Must... post... more...

There's been a lull in my posting recently since the sweetest thing came into my life: Iris Ellington Swartz Turfle, my baby girl, born February 12. For all the cute pics of baby drooling, and adults drooling over a baby, check out my Flickr account. I'm sure loyal DG readers will understand why art blogging was one of the last things on my mind.

That doesn't mean making art has gone to the back burner, however, as I've entered an extremely productive phase and have been very busy in the studio lately. I'll post pics soon of what's bubbling out in this very green time.

And, as life with a newborn becomes more manageable, look forward to more regular posts here.

In the meantime, I thought I'd share a great quote I found from an interview with Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman that relates to a lot of my past year in the studio.

As the religious aspect of my existence was wiped out, life became much easier to live. Sartre said how inhibited he used to be as an artist and author, how he suffered because what he was doing wasn't good enough. By a slow intellectual process he came to realize that his anxieties about not making anything of value were an atavistic relic from the religious notion that something exists which can be called Supreme Good, or that anything is perfect. When he'd dug up this secret idea, this relic, had seen through it and amputated it, he lost his artistic inhibitions too.

'Our City Dreams' opens tonight

I like women, I like art, and I like New York. So of course I'll be seeing Chiara Clemente's portrait of five female artists living and working in NYC. It's showing at Film Forum. Here's their press release:

It's an affecting love letter to the city which strings together the self-told narratives of five women artists (ages 30 - 80), each of whom has a passion for art-making inseparable from her devotion to New York . Swoon, the youngest, exhibits cut-outs directly on city walls and subways, and exudes idealism and energy while carrying a two by four the way some women would carry a briefcase. Cairo-born Ghada Amer mixes media -- embroidering with painting -- to confront sexual taboos that cross cultural boundaries. After experiencing the New York Dolls in San Francisco , Kiki Smith realized she needed New York 's energy to create her wildly influential paintings and sculptures; Marina Abramovic, originally of Belgrade , is a performance art pioneer who often uses her own body as a canvas. And Nancy Spero returned from Paris with artist-husband Leon Golub in 1964, to meld art and activism during the Vietnam War and become, in her own words, "a woman warrior."

A special secret in Brooklyn

Clearly I don't take the Q train enough. I haven't seen Bill Brand's subway zoetrope in person yet, but the NY Times has an article on its restoration. Created in the late '70s, Brand's zoetrope is based on the 19th century invention that showed movement with a series of still pictures seen through slits. Decades later, the subway zoetrope was abused and in disrepair from graffiti and neglect from the city. Brand, getting access with an MTA key someone slipped him long ago, spent years lovingly going back to clean graffiti from his work in this abandoned train station until it was a hopeless cause. Now, after getting funding for clean up and proper lighting, it's back in full force. Below is good video of it since the Times's stinks. I love how the passengers totally dig the suprise in the first video.

Here is great vintage news footage from the early '80s, including interviews with passengers and artist Bill Brand talking about the zoetrope's conception and construction.

Discover. Preserve. Protect.

For those archivist/preservation types out there, here's a great website devoted to keeping old movie theaters alive (and reminiscing about those that are gone).: http://cinematreasures.org/

Crazed Fruit

Brothers Natsuhisa (Yujiro Ishihara) and Haruji (Masahiko Tsugawa), are spending their summer at a coastal resort running with a group of similarly-minded college-age youths boating, gambling, generally not doing much of anything. The younger, more naive Haruji, would like nothing more than to meet a nice girl while on this summer vacation, but as we all know, love (or, more to the point, lust) can complicate matters.

FULL ARTICLE

Restoring the order of things

As Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 1999 feature Charisma begins, burnt out cop Yabuike (Koji Yaukusho) is brought in to defuse a hostage situation. Seized by a moment of indecision, he misses a key opportunity, leading to the deaths of both the unbalanced criminal and his prisoner. Yabuike is forced to take an obviously much-needed vacation, but instead of going home, he decides to go for a walk in the woods.

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Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Seance

Koji and Junko Sato are a married couple living a quiet, modest life. Koji (Koji Yakusho) works as a sound effects recorder for television; Junko (Jun Fubuki) works from home as a medium. Their respective careers will come to involve them in quite the life-changing event.

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Cannes 2005

The 58th annual Cannes Film Festival kicks off today. Much has been made of the main competition's reliance on past masters, but that is not necessarily a bad thing, and it doesn't change the fact that there are some films getting excited about:

In competetion

David Cronenberg's A History of Violence has the baggage of being adapted from a comic book...oh, excuse me, a graphic novel, but as he has proven before, pulp source material can be transformed into excellent cinema (see: The Dead Zone, Dead Ringers).

Michael Haneke's Cache, starring Daniel Auteuil and Juliette Binoche (reuniting with her Code Unknown director), sounds appropriately ominous from its description on the Cannes site: "Georges, who hosts a TV literary review, receives packages containing videos of himself with his family -- shot secretly from the street -- and alarming drawings whose meaning is obscure. He has no idea who may be sending them. Gradually, the footage on the tapes becomes more personal, suggesting that the sender has known Georges for some time. Georges feels a sense of menace hanging over him and his family..."

Haneke may have won the Grand Jury prize in 2001 for The Piano Teacher, but for my money his 2003 entry Time of the Wolf was even stronger. Here's hoping he continues that upward trend. Here's the trailer.

Love him or hate him, there's no denying the fact that Lars Von Trier will at least give a mean press conference for Manderlay, his follow up to Dogville and the second chapter of his self-described USA Trilogy. Bryce Dallas Howard (Opie's girl) takes over for Nicole Kidman in the role of Grace, and Willem Dafoe replaces James Caan as her father. The great Anthony Dod Mantle does return however as cinematographer. Check out the trailer for an idea of what to expect.

If Coffee and Cigarettes felt like an uneven biding of time, maybe Broken Flowers will bring back the long form Jim Jarmusch we know and love. With Bill Murray in the lead, this may end up being the most widely distributed and seen film of the white-haired New Yorker yet.

Wim Wenders lent Jarmusch a major hand by donating leftover black and white stock from the shooting of The State of Things for the younger director to make Stranger Than Paradise. Wenders is back in Cannes competition this year with Don't Come Knocking, a Sam Shepard-written movie about a fading western actor searching for a daughter he does not know. Shepard's wife Jessica Lange costars, along with Sarah Polley, Tim Roth, and Eva Marie Saint. The documentary Buena Vista Social Club not withstanding, Wenders has fallen out of critical favor in recent years (though his last film, Land of Plenty, received some good reviews at the Toronto Film Festival back in October, IFC Films still has not released it), but maybe reuniting with his Paris, Texas collaborator Shepard will get him back in with those same critics who elevated his career to its popular peak.

The kids aren't alright: All About Lily Chou Chou

Films about young people that actually explore social dynamics in an honest and forthcoming way are few and far between. That Shunji Iwai's All About Lily Chou-Chou (2001) manages this feat while also engaging the viewer on a purely cinematic level is something of a minor miracle.

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Nip/Tuck: Franju's Eyes Without a Face

To the strains of Maurice Jarre's spiraling carnival-waltz score, Alida Valli drives through the French countryside just outside of Paris. In the back seat is a figure slumped over, face obscured by a hat. Valli pulls over to the side of the road and drags the body out of the car. Dressed in a man's raincoat and nothing else, the corpse's legs become just a little too visible for comfort as Valli, her own black vinyl raincoat glistening in the moonlight, rolls the dead girl into the Seine.

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Social Disservices: The Demon

It is 1978 and the middle of a heat wave in Japan. Kikoyo (Mayumi Ogawa) is at her wits end with her three children. Gathering the kids up, they take a train to visit the children's father. Sokichi (Ken Ogata) is running a printing business with is current wife Oume (Shima Iwashita) who has until now had no knowledge of his lover, let alone his brood. No longer able to support Kikoyo and the children, Sokichi has simply cut off contact with them. Now, Kikuyo insists, they are his problem.

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Red menace

For those in the NYC area, a reminder that Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Bright Future opens today at the Cinema Village. Kurosawa's films are hard to see theatrically in the U.S. outside of festivals, so try to catch this one while you can.

Kurosawa's films have a mysterious elusive quality to them, none quite as much as Bright Future. Of the five I have seen, this is on the one hand the most straightforward film, but it is also perhaps the hardest to get one's head around. I have been mulling it over in my mind like no other movie this year. The other Kurosawa films I've seen have used thriller/horror genre trappings to allow a point of entry for the viewer. Bright Future, while no less concerned with modern alienation than Cure or Kairo, allows the emotional undercurrents to drive the story more, all while keeping the technique largely the same. It's an odd film, but a rich and rewarding one.

Manohla Dargis's review is nicely done, and skillfully skirts the plot spoilers that others have freely spilled.

A Desperate Housewife: Yoshitaro Nomura's Zero Focus

Yoshitaro Nomura's Zero Focus (1961) begins with an ending; not the film's ending, but the end of a relationship, though this is unbeknownst to either partner at the moment. Teiko (Yoshiko Kuga) is at a Tokyo train station seeing off her new husband Kenichi (Koji Nambara) as he leaves to oversee the transfer of his position in an advertising agency to a new hire. He tells his wife that he will be back in a few days. Those days pass quickly for the young woman and as the third day comes and goes, then the fourth and the fifth, she becomes increasingly worried.

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Being Koji Yakusho

Now, I don't really have anything against Richard Gere. He's probably a perfectly nice guy, and he wears his grey hair well. However, as I see the commercials on the tee vee for the remake of Shall We Dance, I can't help but pine for a future when Koji Yakusho is as well know in the States as he is in Japan. Koji originated the role of the stuffy businessman who discovers both ballroom dancing and love in the 1996 original. It's a lightweight movie, as I recall, but one that is helped immeasurably by its star's performance. Koji Yaksho has starred in several films by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, and it was with great delight while checking out the (Japanese language-only) extras on the Doppelganger dvd that I saw the audience at what I assume to be the premiere screening don Koji masks. I bet this will never happen for Richard Gere, though the image of it in my mind does kind of freak me out a little bit.

For the record, Doppelganger is a lot of fun, perfectly paced and full of dark humor. The last half hour, especially, edges into that absurd realm inhabited by Kurosawa's Charisma and though this latest film doesn't reach those trippy heights, it still marks a bit of (relatively) easy-going relief after the glum but very moving Bright Future.

We all fall down

When funding fell through for Lars Von Trier’s sophomore feature film, instead of completely scrapping the project, he transformed it into something new. The least seen of his major works, Epidemic (1987) is a very self-referential piece for the director, a film about the making of itself, real life eventually contaminated by fiction.

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I've got something I want to play for you...

Television programmer Max Renn (James Woods) is looking for something new, "something tough" to really pull in an audience that, as he sees it, has grown tired of the same old same old. Softcore Japanese porn isn't going to do it; faux-Greco-Roman period softcore really isn't going to do it. One day, Max thinks he has found his solution in a pirate televison signal his technogeek Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) picks up in his lab.

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Maybe the cinema really is about death

This sounds straight out of the John Waters movie "Cecil B. Demented." Police in Paris have discovered true underground cinema in the centuries-old skull-lined catacombs under the city.

After entering the network through a drain next to the Trocadero, the officers came across a tarpaulin marked: Building site, No access.

Behind that, a tunnel held a desk and a closed-circuit TV camera set to automatically record images of anyone passing. The mechanism also triggered a tape of dogs barking, "clearly designed to frighten people off," the spokesman said.

Further along, the tunnel opened into a vast 400 sq metre cave some 18m underground, "like an underground amphitheatre, with terraces cut into the rock and chairs".

There the police found a full-sized cinema screen, projection equipment, and tapes of a wide variety of films, including 1950s film noir classics and more recent thrillers. None of the films were banned or even offensive, the spokesman said.

Happy birthday to Roman Polanski

I've always had some weird fascination with celebrity birthdays, possibly out of a desire to see how long someone can work successfully within the movie-making world. Roman Polanski, who turns 71 today is proof that one can turn out masterpieces at both ends of a career, from his 1962 feature debut Knife in the Water to 2002's The Pianist. Polanski is currently working on an adaptation of Oliver Twist, with newcomer Barney Clark in the title role and Ben Kingsley as Fagin.

Two of the last Polanski dvd hold outs are due this fall: 1967's The Fearless Vampire Killers (October 5) and 1979's Tess (September 28). Expect reviews at Gusto of both.

Mopping up the goo

Now that theater owners will have had a little time to squeegy the collective fan-boy wad off of the screens showing Alien Vs. Predator, let's take a look at a few flicks down the pike, ones with hopefully a little something more to offer:

I (Heart) Huckabees (October 1) is the first film from David O. Russell since 1999's Three Kings (which will apparently be re-released this fall). A comedy about, well....I'll actually let the official Fox Searchlight synopsis handle this one: "Albert Markovski (Jason Schwartzman), head of the Open Spaces Coalition, has been experiencing an alarming series of coincidences the meaning of which escapes him. With the help of two Existential Detectives, Bernard and Vivian Jaffe (Dustin Hoffman and Lily Tomlin), Albert examines his life, his relationships, and his conflict with Brad Stand (Jude Law), an executive climbing the corporate ladder at Huckabees, a popular chain of retail superstores. When Brad also hires the detectives, they dig deep into his seemingly perfect life and his relationship with his spokesmodel girlfriend, the voice of Huckabees, Dawn Campbell (Naomi Watts). Albert pairs up with rebel firefighter Tommy Corn (Mark Wahlberg) to take matters into their own hands under the guidance of the Jaffes' nemesis, the French radical Caterine Vauban (Isabelle Huppert)." Gotta love the cast.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Bright Future will open for a limited run at Cinema Village on October 27 thanks to the fine folks at Palm Pictures. The film focuses on the relationship between two men who work at the same factory. When one goes to jail, the other strikes up a friendship with his father and also must take care of the friend's pet jellyfish. Reportedly more of a straight drama than many of Kurosawa's recent films (read my takes on Kairo and Cure here at Gusto), Bright Future has been called by some his best film to date. His films are not easy to see theatrically in the States outside of festivals, so check this one out.

Wes Anderson and Bill Murray work together for the third time on The Life Aquatic (December 1). Murray stars as an eccentric (of course) oceanographer, leading a fine cast that includes Owen Wilson, Cate Blanchett, Willem Dafoe (excellent in the recent, underrated The Clearing), Anjelica Huston, and Harold himself, Bud Cort. Expect Calypso covers of David Bowie tunes on the soundtrack (seriously).

Closer (December 3) brings us more Jude Law goodness, this time with Julia Roberts, Clive Owen, and Natalie Portman in Mike Nichols's film of Patrick Marber's award-winning play. Expect lots of vitriolic dialogue and sour relationships.

Steven Soderbergh's Ocean's Eleven was an agreeable enough entertainment, coasting by as it did mostly on George Clooney's charisma. Ocean's Twelve (December 10) promises more of the same, from the same cast plus Vincent Cassell, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Eddie Izzard, and since this one takes place in Europe, Jeroen Krabbe (check him out fondling a life-size boy-toy Jesus in Paul Verhoeven's 1984 Dutch film The Fourth Man).

Martin Scorsese's The Aviator (December 17), starring Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes admittedly has my interest piqued mostly because of the behind the camera talents of Scorsese, ace cinematographer Robert Richardson, and composer Howard Shore. The story to be told (concentrating on Hughes's younger, pre-Spruce Goose years) is no doubt a fascinating one, but the thought of seeing modern actors ape the public personalities of such well known performers as Katherine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett), Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale), and Jean Harlow (uh, Gwen Stefani) does set loose butterflies in the stomach. On the other hand, Jude Law-as-Errol Flynn sounds like near perfect casting.

Math never was my strong suit

A group of scientists at King's College, London, has come up with a mathematical formula to determine how scary a movie is. By taking into account such variables as music, the unknown, setting, and a balance between realism and fantasy, the researchers have determined that Stanley Kubrick's The Shining is the perfect scary movie. They get no argument from me (The Shining never fails to scare the hell out of me and ranks as one of the director's very best works, in my opinion), though the idea of determining a film's (or any piece of art's) worth via a hideous algebraic equation is specious at best.

Kairo, and those moments out of left field

I love those moments in films that catch the viewer totally off guard. A scene is playing out in normal fashion, but something completely horrible happens and punches you in the gut. One such scene occurs in Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Kairo (aka Pulse). The shot in question is pictured here, but I won't give away what happens. There is a special effect of some sort involved, but it is so seamless that I sat there simultaneously shocked and wondering how the shot was pulled off. (Likely something very simple, but simplicity is the key the shot's effectiveness.) It's a moment worthy of the best Val Lewton films of the 1940s.

Like several of the Lewton productions, Kairo is on its surface a horror film, but the genre elements are mostly secondary to Kurosawa's main concerns, those being alienation, the modern technology that facilitates it, and our basic need to not be totally alone in the world. It's a great film, one whose power is difficult to appreciate without actually seeing it. A simple description of its plot does little to convey the thick feeling of dread that permeates the movie. Two plot strands are introduced and will eventually intertwine. In one, three employees of a greenhouse try to make sense of a co-worker's unexpected suicide. In the other young computer novice Kawashima stumbles across a website asking, "Would you like to meet a ghost?" The site shows cryptic images of people alone in their rooms, distraught and haunted. Kawashima brings this site to the attention of a computer teacher at his university and together they investigate. And what does this all have to do with the mysterious rooms around the city that have been sealed up with red construction tape? Kurosawa never fully explains some of these things, leaving it to the viewer to draw conclusions. The mechanics of what is going on (Are ghosts traveling via electricity? Are people committing suicide at an incredibly high rate, or are they simply 'disappearing'?) are less important that the philosophical and basic emotional concerns. In the end, Kurosawa is much more interested in exploring how we interact (or rather, don't) with each other than in providing a traditional horror film. This is not to say that the movie is not scary: a number of sequences are quite chilling.

Kairo is currently unavailable on dvd in North America. Those with multi-region dvd-players can order the Region 3 disc on Hong Kong's Universe label from Poker Industries (or probably some local outlets in NYC). There are no special features on the disc, and the image can be a little murky in the darker scenes, but never so much so that the disc in unwatchable. In fact, it looks quite good for the most part and has phenomenal sound. I reviewed HVE's excellent disc of Kurosawa's Cure back in February for old school Gusto.

Go Dickie!

There's a hilarious faux-political website set up to promote the John Sayles film Silver City. Check out Dickie Pilager's views on everything from gay marriage ("Colorado will have no part in the wave of indecency sweeping across this nation like a wave of indecency.") to capital punishment ("I am in favor of the death penalty for those who need it, whether those people like it or not. A couple of seconds in Old Sparky is the kind of permanent rehabilitation Pilager ’04 is all about.").

Then be sure to check out Chris Cooper-as-Dickie when Silver City opens this September.

Gothamist Interviews Hal

No time to give this the post it deserves, but today's Young Manhattanite interview is with one of my heroes, Hal Hartley, to whom I give partial credit for my love of both film and of Martin Donovan. I'm looking forward to seeing Hal's new film, Girl from Monday, when it is released early next year. Perhaps (I always say "perhaps") it's time for another Hartley marathon...

Lights...camera...action! : Godard's A Woman is a Woman

Angela (Anna Karina) has decided she wants to have a baby. Lover Emile (Jean-Claude Brialy) will have none of it. Their current situation is fine as is. He doesn't seem to care when Angela decides to seek outside help from Emile's pal Alfred Lubitsch (Jean-Paul Belmondo). "Is this a comedy or a tragedy?" This being a Jean-Luc Godard film it's, well....Godard.

FULL ARTICLE

Now If We Could Get Him to Apply This Principle to Filmmaking

It's beat up on Lars Von Trier day.

(I love to stir up you Von Trierites.)

Some People Like Kieslowski, Others Jet Fighters

The Final Countdown is now on DVD!

For those growing tired of the same old artsy-fartsy stuff, Blue Underground has just released The Final Countdown on DVD, in a beautiful two-disc set with a neato aircraft carrier hologram on the cover.

If you're unfamiliar with this 1980 classic, here's a synopsis. Kirk Douglas commands the USS Nimitz on routine maneuvers off the coast of Hawaii. A very young Martin Sheen is on board, as a civilian observer working for the Pentagon. A freak storm suddenly appears, somehow sucking the 100,000 ton aircraft carrier back to December 6, 1941, the day before the Japanese raid on Pearl Harbor. It takes a few scenes for Douglas to understand and accept what's happened, then a few more scenes to decide what to do: intervene and change history, or allow the worst naval defeat in American history to take place. As a senior officer exclaims in exasperation: "We are in a war situation! This is a United States WAR ship! Or at least it used to be... Or will be... Or what the hell ever!"

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When Gutless Execs Strike

Disney is forbidding American distribution of Michael Moore's new film, Fahrenheit 911. The film deals with the Bush administration and has been creating a stir on the film festival circuit, and now financer Disney is getting cold feet about tax breaks in Jeb Bush's Florida.

I've got problems with Moore as a shady documentarian -- but this guy needs a factchecker, not a corporate censor whose going to put his movie on a shelf. Icon Productions, Mel Gibson's company, already backed out. That was over a real disagreement of opinion and I can respect that. But it's despicable to get dollar signs in your eyes, give a film financial support, and then get cold feet. Did they think Moore was going to do a Bush puff piece?

Weekend at the Movies

For those inclined to spend "warm summer days indoors," Karen Cinecultist has a nice rundown of weekend movies here.

For our part, we're most excited about The Saddest Music in the World, too, with the lovely Isabella, a Kids in the Hall alum, and the adorable Maria de Medeiros. We've not yet seen any of Guy Maddin's other films, but he's Canadian! How could a Canadian be bad, Alanis Morissette notwithstanding?

(p.s. Ten of our favorite picks for the saddest music in the world are here.)

Pale Flower

Yakuza Muraki (Ryo Ikebe) finds himself in an existentialist funk in Masahiro Shinoda's Pale Flower (1964). Fresh from serving a three year prison sentence for a gangland murder, he feels no connection with the people he sees on the Tokyo streets. He could kill any one and it would not make a difference. The mob he belongs to has joined up with its former rival, all the better to prevent a new faction from Osaka from moving in on their territory. Things have changed in the relatively short amount of time he was away, but Muraki can still count on gambling to help relieve the tedium of his otherwise solitary hours.

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Subrin Sundances

I noticed today that Filmmaker magazine ("The magazine of independent film") has a blog -- and it's actually useful and good for all my fellow movie hounds out there.

Their entry for today is about a reading of "Up" sponsored by the Sundance Institute. The screenplay was written by Elisabeth Subrin and Evan Carlson, and will be directed for the big screen by Subrin.

For those who don't know her work, seek it out now. The Fancy is the only artist biopic that doesn't romanticize its subject or get bogged down in art mythology, and I recommend it as a good place to start. [Disclaimer: Elisabeth Subrin was a teacher of mine, and I worked for her after moving to New York on the video for Le Tigre's "Well Well Well."]

Onibaba

In war-torn 16th century Japan, a middle aged woman and her young daughter-in-law (both unnamed) struggle for existence. Killing samurai who lose thier way in the tall susuki grass, the two women trade the armor and weapons for food and other supplies, dumping the corpses in a deep, dark hole nearby.

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Good-bye, MoMA Gramercy

My second home is no more. Yesterday MoMA's Gramercy Theater on 23rd Street bid adieu with a retrospective of Sofia Coppola's films. The ridiculous idea of cannonizing Ms. Coppola after two-and-a-half films fits my sadness, which is for the loss of something that was a temporary home while the museum fleshes out its expanded 53rd Street space.

The Gramercy was close to both apartments I've had while living in New York. The screen was the perfect size, and every seat on the floor was fantastic. The experience at the Gramercy was second only to the Walter Reade for optimal viewing. And plus, there were those weird bleachers where you could make out if the movie were right.

Because of my corporate slavery, I could get in free with a certain company's ID. The Gramercy made a real classic movie buff out of me as I watched the entire series on Nicholas Ray and Vincente Minnelli. And when the lights came on, you could quickly turn around and see an army of old cotton-topped retirees coming out of their slumber, some slunk back with their mouths open.

The 53rd Street theater will re-open November 20, 2004. Here's an Observer article about the squabbling in MoMA's film department.

Two movies that have absolutely nothing in common.

In one weekend I saw both “Dawn of the Dead” and “Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.”

For fun I decided to go to a midnight showing of "Dawn of the Dead” on Saturday night. Midnight shows make scary movies infinitely scarier. I was prepared to watch a good portion of the movie through closed eyes and held breath, or at the very least, to laugh a lot.

The opening was really good. Super fast and scary and fun. But after that I can’t remember being scared again. I do remember fearing for the safety of others, as people continued to text message each other INSIDE THE THEATER until some guy yelled “yeah, one more and that phone goes in your ass!” right in time too, because I was about to kill someone. There was also a considerable amount of both pot smoking and making out going on during the film. I can’t say that I understand it but I can also say that I wasn’t surprised. My final thought, see the original and be scared and smoke weed in your own home.

Oh, and P.S. Hollywood, you don’t need to do anything else to make pregnancy and child birth seem more gross or scary. Thank you.

The next day I met my friends for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind ."

This was a movie that I did not want to see originally. I thought it was a really well done trailer. My friend Brandon made me watch that trailer 3 times in a row on his computer until I admitted that it was awesome. But I thought it was like a slick music video, which wasn’t surprising knowing Michel Gondry’s work. I hated “Human Nature,” though. I thought it was a piece of crap that had this tone of "i'm very clever, listen to this clever insight!" It was like listening to a person who thinks they are smarter than every one else, talk. Anyway, I decided early on not to be interested in this movie.

I also think I might hate Charlie Kaufman. Not that everything he does is bad, just that I don’t like him. He was on Charlie Rose last week in a rare television appearance and I can’t tell if he is arrogant or the rest of the world is pushing arrogance on him. It seems to me that he hasn't written that much but is talked about like this hollywood golden boy who everyone can count on for a quirky hit. Here is a dissenting opinion from someone with a lot more personal contact with him than I have had. He did write for "Get a Life" though, and that holds a special place in my heart.

Anyway, by the opening credits I had given in to the movie. I loved it in a way that I rarely love movies. I feel bad writing much about it because I don’t want to hype it too much. The hype curse can kill movies and I want this movie to LIVE. It is very real, and believable and sweet and sad. So I guess I might have to start hating Charlie Kaufman less… for now.

Le Corbeau

1942, a small French village. The townspeople begin receiving poison pen letters signed "Le Corbeau" ("the Raven"). The letters shed unwanted light on the locals' secrets, from the underground abortion work of Dr. Remy Germain (Pierre Fresnay), to extramarital affairs, to the corruptness of the mayor. While the first letter seems to be written only to intimidate a potentially unfaithful wife, soon the entire town is in a paranoid uproar over the raven's apparent intention to expose all of the dirty little secrets possible.

Henri_Georges Clouzot's Le Corbeau was made during the German occupation of France under the aegis of Continental Films, and its allegorical ties to the then current political situation are strong. The letters completely disrupt the small, tightly knit community. Everything is thrown into disarray as no one trusts anyone else. The suspicion is due not as much to the unknown identity of "the raven" but to the secrets that are laid bare. In one particularly humorous exchange, the head of the hospital (Antione Balpetre) confronts the bursar (Jean Brochard) with a letter suggesting that he has cooked the books. In response, the bursar produces a letter he has received implying that his daughter has been carrying on an ilicit relationship with the doctor. This then prompts the doctor to call the letters "a web of scandal and lies," dropping the matter lest he end up in hot water himself. With hundred of letters circulating and fueling even more rumors, everyone suspects everyone else of hiding something.

Clozout's maintains a high level of suspense throughout. There are no red herrings since anyone in the town could be the raven. Only after a letter drops from the balcony of the church during (in a virtuoso shot, the camera looks down at the congregation who it turn look up at the envelope at it flutters to the ground) does the suspect list narrow. Those in the balcony are taken to the schoolhouse and, in what plays like a parody of tedious classwork, write down the letters as they are dictated in an effort to match the guilty party's handwriting to that of the raven. The task doesn't prove to be as easy as hoped.

Working with cinematographer Nicolas Hayer, Clozout creates a palpably paranoid atmosphere that could easily be referred to as early noir. There is no shortage of creative camera angles and lighting, yet the photography is always in service of the story, not the dominating force of the film. Clouzot directs his cast well, too. The film has a rather large number of speaking roles and each is well defined. Even characters that appear for only a scene or two make an impression.

Not exactly the easiest until recently (its appearance on Turner Classic Movies last year probably marked its greatest exposure in some time), Criterion has given Le Corbeau stellar treatment on dvd where it will hopefully become as well know as Clouzot's more famous Diabolique and The Wages of Fear. The picture shows minimal damage on the whole looks quite gorgeous. The sound, despite some mild background noise that even Criterion could not get rid of, is very clear. Given the age and history of this film, this is an excellent presentation and probably the best we will ever see.

Aside from the trailer, there are tow significant extras. A 21-minute interview with director Bertrand Tavernier (Coup de Torchon, Safe Conduct) and an 8-minute excerpt from a 1975 televesion documentary, The Story of French Cinema, by Those Who Made It provide appropriate historical context for Le Corbeau, form the film's inspiration to reactions from both ends of the political spectrum. Many on the left took Clouzot to task for working for a German company, while those at Continental felt the film portrayed informing in a bad light. Clouzot consequently did not make another film until after the war when he found supporters in the likes of Jean Cocteau, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Simone de Beauvoir. His following film, Quai des Orfevres(1947) is also available from Criterion.

Ultimately, political concerns take a back seat the thriller elements in the film. It is a very fine work that deserves a much wider audience, something Criterion's dvd should do much to rectify.

Cinecultist takes on Jersey Girl

Sometime Gusto contributor and Cinecultist site owner Karen does the unthinkable -- she goes to see Jersey Girl and lives to blog about it. In particular, check out Karen's pull quote from Newsweek where Kevin Smith is [refreshingly or brutally, depending on your own take on Smith] honest about his own abilities and limitations as a filmmaker.

Thanks, Karen, for going so the rest of us don't have to.

Weekend Movie Roundup

Opening This Weekend

It's a grim scene this weekend for new movies. Opening this weekend is the Sundance darling The United States of Leland, which has, at the very least, my Hartley darling Martin Donovan to recommend it.

Also opening are Hellboy, The Prince & Me, Walking Tall (warning: click on this at your own peril!), and Home on the Range, Disney's last hand-drawn animation feature from its SoCal studios.

Rep Houses and Around Town

The American Museum of the Moving Image

AMMI shows films by Raoul Peck as part of the Haiti on Screen festival. About Peck:

When Raoul Peck was eight years old, his family fled from Haiti’s Duvalier dictatorship to the newly democratic Republic of Congo, which was just recovering from the murder of its first elected leader, Patrice Lumumba. Peck has since lived and worked in New York City, France and Germany. Cultural displacement and the relationship between the political and the personal are at the heart of his inventive and lyrical films. Peck's work crosses boundaries, blending elements of drama and documentary, combining rigorous social analysis with a strong sense of dramatic storytelling.

Film Forum

The Welles festival continues on Friday night, with films F for Fake, which has a shiny new print, and The Immortal Story, Welles' first color film, with music by Eric Satie. (Disclaimer: according to the web site, The Immortal Story will be projected digitally because of print problems.)

MoMA Gramercy

The New Directors, New Films series continues at three venues: MoMA Gramercy, the Walter Reade theater, and the Alice Tully Hall.

As is true of most screenings of new work, some of the films seem more interesting than others. One that caught my eye (because I'm a sucker for films about rockstars) is Dig!, described as:

A rousing chronicle that is as much about contemporary American rock as the bad behavior of rock stars, Dig! follows the spectacular ascents and descents of Anton Newcombe, leader of indie band The Brian Jonestown Massacre. For over seven years filmmaker Ondi Timoner had unmediated access to Newcombe, a self-styled Brian Jones acolyte, and her film is a raw, energetic portrait of an artist and his nose for trouble.

Another draw may be the Canadian short film preceding Berlin Blues, entitled The Arousing Adventures of Sailor Boy, which sports this cheeky description: "Hey, sailor—come here often? A naïve mariner is out on the town in Jenny Bisch’s romp with a hermaphrodite."

The Sunshine

See the hugely crowd-pleasing Shaolin Soccer (I won't make a Wu-Tang Clan reference. I won't make a Wu-Tang Clan reference), Bertolucci's The Dreamers, or the midnight movie Clash of the Titans.

Quick side note: the Sunshine's midnight movie on April 16-17 will be The Apple, a bizarre, hilarious '70s musical schlockfest and critique of the music industry -- in the then-faraway future of 1994. See it at least once, preferably under the influence of something.

A Short Film About Love review

Krzysztof Kieslowski's A Short Film About Love opens with a close up of hands, wrists bandaged. Another hand attempts to caress them but they in turn are stopped by a third party. The scene's significance will become apparent later. The film proper begins: we witness 19-year-old Tomek (Olaf Lubaszenko) break into what appears to be a school and steal a small telescope. He sets the small scope up in the bedroom he rents from a friend's mother and spies on Magda (Grazyna Szapolowska), an artist living in an apartment on the opposite side of the courtyard.

Tomek is clearly obsessed with Magda. An employee of the post office, he leaves her forged pick-up notices just so that he can see her up close. He takes a second job an a milk deliveryman for the same reason; he hides her empty bottles so that he can have a reason to know at her door early in the morning. He even tries to sabotage her romantic liaisons, calling in a false gas leak just as she and her lover are getting undressed.

(Peeping Tom)ek eventually confesses his feelings (and his mischief) to Magda. She is understandably very angry, but at the same time intrigued by this younger man an his romanticized ideals, however misplaced they may be. Magda agrees to go out on a date of sorts with Tomek. They go back to her place afterwards where he humiliates himself with his sexual inexperience. Tomek storms off in embarrassment and Magda is ashamed of the casual emotional cruelty she has shown him. Kieslowski's love story begins to change direction in tragic, moving, and subtly unexpected ways.

Despite having the trappings of a suspense film, with its themes of voyeurism and thwarted affections, this truly is a love story, albeit an odd one. Tomek's feelings for Magda may be naive, and he may objectify her, but his love is genuine in its innocent, idealistic way. His drastic actions when things don't immediately work out as he had hoped may be the actions of a lovesick young man, but it is precisely for that reason that Magda's feelings begin to change from a condescending pity to something more heartfelt. He reminds her that there is still a place for romanticized ideals, ones that she has forgotten or, more likely, put away.

The ending of A Short Film About Love is completely different from the one of Decalogue VI. The television version ends on an ironic, almost bitter note. Kieslowski created the cinema ending at the request of Szapolowska who suggested that a more optimistic, even happier ending than the one in Kieslowski and Piesiewicz's original script. The ending they came up with approaches the trancendental heights of the conclusions to The Double Life of Veronique and Blue.

A Short Film About Love also bears some similarities to White. Both open with seemingly out of place scenes that, it later transpires, are flash-forwards to important plot elements. Both films feature their protagonist watching the object of their desire though a bedroom window, crushed by the sexual betrayal they witness. (However, whereas White's Karol Karol embarks on an elaborate revenge scheme against a cold and bitter wife, Tomek is obsessed with a woman he doesn't even know.) Finally, both movies find the women at their centers in emotional places they certainly did not expect. White, though, is a story of of love withered and they regrown, ASFAL is a search for love, beginning unrequited by one partner, ultimately discovered within the other.

Visually, A Short Film About Love couldn’t be more different from its sister feature, A Short Film About Killing. Instead using the sickly hues employed by Slawomir Idziak, Witold Adamek shoots in a relatively naturalistic style. This is not to say that the photography is uninteresting at all, only that Kieslowski here goes for a gentler, more lyrical style. The same goes for Zbigniew Preisner’s music. Dominated by a classical guitar theme, the score is in keeping with the more romantic style of some of their other collaborations.

Kieslowski was somewhat reluctant to work Graznya Szapolowska again after butting heads during the production of No End (1984), but he knew she was the only one for the role. She gives an excellent performance, never letting Magda become unlikable despite her initial attitude towards Tomek. As her youthful admirer, Olaf Lubaszenko likewise keeps Tomek from being creepy or sleazy, especially given his tendency to peep. Who hasn’t had those feelings for someone they hardly know, an idea that they would be perfect together? Similarly, who hasn’t reacted badly to unwanted attention, only to find unusual sympathy for that person? They way Kieslowski structures his film, they audience is given two identification figures, two sides of the same coin.

Like their dvd of Killing, Kino’s disc replicates the features found on the region 2 discs, making these important films more accessible to North American viewers. The 1.66 transfer is anamorphically enhanced, and quality wise is very similar to Killing (setting aside the stylized photography aspect that comes into play for the other film). Sound is fine and clear. Annette Insdorf provides another short examination of the film. Szapolowska is interviewed and though she speaks well of her collaboration with the director, she is not shy about the fact that she feels he abandoned some of his Polish roots (and fellow workers) when he began making films in Western Europe after Decalogue. (Though is should be noted that the majority of White takes place in Poland and stars the two leads from Decalogue X, one of whom, Jerzy Stuhr, also starred in Camera Buff [1979].) Emmanuel Finkiel, Kielsowski’s assistant director on Three Colors, gives insight into some of the director’s methods, especially his tendency to go through many different cuts in the editing process. Trailers from the Killing disc for the other Kino releases are repeated here.

The final extra is Kieslowski’s black and white short film Tramway (1966). Already familiar to owners of the Three Colors box set (it also appears on the White dvd), its inclusion here is appropriate. A man gazes longingly at a woman on a bus. He gets off, only to change his mind and run after her. That’s all that happens in this five minute film, but it is gorgeously shot and looks forward to both later themes and even specific instance in Love (Tomek and Magda rush to catch a bus after their ‘date’).

Perhaps less well know than the more draining Killing, A Short Film About Love shouldn’t be neglected due to its relatively lesser notoriety. Viewers familiar only with the later multinational co-productions would do well to explore Kieslowski’s earlier work, and these two films (along with Decalogue) provide a perfect bridge between those two periods. Both are out May 11. More titles will follow in August.

A Short Film About Killing Review

19-year-old Jacek (Miroslaw Baka) wanders aimlessly about Warsaw. He cares nothing about those around him, pushing a man down in a public restroom, dropping a rock off an overpass into traffic. Having coffee in a cafe, he works on cutting a piece of rope down to a suitable length for use as a garrote.

A middle aged taxi driver (Jan Tesarz) cleans his cab outside his apartment building. He ogles a young woman working a produce truck and denies a fare to a married couple looking for a ride. He honks his car horn to frighten two passing dogs being taken for a walk and possibly poisons another.

Piotr Balicki (Krzysztof Globisz), an idealistic man in his thirties, after a combined eight years of studies and apprenticeship, has been admitted to the defense council of lawyers. Adamantly against capital punishment, he hopes to be a just voice of reason in Poland's legal machine.

These three men will find their paths crossing as one senseless murder leads to another, state sanctioned killing.

Krzysztof Kieslowski's 1988 film A Short Film About Killing ( a feature length expansion of the fifth Decalogue episode) establishes its grim tone, look, and subject matter right from its opening shots: a dead rat floating in a pool of filthy water, and a stangled cat hanging from a noose, both photographed through a sickly green filter. These images also foreshadow the fates of the taxi driver (rodent) and hi equally doomed killer (feline).

Kieslowski uses the first third of his film to cut between his three main characters, highlighting the similarities between Jacek and the cab driver. Both display an almost casual cruelty. Jacek, when he drops the rock from the bridge, causes an accident; we do not see it, but the sound of breaking glass and screeching tires makes it sound fairly major. The taxi driver scares dogs, ignores fares because he is not officially on the clock yet, and in all likelihood poisons a animal; the way he sneers at the dog and encourages him to eat it up would appear to indicate this. (Also the boy in Decalogue I tells his father he saw a dead dog. They live in the same apartment complex as the cabbie.) Conversely, Piotr is about to embark on a new, hopeful phase of his life. He has been admitted to the bar, he has a wonderful relationship with his wife, and, we learn later, he will become a father.

Curiously, Jacek and the taxi driver both show seem to lower their defenses in the presence of children. Jacek playfully flings coffee and pastry at the cafe window to make two little girls laugh. The cabbie, for all his rudeness to everyone else, stops at a crosswalk and lets a group of schoolchildren pass. It is the last remotely kind thing he will ever do.

Jacek murders the taxi driver for no real reason (although he does take his car, perhaps as a way to leave this bleak city for good). The killing is a long and arduous affair, certainly one of the most violent and harrowing ever put on screen. To Kieslowski's immense credit, it never, no for one single second, seems exploitative. The director cuts from the aftermath of the murder to the end of Jacek's trial. That he is found guilty is neither surprising, nor, ultimately, important. His sentence, however, is. Piotr, given as his first case one he could not possibly hope to win given the brutality of the crime, finds his client on death row. This is crippling both emotionally and morally for the attorney. He spends a brief amount of time with Jacek just before his execution in which we learn more about the young man's past. While there is still no excusing what he did, we do come to understand, if only a little bit, how he ended up so lost. His subsequent murder at the hand of the state is just as difficult to watch as the initial crime.

Kieslowski and his superb cameraman Slawomir Idziak (The Double Life of Veronique, Blue), portray Warsaw in a cold, dirty light. Idziak's use of filters gives everything a horribly jaundiced look that at times verges on the oppressive. It is a highly stylized looks that fits the story perfectly. As he explains in the accompanying interview, Kieslowski gave him complete freedom to experiment, and that trust paid off.

Zbigniew Preisner's score is darker and more ominous than his usual work with Kieslowski, but this is also the bleakest project any of them ever worked on. The music is not without its more lyrical passages, but there are also parts that evoke a sickening dread.

Baka, Globisz, and Tesarz are all exceptional in their roles. Baka in particular pulls off a tricky, demanding role well. Evoking audience sympathy for a killer is no easy feat, but with the aid of screenwriters Kieslowski and Krzysztof Piesiewicz he pulls it off. All three actors have continued to do film work in Poland but remain largely unknown here.

Kino's DVD replicates the transfer and special features previously only available on region 2 British and French import discs, making this important film much easier for U.S. viewers to see. The film is letterboxed at 1.66 and enhanced for widescreen televisions. Extras include an lengthy interview with Idziak; an interview with director and colleague Agnieska Holland; and brief discussions on the film with Kieslowski friend/scholar Annette Insdorf (familiar to viewers of Miramax's Three Colors box set) and Antonin Liehm. Trailers ane included for this film, A Short Film About Love (to be reviewed next week), Blind Chance, No End, and Camera Buff. The most significant extra feature is the inclusion of Kieslowski's 1978 short From a Night Porter's Point of View. The documentary follows the porter of the title as he goes about his day both at work and at home, all the while espousing his views on his job, youth, and, most significantly, capital punishment. It's an excellent film that ends on a surprisingly poignant note.

A Short Film About Killing will be released on May 11, along with its companion feature A Short Film About Love. Kino's other Kieslowski titles, The Scar, Camera Buff, Blind Chance, and No End, will follow in August.

demonlover Review

Walking a fine line between narratively abstract art movie and genre filmmaking, Olivier Assayas's demonlover occasionally wanders a bit too far in one direction at the sake of the other. Sheer directorial verve keeps the project from falling apart; the movie may be a bit messy at times, but so are the the themes and ideas it explores.

Paris-based media conglomerate Volf Group is in the process of buying out Tokyo Anime, a company already producing successful animated porn and looking to expand in to a 3-D video game style variation that will revolutionize the industry. Two competing companies are looking for exclusive web licensing rights to Volf Group's new acquisition: the Japanese Magnatronics and the U.S. run Demonlover.

Volf's personal assistant Diane (Connie Nielsen) has, though devious means, landed a new position at the company as part of the team responsible for the Tokyo Anime licensing. Covertly also working for Magnatronics in order to undermine Demonlover's efforts, Diane discovers a connection between the American company and the Hellfire Club, a hard to access underground website specializing in interactive torture that looks uncomfortably realistic. As things get murkier and more disturbing, Diane realizes that she is alone with no one to trust, not her coworker Herve (Charles Berling), certainly not her spiteful assistant Elise (Chloe Sevigny), and perhaps not even herself. After all, no one else has reason to trust her.

Assayas lets demonlover develop as a pretty much straightforward (if convoluted) corporate thriller for the first half of the film. At a certain point, however, when Diane's attempts to sabotage Demonlover go awry, the film heads into even darker, more confusing territory. Character allegiances and levels of power change even if their identities do not. The plot, already demanding the strictest attention, twists and contorts to the point of near-abstraction. The viewer has to trust the director for guidance. It's a lot to ask, and while Assayas's experiment may or may not be as successful as he intended, there certainly are rewards for the adventurous and plenty to mull over after the film has finished.

What keeps the film engaging and entertaining is not only Assayas's willingness to follow his own instincts, narrative convention be damned, but also his game collaborators. Denis Lenoir's widescreen photography makes great use of the corporate settings from the offices with their designer ashtrays to the expensive hotel rooms overlooking the various cities the characters find themselves in. Oftentimes shooting the actors through or against planes of glass to gorgeous effect, Lenoir is also able in indulge in more impressionistic character shots as well as some nice aerial landscape views. Sonic Youth provide a creeping, droning score that never overpowers the film, adding to the sense of dread brought about the backroom machinations that drive the plot. Only the main title theme sounds like something that would appear on one of their proper albums; the rest of the material fits squarely in with the more experimental work they release on their own label.

Connie Nielsen, as the axis on which everything in the film must pivot, carries the film quite well. She would do well to pursue more projects like this one in tandem with her Hollywood work. As cold and calculating as her character is, she remains an audience identification figure and manages to generate sympathy the further she ventures into the conspiracy surrounding her. Charles Berling, working with Assayas a second time after the period piece Les Destinees, has a charismatic edge to him that turns decidedly snakelike as his ruthlessness becomes more apparent. Chloe Sevigny initially seems somewhat miscast (indeed, she is filling in for Assayas's original choice of Viginie Leyoden), but proves herself more than up to the challange of playing the cutthroat business game. Gina Gershon makes the most of her flamboyant supporting role as a Demonlover executive with a fondness for expensive boots.

Ultimately, one's reaction to this deliberately difficult film will be at least partially dictated by one's tolerance for both the subject matter and the audacity with which the story is told. It may not be a masterpiece, but Olivier Assayas is to commended for sticking to his guns and making the movie he obviously wanted to make. Palm Pictures' R-Rated DVD is out now; the unrated director's cut will follow in June.

Weekend Movie Roundup

First, everyone (including me) and her parakeet is going to be seeing Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind this weekend. Here's a smattering of reviews:

Over at Slate, David Edlestein calls ESotSM "the best movie I've seen in a decade."

Salon's Stephanie Zacharek is slightly less enthusiastic. Although she too liked the film, she's frustrated by its "bag of ironic tricks."

Also in the "enjoyed, with reservations" camp is The Times' Elvis Mitchell, who found that "this angular and intelligent romantic comedy isn't entirely consistent. Even as you laugh, it's a movie you admire more than love."

The New Yorker's Anthony Lane weighs in with a somewhat inscrutable review of the film's "unlovely elegance."

p.s. I love you, Kate Winslet.

In the rep houses and elsewhere around town this weekend:

Landmark Loew's Theater in Jersey City - "Wilder Laughter," three films of Billy Wilder, including Sabrina, One, Two, Three, and Some Like It Hot.

The Sunshine Theater - Catch Mel Brooks's Blazing Saddles at midnight Friday and Saturday nights.

AMMI - Get your woman-torturing freak on Saturday and Sunday with Lars Von Trier's Epidemic, The Kingdom (I and II), and Medea.

Film Forum - The Welles Festival continues with The Stranger and The Lady from Shanghai.

MoMA Gramercy - Sit through fourteen-and-a-half hours (over two days) of Peter Watkins's The Journey.

The Exorcist Voice is Silenced

A Hollywood legend has fallen. Oscar-winning actress and clenched-fist fireball Mercedes McCambridge has died at age 87. Although she's famous for being the demonic voice of Linda Blair in "The Exorcist," my favorite role for McCambridge was as the repressed coil of lust, greed, and envy that she played in "Johnny Guitar." The role required her to match the assured power of Joan Crawford, and McCambridge was more than up to the task. Her frenzied voice, frantic movements, and revenge-fueled righteousness was the perfect compliment to Crawford's steady solitude. McCambridge began in the days of radio, and appeared in at least three of the great movies ever made (Touch of Evil, Giant). Of course, great actresses never die -- they're just neglected during their lifetimes and leave behind great DVDs to watch over, and over, and over.

Morvern Callar DVD Review

Movern Callar (Samantha Morton) awakens Christmas morning to find her writer boyfriend dead in a pool of blood, lying in the doorway from the living room to the kitchen. He has committed suicide because, as his note to Morvern on his computer indicates, "it just felt like the right thing to do." Morvern doesn't call the police, she doesn't freak out (at least not in a traditional sense). She opens her presents: a leather jacket, a cigarette lighter, and a mix tape that will provide much of the accompanying soundtrack for the rest of the film. Then she goes out partying with her best friend Lanna (Kathleen McDermott), telling no one about what has happened.

Morvern's boyfriend has also left behind the manuscript for a novel on his computer along with a list of prospective publishers. Morvern substitutes her own name and mails it off. She never does call tell anyone about her boyfriend's suicide, choosing instead to dismember his body and bury it on the island on which her foster mother is also laid to rest. She then cleans out his bank account, using the funds to book a holiday in Spain for herself and Lanna.

No explicit reasons are ever given for many of the choices made in Morvern Callar. Morvern's decision to pale her name on the manuscript and to bury the body on her own may seem callous and immoral on the surface, but director Lynne Ramsey, working from Alan Warner's novel, never passes judgement on the character. Here is someone looking for escape be it through drugs, partying, or her headphones. The death of her boyfriend has a strangely liberating effect on her, even though all the while she keeps the tragedy repressed inside. In Spain, a chance encounter with a man whose mother has just died leads to emotional, cathartic sex; dealing with death, even in this oblique way, spurs her to leave the resort, hire a car, and explore the countryside, far away from the spring-break atmosphere of the hotel. She eventually returns to meet with interested book agents and attempts to discover more about both who she is and is going to become. How successful her escape from her life in Scotland will be is left up in the air; as Lanna says to her late in the film, "it's all the same out there." The film's final scene, a replay of an earlier bit in a club but now with a different soundtrack, ends the film on a thoughtful, melancholic note.

Morvern's journey is a largely interior one, and this can make the film at times difficult to penetrate. Ramsey's style, however, allows for significant emotional involvement if one surrenders to its spell. The movie has a druggy, at times almost hallucinatory feel to it. The party scenes at the beginning are frenetic and full of strong washes of color. The other scenes in Scotland, while not without their own beauty, are damp and certainly have a "morning after" feel to them. In contrast, the section of the film in Spain is brightly sunlit and, after Morvern and Lanna embark on their impromptu countryside tour, full of colors just as bold as any in the earlier party sequences.

Palm Pictures' DVD captures the theatrical look of the film very well (though the impact of many of the visuals are, naturally, even more striking on the big screen). Given Ramsey's background as a still photographer, it is no surprise that the film is so visually alive, and she has an excellent collaborator in cinematographer Alwin Kuchler. The disc's sound is robust and clear; the thickly accented dialogue is much easier to make out here than in theaters.

Samantha Morton's performance is a wonder of enigmatic expressiveness; Morvern may be opaque in many ways, but Morton makes sure that we are never lose interest in what is going on inside of her head. Kathleen McDermott may be a nonprofessional actor, but she is completely at ease with the camera and her relationship with Morvern feels genuine.

Extras, limited to brief interview snippets with the director and the two leads, are largely inconsequential. Trailers are included for this film as well as other Palm releases ranging from demonlover to their "Directors Series" collections of the work of video directors Spike Jonze, Michel Gondry, and Chris Cunningham. While more information on the picture in question would have been appreciated, the film's the thing, and Palm's presentation of it is to be commended.

NYUFF nyuck nyuck

Funny fuck Todd Levin thinks he's fucking funny translating the arty film descriptions for the New York Underground Film Festival into advice for the everyday filmgoer. Isn't mocking the humorless kind of like beating up a cripple?

"…an ode to lights and color"
"Even my closest friends and family will have second thoughts about attending this film."

"…exaggerates the clichés of femininity and men in power."
Get ready for 75 minutes of women throwing up and the men who constantly try to rape them. And isn't a cliché – if presented without sufficient context – already something of an exaggeration of the truth, anyway? If not by definition, then by implication? Aw forget it. If watching an extended, unedited monologue from a woman with poorly applied black eye makeup is your idea of a good time, have at it.

Additionally, there is a 70% chance of unenthusiastic sex in this film.

"…a freeform documentary…"
If this film has an "editor" in its credits, it is probably a lie. My parents' home movies of me riding the caterpillar at Hoffman's Play Land are technically "freeform documentary."

"a movie poem…"
Almost as promising as a "whisky enema."

"Nutria are a large, odd looking rodent from Argentina…"
HOLY SHIT DO NOT MISS THIS FILM!!!

(links via greg.org via Gawker)

Ouch.

As I'm recovering from a food poisoning, maybe it'll be fun for others to remember the Top 10 Puke Scenes from movies. With video clips!

Wisconsin Death Trip DVD review

Based on Michael Lesy's 1973 book of the same name, James Marsh's Wisconsin Death Trip feeds off of that innate curiosity many of us have with odd facts, people, and crimes. Both book and film are concerned with the town of Black River Falls and the strange events that occurred there in the late 1890s. Lesy collected vintage newspaper clippings and photographs to compose a portait of this turn of the century town. Marsh in turn took select items from the book and recreated them for his film to make, in his words, a visual essay.

Opening with beautiful, gliding black and white footage of a lake and the surrounding cliff faces, the film immediately establishes one of its strongest traits: a feel for landscape and the beauty inherent in it. Filmed over the course of the four season, Marsh's film also manages to convey a sense of concentrated time, aided by the relatively brief running time.

Despite the fact that the events took place 100 years ago, the vignettes Marsh has filmed have a timeless quality to them in ways both sad (a lovesick young woman drowns herself) and disturbing (a 13-year-old boy steals a gun and kills a man just for the hell of it). Still, the director resists the urge to preach or draw any overt parallels to the present; he lets the stories speak for themselves.

Even with the parade of jealous lovers, arson, mistaken burial, and dead children, Wisconsin Death Trip is not without humor, from the opera singer whose dentures rattle when she sings, to the antics of serial window smasher Mary Sweeney.

Home Vision Entertainment presents Wisconsin Death Trip in an anmorphically enhanced 1.78 transfer that beautifully shows off Eigil Bryld's cinematography. His work wonderfully captures the texture of the vintage photographs that inspired the film. Sound is crisp and clear; the excellent soundtrack Marsh has assembled (from Debussy and Blind Mellon Jefferson to DJ Shadow and new music from John Cale) provides the perfect aural accompanyment to Bryld's visuals.

Marsh and Bryld contribute a very interseting audio commentary touching on everything from the photographic techniques of the period to which season provided the worst working conditions. (Summer.) The behind the scenes documentary complements the audio commentary nicely; it is obvious that everyone who worked on the film, from Marsh's British crew to the Wisconsin locals had a great deal of faith in both their director and the project.

Already the benificiary of great word of mouth on the festival circuit, Wisconsin Death Trip is bound to continue that success on home video where it can no doubt reach a wider audience. It's a unique little film that will have many viewers saying to their friends, "You know I saw the oddest movie last night. There was this woman that kept breaking windows....and a horse with Rapunzel-like hair....and this crazy opera singer....and it was all true."

Revisting the classics

Every once and a while, you decide to watch a film you haven't seen in years, one you know is great but has somehow faded in memory. Then, after seeing it again, you wonder why you don't watch it at least once a year.

Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger's The Red Shoes was a movie I had seen over ten years ago, had appreciated at the time, yet I now felt ready to see it again with fresh eyes (especially after having recently seen Black Narcissus for the first time). Here is a film that truly represents everything that cinema can do so well. The performances of Anton Walbrook, Marius Goring, and Moira Shearer are full of emotion and charisma. The script is complex yet speaks to the viewer in a near-universal way (even if art is not a major part of your life, everyone must deal with that tug of war between work and personal life). The editing of the "Red Shoes" ballet sequence achieves on film what would be impossible on the stage. This is all clothed in Brian Easdale's wonderful score and Jack Cardiff's remarkable cinematography. Cardiff's work here is some of the most astonishing color photography I have ever seen. Every scene is a wonder, from the aforementioned 12-minute-plus ballet sequence to Shearer and Goring's nighttime carriage ride, the moonlight shimmering on the surface of the ocean, the coach driver nodding off at the reigns.

The beauty of being a film buff is knowing that there is always something new out there waiting to be personally discovered (or, as in this case, rediscovered). Criterion's Red Shoes dvd has clips from many more of the Archers' films. Having seen only four (this, Black Narcissus, The Small Back Room, and Powell's solo Peeping Tom), these snippets really feed into that excitement of exploring those heretofore unseen (by me) works.

3-D Thursdays

Film Forum is following the sold-out success of their January run of Hitchcock's "Dial M for Murder" with a month of stereoscopic mania every Thursday -- beginning tonight with Raoul Walsh's "Gun Fury" (and the Three Stooges' "Pardon My Backfire").

Where Hitchcock's use of 3-D was subtle, unexpected, and domestic, my guess is that "Gun Fury" will leave people needing neckbraces from all the surprise action bursting from the screen. Adventure, violence, and swagger are the order of the night. But Walsh has a soft touch and amazing sensitivity, too. He's been called the only director who could get away with filming James Cagney sitting on his mother's lap (in "White Heat").

Here's a prize Manny Farber bit on Walsh:

If hardwares sold a house paint called Gusto [ed. - Don't they?], the number one customer would be Walsh: six decades in film using a jabbing, forthright crispness to occasionally vitalize the crudest hack fiction.

"Gun Fury" stars Rock Hudson as a fatigued soldier coming home from the Civil War, sick of violence. But when an ex-Confederate steals his fiance (Donna Reed), Hudson's raw masculine taste for blood comes back as he searches for his girl and the Rebel who took her. I don't think I need to say how this one turns out. The fun will be the variety of tomahawks and punches coming out at the audience in beautiful stereoscopic Technicolor.

Did you know that New York has a Stereoscopic Society devoted to promoting 3D images? Here's a good site that explains how stereoscopic vision (3D) works. And a disturbing answer to what the highest-grossing 3D movie of all time is.