoned cars, and finally the resulting physical toll on a human who is too close.
The film itself is almost plotless, its narrative propelled by the natural intensity of following three men whose typical workday happens to revolve around things that blow up.
One of the common complaints about movies that depict combat is that they glorify violence, they make war look exciting. How the men at the heart of The Hurt Locker respond to that inherent sense of exhilaration (one might even say intoxication) is the primary theme Bigelow and writer Mark Boal (himself a former journalist) explore.
For Staff Sgt. William James (the underappreciated Jeremy Renner), the leader and chief bomb tech of the trio of main characters, war itself may not be a drug, but his job certainly is. Instead of using a remote-control robot to first investigate IEDs, James delves in head-first, at times without the protection of a blast suit, getting a charge by removing a charge.
To the chagrin of his fellow soldiers, the by-the-book Sgt. J.T. Sanborn (Anthony Mackie) and the on-edge Spc. Owen Eldridge (Brian Geraghty), James on multiple occasions chooses to spend dangerous amounts of time disarming bombs rather than detonating them once citizens have been cleared from the scene. He follows the successful completion of his work with a cigarette, and saves the triggering mechanisms, keeping them in a box under his bed.
And when James is finally shown safe at home with his wife and infant son, he is suffering from withdrawal.
Someone’s got to do something about that overbite.
LEGION
(Screen Gems) Paul Bettany, Dennis Quaid, Tyrese Gibson, Charles S. Dutton, Adrianne Palicki, Jon Tenney, Lucas Black, Kate Walsh. Directed by Scott Stewart
God has lost faith in mankind again and who can blame him? The last time he got annoyed at his kids, he sent a flood – the Biblical equivalent of a time-out. Now, he’s really pissed and he’s sending out his angels to kick booty and take names. Except these aren’t the slightly effeminate harp-playing pansies you’re thinking about, oh no. These angels are bad mother fu (shut your mouth!)…you get my drift. However, mankind has one last hope; in the unborn son of a waitress in a diner in the middle of nowhere. One angel who thinks God is full of it decides to take it upon himself to save mankind. And that’s when things get really weird…
See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Rating: R (for strong bloody violence, and language)
Extraordinary Measures
(CBS) Harrison Ford, Brendan Fraser, Keri Russell, Courtney B. Vance. The inspiring true story about John Crowley, a man who defied the odds and conventional medical wisdom to save his children who were suffering from a rare, fatal and incurable disease. He enlisted the aid of Robert Stonehill, a brilliant but underappreciated scientist whose unorthodox methods had brought him the scorn of his colleagues. Given a challenge by Crowley, he would race against time to find the cure. They would battle the pharmaceutical industry, the medical profession, time – and each other – to find a cure.
See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Rating: PG (for thematic material, language and a mild suggestive moment)
Tooth Fairy
(20th Century Fox) Dwayne Johnson, Ashley Judd, Julie Andrews, Stephen Merchant. The dirtiest hockey player in the league has a penchant for causing an immediate and urgent need for dental work among opposing players, and he enjoys the work. However, he takes it a step too far when he dashes the hopes of a child – it’s apparently okay to cause pain and suffering in adults, but make a kid feel bad and it’s a BIG NO-NO!!!! He is sentenced to act as a tooth fairy, complete with tutu and fairy wings, until he sees the error of his ways. Me, I think The Rock’s agent should be sentenced to something nasty.
See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Rating: PG (for mild language, some rude humor and sports action)
To Save a Life
(Goldwyn) Randy Wayne, Deja Kreutzberg, Joshua Weigel, Steven Crowder. Jake Taylor has it all from a high school perspective. A star basketball player, he’s been offered a scholarship to a prestigious school, he has the love and admiration of the students and all the cheerleaders fawning over him like he’s starring in the next installment of the Twilight series. Then, when his best friend from childhood commits an unspeakable act, he is forced to re-examine his values and his life choices.
See the trailer and clips here.
For more on the movie this is the website.
Rating: PG-13 (for mature thematic elements involving teen suicide, teen drinking, some drug content, disturbing images and sexuality)
I was invited by Danny at the end of last year to contribute a single image and accompanying sentence to The Auteurs‘ fun, exquisite corpse-like end-of-decade-in-images activity; arranged by Ryland, the final set of images and words were published a few weeks ago. Due to the impact that Wang Bing’s Tiexiqu had on me when I first watched it––which, if I had to describe it, felt like being overwhelmed by another’s clarity of our world––selecting the one film was straightforward. I had to equivocate over the single image, though, and its nine-hour duration didn’t help in this respect. Shared here are some of the out takes and rationales.
I first thought about this:
The frame grips such a sizable hunk of the terrain, as elevated master-shots do, and delivers a good impression of scale over the colossal smelting plants. But it also seemed too remote and distanced from the subject matter.
…
Then I thought about this:
Which, in its subdued cold blue hue, seemed to materialize the sensation of how I felt gazing upon it: a synesthesia of lucidity in its desolation. But, then, I did not want to further emphasize the film’s already over-egged association with industrial decay.
…
I thought about this too:
The blinding shafts of light seemed to suggest something transcendent about the subject matter, not to mention the physical space in ruins. But I did not want to impose a dishonest sense of faux-spirituality that was never intended by Wang in his observations.
…
I then considered this:
This image of the solitary man pensively surveying the view seemed perfect, almost iconic, in representing all those tarrying with Shenyang’s ever-changing landscape. But I decided that, on its own, it looks too melancholy and defeated.
…
Were I allowed, I would have probably submitted these three as a triptych:
The trains and railways are as central to the documentary as its factories and plants, and I think its connotations with time are helpful (“locomotives of history”). I always seem to find some mystery––however token––in the nocturnal sight of vapors and mists, and the faceless figure caught in headlights only serves to heighten this effect.
…
I was close to submitting this:
The railway worker stood with his arms aloft before the oncoming train is the image’s punctum, of course. His presence and position manages to disrupt the rails’ power too, but, it he is too small, and looks like his to be overpowered.
…
Eventually, I chose this:
This particular worker performs only one visible task: operating the mechanisms that dictate the rails’ direction from the ground. He works alone, and relies entirely on the moonlight––which he tells the camera that he admires for its beauty––to see. For the film, this darkly lit figure condenses all of its others, boldly forming something generic of the the film’s humanity. Visually, it speaks its own materiality, suggesting in its appearance an idea that Badiou retrieved from Beckett: that the figure in its naked existence is a ’stain upon silence and nothingness.’ I felt this notion was at the meta/physical heart of Wang’s epic documentary (and his other films, perhaps most explicitly in The Man with No Name). This image, with the rails conforming to the figure’s lead, quite serendipitously manages to convey this.
*
All video stills: Tiexiqu (West of the Tracks, Wang Bing, 2003) | * Paul Valery, Graveyard By the Sea, 1920
The expression “being knee-high to a grasshopper” takes on a fresh significance in this touching tale of two young sisters who are sent to live with their alcoholic aunt while their mother mysteriously heads off in search of their absentee and seemingly good-for-nothing father. Scrupulously avoiding any hint of mawkishness in a film that was ripe with such temptations, American director So Yong Kim instead relies on her ability to get the best out of her two diminutive-looking protagonists. To her credit, she does achieve two heart-wrenchingly good, understated, and naturalist performances from the unrelated Kim Hee-yeon (Jin) and Kim Song-hee (Bin). Her accomplishment is made all the more impressive again for the fact that neither girl had received any formal training prior to making this neorealist film.
Moreover, with the cameras unobtrusively positioned no more than three feet off the ground, it is a work that looks to portray the world from the perspective of Jin and Bin alone. As a result, there are large gaps in the plot because no adult is ever going to explain things in a detailed manner to either a six year-old or a toddler. Instead, their mother (Lee Soo-ah) gives the girls a plastic piggy bank and tells them that she will have come back by the time that they have filled it up with coins. Needless to say, they take her literally and innocently start concocting ways to expedite her return to them. Throughout it all, the audience is able to witness the differing thoughtful expressions on the faces of these two surprisingly well-behaved and solemn children.
At the same time, the audience is still able to interpret the information that it is being given in a far better way than the two children can. Consequently, it is with a mixture of pathos and dread that they watch the girls cope with both their sense of dislocation and their distress at being separated from their mother. In addition, the film takes its name from an earth mound that the children stand on so that they can see the bus stop. Here, they have “planted” a tree branch in the stony earth. It may not have been Ms. Kim’s intended allegory, but this image is reminiscent of the gospel story where some seed fell on stony ground and did not grow. Indeed, the denouement can also be explored through the context of this parable.
Inspired, though, by the director’s own experiences of growing up in South Korea, this film is also notable for its minimalist approach to both plot and dialogue. For the first two acts, this works well. However, the heart did sink a little at the start of the third act when the manner in which Ms. Kim wished to bring this film to its conclusion became unclear. Instead, it unbearably looked like the audience was going to be asked to observe even more misery being heaped on these children’s heads. In hindsight, though, a simple, thoughtful, and mildly optimistic resolution was not that far off. Accordingly, keep the faith with this film and it will reward you!
One of the Indian Cinema best movies of all times.. A 1986 production that made me stare into my laptop screen throughout it’s 164 mins, amazed with the marvelous performance of Amitabh Bachchan in a Drama movie plotting the war between beliefs and duty …sympathizing the Father willing to help him take his revenge and proud of the son who is trying to do his work faithfully.
David (Amitabh Bachchan) spent 24 years in prison, for no reason except corruption. A Parliament member, a police inspector and a Doctor conspired on him after the first rapped David’s wife leading her to commit suicide ,burnt the only evidence for this – a letter she wrote before hanging herself- and witnessed that he tried to kill the parliament member. He is now out of prison, and seeking revenge because law never gave him his right. Insp. Vijay Sandaliya (Amitabh Bachchan) is David’s only son and he doesn’t know the truth, he as been raised as the son of Mahesh Sandaliya – David’s closest friend – and in love with his boss’s daughter Vinita Bhatnagar (Sri Devi), happens to be the police officer responsible for David’s case.The movie ends with the father taking the mother’s revenge and the son keeping his duty as his first concern even after he knew the truth, but proud with what his father did.
Amitabh Bachchan credited as “your favorite Star” on the movie opening titles and one of Bollywood’s most recognizable faces in the last two decades, had a hard mission of performing both the father & the son that turned into a stunning performance. I loved him being the old man who loves his wife and willing to take her revenge and believed him being the young enthusiastic police officer trying to apply justice.
I couldn’t hold my tears in two parts, when the young Amitab knew the truth and in the final scene. Unlike any other Indian movie i saw, it wasn’t easy to predict the end …
The war between beliefs and duty has been explained when the father stood against the son and Drew no. 9 on his hand then he showed it to him to appear as no. 6 … both the 6 and the 9 are right depending on from where do you look.
The idea is easy to be addressed in a movie but in real life -in my opinion- one, in some cases, gets emotional or do what he really beliefs in, no matter how his work duty says. The reaction of the son – deceiving the man who raised him to know the truth, saving the Parliament member life and chasing his father till the end – can never be achieved, although as i said in the beginning i was proud of him doing it, may be because i am sure it’s 100% correct if i am looking from his point of view. However, when i put myself in his place, even if i could chase my father or deceive the man, at least i won’t save the life of the man who lead to my mother’s death.
Nevertheless, the movie is a a MUST see if you are interested in the Indian Cinema.
Alas, it’s been an exceedingly long time since I’ve written something, that I am not happy about. But last week, the first week in which Avatar was not sold out, unlike the four previous to it, I was able to see it.. In 3D!
Ainda bem que tenho meus colabs e frilas para distrair. Inclusive é sobre uma colaboração em especial que estou curtindo muito em fazer e quero falar. Quer dizer, não posso falar muito mas é a tradução de algumas histórias em quadrinhos. Histórias curtas, cinco páginas no máximo. Eu já faço algumas traduções junto com o Gus Lanzetta principalmente. Tradução, transcrição, enfim. Como nerd que sou amo HQ’s e ajudar na tradução e por vezes adaptação da história é incrível! Uma experiência ótima. Quem sabe não me especializo e ganho dinheiro com isso \o/
Someone’s got to do something about that overbite.
LEGION
David (Amitabh Bachchan) spent 24 years in prison, for no reason except corruption. A Parliament member, a police inspector and a Doctor conspired on him after the first rapped David’s wife leading her to commit suicide ,burnt the only evidence for this – a letter she wrote before hanging herself- and witnessed that he tried to kill the parliament member. He is now out of prison, and seeking revenge because law never gave him his right. Insp. Vijay Sandaliya (Amitabh Bachchan) is David’s only son and he doesn’t know the truth, he as been raised as the son of Mahesh Sandaliya – David’s closest friend – and in love with his boss’s daughter Vinita Bhatnagar (Sri Devi), happens to be the police officer responsible for David’s case.The movie ends with the father taking the mother’s revenge and the son keeping his duty as his first concern even after he knew the truth, but proud with what his father did.
