tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-35570053579737663752024-03-18T15:45:40.301-04:00floating worldmusings and opinions on cinema and beyond by Dustin ChangDustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.comBlogger1582125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-47926170291447146222024-02-29T12:00:00.005-05:002024-03-01T08:38:22.915-05:00Rendez-Vous with French Cinema 2024 PreviewTaking place from February 29 through March 10, this popular annual festival showcases the verve, creativity, and depth of contemporary French cinema in a variety of genres.
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This year's opening night film is the critical and box office hit The Animal Kingdom starring Romain Duris, Adèle Axarchopoulos. Others in the lineup includes Little Girl Blue with Marion Cotillard, Book of Solutions, Michel Gondry's new film in 8 years and loads of films by talented newcomers - Ama Gloria by Marie Amachoukeli, Banel & Adama by Ramata-Toulaye Sy and Nora El Hourch's Sisterhood (HLM Pussy).
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With the recent critical success of Justine Triet's Anatomy of a Fall and Tran Anh Hung's Taste of Things, French cinema is having a moment with American Audiences. As always, Rendez-Vous provides the glimpse of what's hot in French cinema here and now.
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Rendez-Vous with French Cinema is sponsored by Villa Albertine, TV5 Monde, Maison Occitanie, FIAF, The Plaza, New York<br><br>
<b>Little Girl Blue</b> - Achache
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Filmmaker Mona Achache recreates her mother Carole through Marion Cotillard in understanding her suicide a fascinating docu-drama <b>Little Girl Blue</b>. In the beginning of the film, Achache hands her mother's jeans, t shirt, blue cardigan, glasses and a perfume to Cotillard who accepts quietly and transforms into Carole, a writer, photographer who left mountains of journals, photographs and audio recordings behind.
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Achache, uses a massive studio wall space to painstakingly catalog her mother's life, like a crime investigator. Carole, who herself had tumultuous relationship with her prolific writer mother, Monique, who hung out with other literary giants as Jean Genet, Maguerite Duras and William Faulkner in the 50s Paris.
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The film tells the abuse perpetuated by men (all coincidentally named Jean/Juan) and how it reverberates through generations. A little heavy on the use of stock footage to drive home the points, but Cotillard's committed performance on screen, as she fluffs the lines and retries under her breath are all documented as the process. It's a fascinating, personal art therapy of a film.
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<b>On the Adamant</b> - Philibert
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To Be and To Have director Nicolas Philibert's points his camera to the Adamant, a psychiatric daycare center for adults on the embankment of Seine. This floating, two story wooden structure is a safe haven for many people who struggle with mental illness. Philibert gently documents its patients and staff as they conduct series of workshops - music, painting, book keeping, jam making, etc. As one of the participants says, it's all about having someone to listen to their anxiety and neurosis.
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Philibert, with his infinite patience and compassion, listens to these people without judgment and shows how each individual is talented and unique in his/her own way in the process.
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<b>On the Adamant</b> softens its social stigma placed on mental illness.The Adamant is a project of St Maurice Hospital and all the patients are under some medication to control their conditions - many hear voices or suffer from hallucinations. By providing positive, calm environment, the project has been successfully operating since 2010. There's singing, there is poetry, there is traveling film screenings, all in the backdrop of the lively and romantic Seine. A real gem.
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<b>The Book of Solutions</b> - Gondry
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A typical Michel Gondry manchild protagonist is perfectly played by Pierre Niney. Niney is Marc, a film director first seen fleeing the film executive's board meeting after they watch the footage and shut down his project. He drives to his childhood village in the rural home with his producer, editor and assistant in tow, to working on editing his 4 hour long, incomprehensible film. He flushes away all his anti-depressants against the advice from his beloved aunt Denise, in order to free his creative energy and gets sidetracked by everything around him, much to the dismay of all his crew members. <br><br>
As always, Gondry puts his chaotic creative process on display while keeping it close to his heart with a film director as the protagonist. Not as visually creative as his earlier films but it has that madcap Gondry energy that is quite infectious.Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-45354304654919373772024-02-20T13:00:00.017-05:002024-02-20T13:00:00.235-05:00The Novelist's Films: The Cinema of Nuri Bilge Ceylan<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/149162636@N05/53526791348/in/dateposted-public/" title="Ceylan"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53526791348_ba5d81b68a_z.jpg" width="640" height="360" alt="Ceylan"/></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The latest film by Turkish film director, photographer, screenwriter, Nuri Bilge Ceylan, About Dry Grasses is three-plus hours of novelistic contemplation on human conditions in a stunning rural East Turkey backdrop.
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Among the best Turkish New Wave directors, along with Reha Erdem (Times and Tides, My Only Sunshine) and Semih Kaplanoğlu (Honey, Commitment Hasan) Ceylan built a reputation as the world's most novelistic filmmaker, with deliberately slow pacing, long takes and themes steeped in vagaries of human existence, in often beautiful rural and urban settings in Anatolia and Istanbul. Indeed, experiencing each of his films is similar to reading a great thick book. And it's deeply satisfying, every time.
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Ceylan studied engineering in school, then became a photographer: it is apparent that he has an eye for landscapes as you watch his films. Consider the snowy streets of Istanbul in Distant, ancient ruins on a hot summer day in Climates, the winding mountain roads from above at dusk in Once Upon a Time in Anatolia, the icicle covered resort in Winter Sleep, and snow-capped mountains in About Dry Grasses, just to name a few. And there is always a cinematic showstopper in every one of his films that makes your jaw drop.
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Yet, it's his juxtaposition of close-ups of the faces and their surroundings that gives meaning to his work. We humans exist among those spectacular places, with our jealousies, greed, lust, pride and other qualities intact.
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With his wife Ebru Ceylan as a writing partner on most of his films, along with actor/physician Ercan Kesal (Three Monkeys, Once Upon a Time in Anatolia) and actor/teacher Akin Aksu (Wild Pear Tree, About Dry Grasses), he sketches out great, lived-in melodramas like no other.
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Within the generous running time -- since Anatolia's comparitively modest 155 minutes, the runtime of Ceylan's films are more than three hours -- we get to know every main character in an intimate way with their faults and weaknesses, as well as their redeemable qualities. We get to live with them, like a main character in a great thick novel, at least a short while in darkened theaters. With Winter Sleep, the Palme d'Or winner 2013, adapting Anton Chekhov's play, The Wife, Ceylan explicitly let his audience know where his influences originate and where his interests lie thematically, while not sacrificing his cinematic playfulness.
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About About Dry Grasses:
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About Dry Grasses deals with the usual Ceylan themes: how to live within your environment without making your surroundings a personal living hell.
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Samet, our protagonist, skillfully played by Deniz Celiloglu, is a teacher in a small rural village, returning from the summer recess. He is counting the days until he is to reassigned and out of rural living, after the government's mandatory assignment period ends.
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He is easily irritable and self-centered. Overall, he is not a likable character, like many other of Ceylan's male protagonists. All three principal characters -- Samet, Nuray (Merve Dizdar, Best Actress at Cannes 2023), Kenan (Musab Ekici), and Sevim (16-year-old Ece Bağcı) -- are exceptionally great.
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There are many great moments in the film but one showstopper comes in late in the third act of the film. After accusations of inappropriate behavior with the students quiet down, Samet's favorite student Sevim poses for him outside school in the snowy field, as he is an amateur photographer.
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It's the closeup of Sevim's face, where Samet sees betrayal, lies and vengeance, while the audience sees innocence, beauty and indifference. While self-absorbed Samet might not realize, but we do, that it's our projection on others that makes our lives miserable.
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Also, it is the first time in a long while Ceylan plays with the film medium. He used non-professional actors until the mid-2000s. He even starred along with his wife Ebru in Climates as a fictional couple in a tale of disintegration of a marriage shot on digital video.
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If the run of Anatolia, Winter Sleep and The Wild Pear Tree gave the impression that the Turkish auteur is just making wordy filmed plays in a spectacular setting, About Dry Grasses will surprise you. There is a third-wall breaking scene in Grasses, where Samet and Nuray get intimate after being drunk.
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The camera follows Samet to the bathroom, then out the door to a film set in a lot, revealing that the tiny apartment filled with trinkets of Nuray's life is indeed a film set, which takes you out completely from the film narrative. It gives you a sudden jolt that all the characters' lives, their thoughts and intimate details and blemishes that you invested in for the last two hours, are indeed a fiction. That now you can take a breather and reset.
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With About Dry Grasses, we are witnessing a great, mature filmmaker paving his legacy as a novelistic filmmaker with a visual flair in the league of Tarkovsky and Bergman.
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About Dry Grasses enjoys its U.S. premiere Friday, February 23, at Film Forum in New York City.
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<a href="https://www.dustinchang.com/2012/01/once-upon-time.html" target="_blank">My review of Once Upon a Time in Anatolia (2012)</a><br><br>
<a href="https://www.dustinchang.com/search?q=winter+sleep" target="_blank">My review of Winter Sleep (2014)</a><br><br>
<a href="https://www.dustinchang.com/search?q=winter+sleep">My review of Wild Pear Tree (2018)</a>
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-27527383837311491732024-02-09T10:38:00.001-05:002024-02-09T10:38:30.383-05:00Greed<b>Unter dir die Stadt/The City Below</b> (2011) - Hochhäusler
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Non-descript glass and steel skyscrapers of Frankfurt are as much characters as the cold and calculating people who inhabit in Christoph Hochhäusler's take on Global Financial Crisis of 2007-2008. A young couple Oliver (Mark Waschke) and Svenja (Nicolette Krebitz) just moved to Frankfurt because Oliver got a job at a big bank which is headed by the 'banker of the year' recipient Roland (Robert Hunger-Bühler). Oliver is one of the many ambitious young men who are jockeying up the corporate ladder in a cutthroat environment. They pose for a group picture while saying "GREED". The bank is in the process of acquiring a rival in a ruthless takeover under Roland's instructions while hushing up the kidnapping and gruesome death of an employee in their Indonesian branch, as the Asian Economic Crisis deepens. Svenja wonders through the urban jungle made of glass, lying about her work experiences on her CV as a photo editor while half-heartedly applying for jobs. She casually walks on by at her husband's high-tech, antiseptic new workplace, and catches Roland's attention. Against all his instinct and judgment, he becomes obsessed with the young woman. She as well, perhaps knowing who he is, goes along with his advances and ends up in a hotel room with him. Then they think better of themselves and go their separate ways.
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An opportunity comes up to get rid of Oliver from the picture, dressed up as a promotion. It's the position of as the new head of their Indonesian branch, replacing the recently deceased. Even though he is not the most qualified, Roland pushes for Oliver, in pursuit of Svenja. Soon as Oliver leaves, their affair begins.
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It is interesting to see their inexplicable attractions to each other, gliding over everything: the impact of the takeover resulting in the loss of hundreds of jobs, and their affair taking a toll on Roland's and company's reputation, possible death of the husband. The word love is never uttered by anyone. The affair is not even overly sexual. It's the greed that takes over in a highly capitalized environment where everyone unknowingly plays power games over each other. It's the greed that breeds like a disease. It's as if Roland and Svenja are there but not there doing what they are doing. The disease has taken them over and they are just going through the motions. The ominous ending, as mass of people running down the street, seen by the morally bankrupt, cheating couple, is chilling. The end of the capitalism has begun.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-26410450286444079952024-02-05T16:35:00.003-05:002024-02-13T23:26:48.156-05:00Small Things<b>Perfect Days</b> (2023) - Wenders
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It's been a long while that Wim Wenders made a good film. So this Japan shot with all Japanese cast Perfect Days is sort of a comeback for the filmmaker. And the beauty is in its simplicity.
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Koji Yakusho plays Hirayama, a city worker who cleans the public toilets. His simple daily routine is repeated day after day, starting in his modest small apartment in Tokyo- he gets up at the sound of a neighbor sweeping the streets in early dawn, puts away his beddings, brushes his teeth, puts on his onesie blue uniform, picks up the items that are laid out on side table on the way out, picks up a canned coffee from a bending machine next to his house, off in his blue van full of cleaning supplies to the various public toilets in the city, eats his lunch in the park, takes some pictures with his old style 35mm film camera, works some more, goes home, change, goes to the public bath house to bathe, then to a eatery in a market for dinner, reads in bed a little bit, then goes to bed. Repeat.
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He is a man of few words. There are some who knows him and regularly greets him. He finds life's pleasures in small things - the sunlight shining through the tree branches, listening to classic rock on cassette tape in his van, finding and reading books from a dollar rack at a local bookstore. He doesn't bother anybody and doesn't let others get to him too much. There are others - his young colleague and his girlfriend, his young niece who runs away from home to stay in his tiny apartment, an ex-husband of a bar hostess at the bar that he frequents on his day off. He interacts with them, not in many words, but with warmth and smiles. Yakusho, nearing his 70s, showing his age and experience in his bad-liver eyes, doesn't have to explain much. He's seen things and experienced things. And that's enough.
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There's a certainly a backstory on Hirayama that is left unexplored, rather wisely by Wenders and co-writer Takuma Takasaki. Cleaning toilet is the lowest job one can think of. But it's just a job. If it's a self punishment, we do not get to know. But I think he is past all that. He's just an old man, living his quiet life all by himself happily. It's the repetition of his daily routine, and being happy to know that there is another day that he can see the sunrise, swaying leaves, listen to Lou Reed and Patti Smith and drink a canned coffee.
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Shot on full frame and with simple but elegant layered black and white images and interior lighting that reminds you of Robbie Müller days, Perfect Days is a beautifully framed film.
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There's a very zen-like quality in Perfect Days. Is that Wenders converting the Buddhism late in life? There's a scene where two grown men, one dying of cancer, playing shadow tag, like little children. Perfect Days is a guiless movie that makes you think about enjoying simple things in life. Forget about the complicated life you are leading in a complicated world for a second. Play childish games once in a while and enjoy the moment.
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The film opens on 2/7 at Angelika Film Center and Lincoln Square.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-35141412838509861402024-01-28T23:58:00.010-05:002024-01-29T07:35:01.363-05:00Oracle of Cinema<b>Images of the World and the Inscription of War</b> (1989) - Farocki
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We first see the giant wave making machines at work in Hamburg. Scientists are trying to find the pattern in ocean waves however impossible of a task it is. Harun Farocki then connects that with the age of enlightenment and human technology. Enlightenment in German is Aufklärung which also means reconnaissance, in military terms, it's also flight reconnaissance. Photography was used for evaluators to evaluate the scale of the buildings without fear of falling to their death when measuring buildings. Photography is also used to verify the right targets in World War 2 during air raids.
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Farocki rightly questions the acuities of 'seeing is believing' with the example of why Auswitz was never bombed by the Allied despite two escapees testimonials of atrocities there. It didn't look like a munitions factory and therefore not a priority. It was two Pentagon officials in 1977 who admitted that they were examining these aerial photos and clearly seeing crematorium and air vents and lines to the gas chambers.
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Images of the World and the Inscription of War predicts our current world - drone warfare, surveillance state, deepfake and misinformation wars in astonishing detail without ever mentioning internet or AI. A photographer from the occupying forces in Algeria took photos of Algerian women without their veils and published the photo book in 1960. At one point, a voice of a woman who has been narrating the film in absolute objectivity until then, asks, "How can a face of a human being be described with certainty, so that it can be recognized by everyone, by a machine?"
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Both nazi's and concentration camp survivors took detailed records in numbers - one the evidence of genocide, the other, coded evidence for preservation and uprising.
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Farocki, as a film essayist, shared many of the same traits as Godard and Alexander Kluge, but he was more direct and succinct than the other two. His ability in provoking the audience to think for themselves while guiding slightly with big ideas had no equal. With wars in Ukraine and Gaza in the internet age, the misinformation wars are raging like never before and I can't help noticing how prescient Farocki's film is.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-5925312611522538552024-01-25T13:00:00.006-05:002024-01-25T13:00:00.135-05:00Mix and Match<b>The Seeding</b> (2023) - Clay
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Barnaby Clay's <b>The Seeding</b> mixes and matches <b>The Hills Have Eyes</b> with <b>Woman in the Dunes</b>. But it lacks the grit, fast pacing plot of the Hills and the aesthetic beauty and metaphorical depth in storytelling of the Japanese New Wave classic. <br><br>Don't get me wrong, a movie doesn't have to be anything other than what it promises - with the implication of the title and the macabre poster, <b>The Seeding</b> is a horror through and through. Yes, with the first glimpse of the 'strays' (the young cannibals who prey on tourists), you know where exactly the movie is headed.
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A photographer (Scott Haze) gets lost in a California desert after documenting a solar eclipse. He then gets lured in by a woman (Kate Lyn Sheil, Kate Plays Christine, She Dies Tomorrow) singing at night. She lives in a shack at what seems to be the bottom of a quarry drained of water, which is only accessible by a rope ladder. For the next one hour and forty minutes, things don't go well for the photographer. After getting stuck down in the quarry with the not-so-talkative woman who wouldn't divulge any useful information for him to escape or call for help, he tries to scale the wall with a pickaxe, only to end up injuring himself. And who are these feral marauding teenagers who at first seem to be helping him but ending up with toying with him and taunt him? The woman is vague about these 'strays' about their origins or their intentions. With an injured leg and without prospects of escaping, the photographer slowly begins to accept his fate and gives in to temptations, after seeing the woman taking sponge baths in front of him night after night. Now that she is pregnant and only food and supplies are from the strays above, by lowering down with a rope, he tries his hands at some farming and engage in pleasant conversations with the woman who doesn't seem to be aware the comfort of the modern world.
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Clays sets the tone early on with moody score and a shot of feral child munching on a severed finger. And there are some pretty experimental blot art sequences throughout. But the film's predictable storyline and uninspired dialog will certainly invite a lot of scrutinizing: Why did he climb all the way down the ladder at night in the first place when he could've simply call her from above? Why didn't he forcefully get the story out of the woman in the first place? Why there are no search parties or park rangers to look for him for nine plus months? How can the woman and strays and their ancestors not be noticeable in the national park all these years for generations? Where does the woman get electricity to light the shack and cook meals?
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<b>The Seeding</b> features some striking sceneries and sets an impending doom with great sound design but with stilted performances and plot holes, it stops short at delivering an intense psychological survival horror usually associated with 'trapped' narrative.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-13166872119964790092024-01-19T18:13:00.006-05:002024-02-13T23:34:55.399-05:00Warm Bodies<b>Fallen Leaves</b> (2023) - Kaurismaki
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Aki Kaurismaki's micro romance Fallen Leaves isn't revolutionary or anything, but it nevertheless succeeds in warming your heart. It concerns two lonely working class Helsinkians crossing paths and falling for each other in that driest, most deadpan Kaurismaki way possible. And as usual with his recent films (Le Havre and The Other Side of Hope), the state of the world (Russian invasion of Ukraine just began at the time the film was being made), is always on the airwaves reminding us how f'd up the world around us is.
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Ansa (Alma Pöysti) is first seen stocking the shelves in a grocery store under the watchful eyes of a bulldog-like security guard. She sometimes takes expired food home and also gives away expired items to others. Her daily routine is pretty monotonous and uneventful. Holappa (Jussi Vatanen) is a construction worker who is constantly drinking at the job. He drinks because he is depressed. He is depressed because he drinks. They first exchange glances in a karaoke bar, accompanying their more sociable friends. But they are not talkative types. Then they meet again on the street. They go out for coffee, then to movies. They watch Jim Jarmusch's zombie comedy The Dead Don't Die. She gives him her phone number which he immediately loses. They lose their jobs for stealing and drinking. They go through one low wage menial jobs to another. After waiting at the movies, he meets her again and she invites him for dinner. This time he puts her address in his wallet. Dinner goes well. But losing many family members to alcohol, she can't allow someone with drinking problems in her life.
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I'm glad Kaurismaki is getting a lot of accolades for this film, but Fallen Leaves is not too different from any other of his deadpan comedies. While his fellow deadpan comedy comrade Jarmusch is delving into zombie genre, Kaurismaki is making romance. While sad songs punctuate and homages to many great romantic films where two would be lovers are separated and need to find their ways to one another play out, the Finnish master makes room in our darkest times for us to smile, even for a short while. Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-58267347602102963962024-01-15T10:07:00.007-05:002024-01-16T12:07:24.738-05:00Soup for the Soul<b>Here</b> (2023) - Devos
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Devos's nocturnal ASMR session continues with Here, after Ghost Traffic. Just like in his previous film, Devos explores the interconnected lives of immigrants in Brussels. If the night was the rug that tied rooms together, this time it's the forest in an urban setting. And as always, in its full frame presentation and still images, it's gorgeous.
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A good looking Romanian construction worker (Stefan Gota) is about to take his well earned vacation and drive off soon as his car is fixed. In the mean time, he is clearing out his fridge and using all the remaining vegetables to make a batch of soup in order not to have them go to waste before his trip. He takes his soup in containers to give to his friends and relatives. A Chinese bryologist and lecturer (Liyo Gong) who is working at her auntie's Chinese takeout place meets him one day as he takes shelter from the rain and eats in the restaurant. They converse about his wet shoes.
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When he walks through the park on the way to retrieve his car from the garage, he meets the bryologist again, studying and collecting moss samples there in the forest with her little magnifying glass. She introduces him to the world of mosses, and fascinated by the whole ecosystem through the magnifying glass, they are lost in time and spend all day together and walking and talking in deep of the park.
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There's a little magic about the film. The mysterious seedlings that glow, the sound of nearby train running replaced by rustling of the trees and unseen birds, the well timed rain showers, etc. The little romance between the two charcters are so understated and happens literally off the frame, yet so sublimely lovely. Remember, making soup for somebody is the most romantic thing to do.Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-57333402656096085662024-01-10T16:01:00.002-05:002024-01-10T16:02:42.537-05:00Posthistory<b>Last Things</b> (2023) - Stratman
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Deborah Stratman's new film, Last Things, composed mostly of found footage, is a Sci-fi non-fiction about the future imagined from the point of view of a rock. 16mm timelapse images of crystals forming, the living cell structures, 3D satellite footages of a distant planet, the sight of Petra in southern Jordan, Darwin's evolutionary trees, staging of 'star people', accompanied by great sound design and music, the film is an multifaceted, engaging, fascinating contemplation of time in the face of our environmental catastrophe. It's Based on the text of J.-H. Rosny (narrated by Valérie Massadian in English and French). And with the help of structural geologist Dr. Marcia Bjørnerud, the filmmaker lays down the vision of the future where all living things have died out and cyclical nature of how all things start and end and start again.
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Dr. Bjørnerud talks about polytemprality. Everywhere you go, you see the remnants of the deep time. Your backyard could have been under shallow sea 400 million years ago, or the river valley that was carved into clay by a giant lake during the late ice age. The way Stratman goes about presenting the smallness of human existence within the deep time with a completely unsentimental eye is, above all things, refreshing. Clocking in short 50 minutes, Last Things is, as usual, an aesthetically, politically, intellectually invigorating work by Stratman. Please go watch on film print at Anthology Film Archives starting 1/12. Stratman will be doing Q&A in person on this Friday and Saturday.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-58445654584785564112024-01-08T12:01:00.007-05:002024-01-09T09:05:05.071-05:00Pig Brain<b>Monster</b> (2023) - Kore-eda
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What seemingly starts out as a rashomon style abuse accusation in a school drama, Kore-eda's new film Monster is actually about something completely different. It's a massively poignant lovestory and an indictment of the bigotted society where people assume the worst in each other. It tells a elementary school kid Minato (Soya Kurokawa) being accused of bullying another child Yori (Hinata Hiiragi), and in turn punished by a young teacher Hori (Eita Nagayama). When Minato's single mom (Sakura Ando) notices about his son's odd behavior and sullenness, she complains to the principal of the school. But the principal and other teachers have already built an impenetrable wall to protect school's reputation and repeats the scripted response and apology to her. Enraged, mom finally gets Hori fired. But her son's odd behavior doesn't stop. On the eve of a tropical storm approaching the area, Minato disappears. His mom and Hori, start looking for him in the storm.
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Then the film goes back to tell the same moments - some seemed insignificant and some pivotal before, from the kid's perspective and reveals innocent friendship and moving lovestory between two kids. Japan, like other countries (let's not kid ourselves, all countries are conservative) still maintain gender affirming activities in media and at home. Parents convince themselves that they can 'fix' their children if boys or girls are not behaving like boys or girls. We scrutinize everyone for their supposed roles in society and presume their shortfalls- Single mothers are drama queens, too protective of their children, Teachers should never visit bar hostesses, for example.
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The society full of stereotyping and prejudices, children can't express what they feel, not only not to adults but to each other either. Rather they become cruel liars. It's not that they are evil. But the harm is done.
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As is the case with Kore-eda films, he gets the most outstanding performances out of young actors. Both Kurokawa and Hiiragi shine in their demanding roles emoting in their uncertain stares and silences. As usual, Sakura Ando is a national treasure as a frustrated single mom and an unsuspecting role model. And both Nagayama and Yuko Tanaka (who plays the principal) are great in their supporting roles. The late Ryuichi Sakamoto's score adds to the film's greatness.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-49616066364416719292024-01-06T10:27:00.001-05:002024-01-06T10:27:14.140-05:00Rhythm ThiefThrenody (2004) - Dorsky
In pictures
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<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/149162636@N05/53446712025/in/dateposted-public/" title="Screen Shot 2024-01-06 at 9.54.41 AM"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/53446712025_188b66cc6a_z.jpg" width="640" height="360" alt="Screen Shot 2024-01-06 at 9.54.41 AM"/></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-49160194547782696452024-01-05T12:38:00.003-05:002024-01-05T12:38:15.352-05:00Girlfriends <b>Girlfriends (1978) - Weill
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Criterion recently put out the 4K restored version of Girlfriends and I can't recommend this film more. It's really fantastic. Susan (Melanie Mayron) and Annie (Anita Skinner) are roommates in a tenement apartment in New York City in the 70s. Susan is an aspiring photographer and Annie is a writer in the beginning of their career. They are best friends who can help each other out on their work when they need a second pair of eyes. Susan takes gigs as a photographer at bar mitzvah and weddings with the help of an older rabbi (Eli Wallach) at the local synagogue.
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Things change with the news of Annie announcing that she is getting married and move to the suburbs. Susan is happy for her friend but also protests, "How can you marry him? You don't even know him!" It's a financial burden to cover the rent all by herself but also liberating to have her own space. Susan paints the wall red and starts going out with a young local artist she met at a party. Even though she spends most of the time in his apartment, she doesn't want to give up her apartment/independence. He could be annoying sometimes. She also starts relationship with the rabbi who is married.
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Visit to Annie and Martin in the suburbs further illuminates the different life paths they took. Married life with a kid in the suburbs or being single in the city and struggling? Susan feels that their friendship is fading. On the way home, Susan picks up a young woman hitchhiker, Ceil (Amy Wright), a dancer who is very insistent about crashing at Susan's apartment until she gets her shit together. At first the arrangement is fine, but Ceil's inconsiderate behaviors are getting to Susan who needs her own space.
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After landing a show in a downtown gallery with a very supportive, eccentric gallery owner, she invites everyone. But Annie doesn't show. Martin who came alone says that Annie's not feeling well. Susan decides to visit her by driving up to Annie's suburban house after the show. She finds out that Annie had an abortion. It turns out the married life is not what she thought it would be. They look at one another and share an understanding smile before Martin gets home.
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Girlfriends is a very natural, great depiction of being a woman in the beginning of her career. It's not preachy in any ways and not judgmental about the characters it portrays. It's their decisions to make those life choices and will have to live with them. There is no wrong or right choice. There is only her choice. Independence is the key word in Girlfriends. Then there is sisterhood. It's a great film. Male supporting characters include, Bob Balaban and Christopher Guest.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-8910034785820100272024-01-02T12:23:00.002-05:002024-01-02T12:23:07.341-05:00Acknowledging the Past, Then Moving On<b>Poor Things</b> (2023) - Lanthimos
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Visually and thematically audacious, Yorgos Lanthimos's fantastical steam punk period piece, Poor Things, plays out like a female version of a Terry Gilliam film, but good. It also shares a lot in common with my other favorite this year, Bertrand Bonello's time traveling period sci-fi, The Beast, as both films set in Victorian era. But whereas Bonello's film is based on Henry James's novella, Beast of the Jungle of 1903 which is very much a product of its time- the preoccupation with fate, predetermination and compounded trauma that would repeat itself over generations, Poor Things, based on a 1990 Scottish satrical novel by Alasdair Gray, Poor Things: Episodes from the Early Life of Archibald McCandless M.D., Scottish Public Health Officer, is a parodic look at its Victorian age and refreshingly forward looking in its main character's self determination.
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Bella Baxter (Emma Stone) is a revived pregnant suicide victim by mad genius doctor Godwin Baxter (Willem Defoe), who swaps her fetus's brain with the dead woman's. Therefore, Bella has an unencumbered infant's mind that slowly will need to learn the way of things in life. Godwin assigns his good natured pupil McCandles (Ramy Youssef) to look after Baxter and soon the young man is smitten by Bella's beauty and her total lack of social ettiquettes. Fearing her being taken advantage by the rotten world outside the confines of his castle, Godwin makes McCandles Bella's betrothed. As soon as she grows and learn sexual pleasures, she is prayed on by shyster playboy Duncun Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo) and leaves the country in a sensual whirlwind trip across Europe and North Africa. There Bella learns that physical pleasure is not all there is to be in the world, but pain, pain of others and injustices also exist.
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The heightened sense of Victorian imagination, in the hands of Lanthimos, the turn of the century Europe - From Lisbon and Athens to Paris and Alexandria are colorful and whimsical in that bizaare early Czech animation (ie. Karel Zeman) way. Bella learns the world's injustices and unfairness first-hand and determines her destiny every step of the way herself while keeping her always sunny and curious disposition. It might be a naive notion to think that our super complicated 21st century society is just a construct that the past doesn't hold any influence over our lives, that human beings start as a blank page and free to self determine the future. But it's a nice thought.Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-37189282540257375092023-12-21T09:35:00.000-05:002023-12-21T09:35:00.697-05:00Tryin’ to Get Over: Post-Civil Rights Era Soundscape in Black Films<b>Tryin’ to Get Over: Post-Civil Rights Era Soundscape in Black Films:</b>
<b>How <i>The Spook Who Sat by the Door</i> and <i>Superfly</i> Soundtracks Reflected Changing Times</b>
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Since the beginning of cinema, music has been an integral part of filmmaking: from silent era films accompanied by live music on stage, to Golden Age of musicals in 1930s- 50s, to orchestral arrangements of individual composers such as Elmer Bernstein, Ennio Morricone and Morris Jarre in the 60s, and jazz and pop composers such as Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, Herbie Hancock. By the late 1960s, even though there were still many music themed films made in Hollywood, the costly musical genre had all but died out. With troubles abroad - the Vietnam War, and at home - anti-war protests, race riots and political assassinations, the new generations of Hollywood filmmakers decided to reflect the mood of the nation not only in their films but in music as well by working with seasoned and popular musicians who were in transition themselves.<br><br>
Also, Hollywood was taking notice in the Black audience market, which accounted for 30 percent of all movie-going public at the time. Driven by demographics, economics, and the political realities of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements, the studios hired their first black directors, who would redefine the African American image on the big screen. And who would they choose to collaborate for their motion picture soundtrack? Naturally, the biggest and most popular names in music of the era. And these Black filmmakers understood the power and sway of music on general audiences.<br><br>
One can’t ignore the Blaxploitation phenomenon when discussing African American filmmaking or black representation in the 1970s. The African American community had entered a new phase in the Black Freedom Movement. America was witnessing a political shift from African Americans engagement primarily in non-violent Civil Rights tactics towards their participation in move vociferous Black Power actions. (Acham P.113) Long simmering tensions boiled over across the United States in July 1967, with violent rebellions - labeled “race riots” by the press - exploding in New York, Detroit, Milwaukee, Toledo, Houston, Newark, and other cities. President Lyndon Johnson’s Kerner Commission found systematic racism that Governmental institutions failed to address the poverty, crime, drug addiction, joblessness, inequality, poor housing, and general hopelessness growing in many African American communities. (Ryfle p.12) Sidney Poitier became number one box office drawer in 1967. His success was based on mainstream US acceptance of the roles that he played which were typically sidekick characters who supported white counterparts in obtaining their dreams. Poitier was now seen as an integrationist hero and was considered behind the times. (Acham p.113)<br><br>
After the success of films such as Sweet Sweet Baadasssss Song (1971), Cotton Comes to Harlem (1970) and Watermelon Man (1970), black themed movies were generally marketed through the iconography of blaxploitation regardless of the narrative content of the film. This meant that films with predominantly black casts and/or themes surrounding race were seen at the time as occupying the same discursive space. At a time when African Americans’ battle with oppression heightened, and worsening city problems were evident, films that celebrated overcoming The Man were empowering and enjoyable. (Acham p.114) While many 1970s black-themed films were using limited black talent, The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1971), not only boasted a black cast, but black director Ivan Dixon and black writer Sam Greenlee. Greenlee, a Chicagoan who experienced racism firsthand while in the military, and while stationed in Iraq, found kinship with the oppressed Iraqis under the British and US backed monarchy, wrote The Spook which he then adapted as a screenplay for Dixon’s film.<br><br>
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On the surface, The Spook Who Sat by the Door looks like any other blaxploitation film. There’s the man who says things like, “those people make great athletes,” and “This is no place for misplaced cotton pickers.” There’s judo, there is Black militancy, there’s prostitute and there’s that offensive title. “Spook” here has a double meaning, spy, and a derogatory term to address an African American. But the film is much more radical than that. Taking advantage during the integration era, a black man named Don Freeman, patiently works up the ranks as a token black CIA agent, learning everything he could while being a model employee and in turn use all the knowledge, he acquired into an urban armed guerrilla warfare in his native Chicago against authorities. By the end, the film advocates armed uprising by the disenfranchised blacks in every major city in America. Despite the success of the film’s opening gross of half a million dollars in the first three days, the film was pulled from theaters and shelved.<br><br>
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Herbie Hancock, a pianist, keyboardist, and composer extraordinaire, first rising to prominence as a pivotal figure of the post-bop jazz movement of the 1960s, most notably through collaboration with Miles Davis’ incredible Second Quartet, continued to innovate, boldly embracing new technologies and new approaches in music. His keen interests in crossover appeal of jazz with soul, R&B, and funk, went on to become one of the most well-known and popular composers in American music. It was Italian film director Michelangelo Antonioni’s first English language feature film, Blow-Up (1966) that Hancock provided music for its soundtrack for the first time. Antonioni, a big jazz fan, knew Hancock’s music. The film, reflecting the decadence and excess of the decade, was perfectly accompanied by Hancock’s groovy, percussion heavy soundtrack. And like many of his compositions, “Bring Down the Birds” from the Blow-Up soundtrack would be sampled and enjoy a second life in the 90s in Deee Lite’s “Groove is in the Heart (1990).” <br><br>
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His seventh album The Prisoner (1969) was dedicated to the Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. who was assassinated the year before, the album and many of the songs on it reflect African American experience at the time. The most beautiful and delicate composition in the album is the first track I Have a Dream, invoking MLK’s famous speech at the steps of Lincoln Memorial in 1963, featuring a haunting flute by flutist Herbert Laws. This was the last album Hancock made with the legendary jazz label, Blue note. The second film he scored was The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1971). Dixon and Hancock met on the set of Hogan's Heroes (1965-71), an American TV sitcom, where Dixon played Staff Sergeant Kinch. Dixon knew his music and asked him to compose the soundtrack. <br><br>
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At the time of their collaboration, Hancock’s was moving on to something different. He signed with Warner Brothers Music and made forays into popular music including composing many jingles for TV commercials and Bill Cosby’s animated TV special Hey, Hey, Hey, It’s Fat Albert (1969). Musically, Hancock was going through his Mwandishi phase. It was his first departure from the traditional idioms of jazz, as well as the beginning of original and creative style which eventually appealed to a wider audience. Mwandishi means composer in Swahili, the name he chose for himself in the late 1960s to early 70s. Mwandishi (1971) happens to be the name of his 9th studio album. Albums he produced between 1969 - 1973 are now known as the work of Hancock’s Mwandishi period. Deeply influenced by Miles Davis’ foray into electronic music and working on In a Silent Way (1969) and Bitches Brew (1970) with the master trumpeter, he began to experiment with combining electronic with acoustic instruments during this period. Along with his Mwandishi albums, the soundtrack of The Spook marks the jazz pianist’s move from a straighter jazz sound to funk and a transition that would reach its apex with 1983’s “Rock It!” A hit single featured in his album Future Shock (1983) using scratching, drum machines and synthesizers, confounded jazz critics, set the blueprint for rap and much of the pop music for the coming years. Including dialog and sound from the film, the soundtrack is an important precursor to modern film soundtracks. Hancock worked on about ten soundtracks since then, most notably, Death Wish (1974), A Soldier’s Story (1984), Around Midnight (1986), Colors (1988) and Harlem Nights (1989). As an educator, Hancock influenced countless young talents over the years as a chair and an artistic director of Herbie Hancock Institute of Jazz at USC.<br><br>
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Unlike Ivan Dixon’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door which fell into obscurity after it opened and only to be rediscovered with the proliferation of home videos and streaming much later on, Gordon Parks Jr.’s Super Fly (1972) was a bona fide hit, grossing more than 4 million dollars at the box office. A film about a suave cocaine dealer, Super Fly has many of the negative stereotypes the blaxploitation genre was accused of perpetuating - pimps, hustlers, degradation of women, violence, and drug use. Youngblood Priest (Ron O’Neal), a tall, handsome black man with long flowing black hair and hyper fashionable attire with a big car and beautiful white and black girlfriends, lives a luxurious lifestyle in Harlem. He is a man of action and a ruthless boss. No one rips him off and everyone has to pay. But with all the money he is generating selling drugs, he still yearns to go straight. With his partner Eddie, he is trying to score big one last time before he retires from the drug business. The plan is, with $300,000 he and Eddie have, to buy 30 kilos of high-quality cocaine and turn it around for one million, split between them and get out of business. Eddie, although going along with the plan, is unsure. For him, dealing drugs is the only option left to them by “the Man”. After their goon, Freddie, gets killed by the police, they find out that it is the deputy police commissioner Reardon’s intention to keep them in the game and in his pocket. Although Eddie likes the idea of police protection and continuing being the drug dealer, Priest is his own man and no one else can have power over his life. After his mentor, Scatter, who helped him start the business, feeds him the information on the Reardon before he gets killed by the police, Priest devises a plan to escape the drug underworld clean with a big middle finger to the corrupt system. <br><br>
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The film struck a core with black youth film goers and became a cultural phenomenon. It also resonated with the post-Civil Rights Movement generation of African Americans, who saw Youngblood as a new example of how to rise in the American class system. Super Fly’s focus on black underground wealth generation was energized by its rejection of the two classic protest strategies of integration and transformation- the film spoke to disillusionment with both racially ameliorative civil rights politics and radical black nationalism. (Quinn, p.88) Classic civil rights mobilization was based upon those who worked hard at honest callings, whatever their origins, could better themselves and lift their children’s prospects. By romanticizing black criminal life, Super Fly was detrimental to their cause. In one pivotal scene, three “black militants” approach Priest and Eddie and challenge them to give something back to the community. “It is time for you to pay some dues!” Priest responds, “Unless you start killing some whitey, go sing your marching songs somewhere else.” In its staging of business dynamism outside of mainstream white structures, Super Fly proved extremely attractive in a hardening sociopolitical climate. Priest can be seen as a self-made African American outlaw entrepreneur, determined to transcend the endless cycle of crime and danger to which “the Man” has conscribed him, and smart and tough enough to succeed.
Curtis Mayfield was a singer, lyricist and record producer who started his career in a vocal group The Impressions. It was his socially conscious lyrics that made such songs as “Keep on Pushing (1964)” and “People Get Ready (1965)” being embraced by the Civil Rights leaders and utilized during the decades’ many freedom rides, that elevated Mayfield from soul group member to poet/artist/activist.<br><br>
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In 1970 Mayfield went solo and released Curtis (1970) and Roots (1971). With songs such as “The Other Side of Town,” “We the People Who are Darker than Blue,” and “Move on Up," he continued to show that he was acutely aware of America’s racial, and class divide and was not afraid to discuss it. <br><br>
Recorded in just three days, the soundtrack made an indelible mark on pop consciousness. Blaxploitation films had opened an ancillary market for black musicians. Earth Wind and Fire perform the music for Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song (1971), Isaac Hayes did Shaft (1971) and Marvin Gaye did Trouble Man (1972). Now it was Mayfield’s turn.<br><br>
In Super Fly soundtrack, Mayfield continued to offer his social commentary. For James Stewart in his article Message in the Music, it was a deliberate attempt to neutralize the thematic content and visual imagery by producing audio commentaries challenging the glorification of the underground economy. “In effect, these cultural warriors engaged in a type of guerrilla campaign against external cultural manipulation. (Stewart p.211) <br><br>
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The first single from the soundtrack, which was released just before the film hit the theaters, “Freddie’s Dead,” was a massive hit and sold more than a million copies. Freddie, a good-hearted yet weak willed man caught up in the life of a pusher, is killed unceremoniously in the film. Mayfield eulogizes this side character this way:<br><br>
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<blockquote>Everybody's misused him, ripped him up and abused him.
Another junkie plan, pushin' dope for the man.
A terrible blow, but that's how it goes.
If you don’t try, you’re gonna die.
Why can’t we brothers protect one another?
No one’s serious, and it makes me furious,
Don’t be misled, just think of Fred.</blockquote>
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Mayfield was by far the best-remunerated African American on the project. Earnings from performance rights and royalties feld back to Mayfield because he owned his own publishing company and independent record label, Curtom Records, founded in 1963. The hit singles “Super Fly'' and “Freddie’s Dead” both sold more than one million copies, and the crossover soundtrack album went on to shift a colossal twelve million units. Mayfield ultimately earned more than $5 million for his soundtrack. (Quinn p.89)<br><br>
After the critical and financial success of Super Fly,” Mayfield went on to score several more blaxploitation soundtrack albums: Claudine (1974), Let’s Do It Again (1975), Sparkle (1976), Short Eyes (1977) and A Piece of Action (1977). <br><br>
Riding the tide of blaxploitation boon in the early to mid 70s, many of the prominent African American musicians from different genres and backgrounds were given the opportunity to collaborate and explore their craft and artistry to not only reflect the changing society but to help shape and sway African American youth to let themselves heard and protest the Civil Rights Movement’s unkept promises. Herbie Hancock lend his name and music to a radical, revolutionary black film while continuing his exploration of electronic music and found his way to a wider audience, working with different musicians and filmmakers. For Mayfield, while making a cultural milestone with a blaxploitation film soundtrack, he was afforded to counterbalance the negative reaction to the film with his activist lyrics.
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Bibliography
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Guest, Hayden. “Soundtrack by Herbie Hancock. Harvard Film Archive.” (February 2014).
https://harvardfilmarchive.org/programs/soundtrack-by-herbie-hancock
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Quinn, Eithne. “‘Tryin’ to Get Over’: ‘Super Fly’, Black Politics, and Post—Civil Rights Film
Enterprise.” Cinema Journal 49, no. 2 (2010): 86–105.
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Telotte, J.P. “The New Hollywood Musical: From Saturday Night Fever to Footloose.” In Genre and Contemporary Hollywood, ed. Stephen Neale, London: Bloomsbury (2001): 48-61.
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Ryfle, Steve. “The Politics of Super Fly: The Blaxploitation Classic That Defined an African-American Battle for Self-Determination on Screen.” Cinéaste 44, no. 2 (2019): 12–16.
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Stafford, James. “From the Stacks: Herbie Hancock- The Spook Who Sat by the Door.” Why It Matters. (August 25, 2015).
https://wimwords.com/2015/08/23/from-the-stacks-herbie-hancock-the-spook-who-sat-by-the-door/
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Stewart, James B. “Message in the Music: Political Commentary in Black Popular Music from Rhythm and Blues to Early Hip Hop.” The Journal of African American History 90, no. 3 (2005): 196–225.
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Yaquinto, Marilyn. “Cinema as Political Activism: Contemporary Meanings in The Spook Who Sat by the Door.” Black Camera 6, no. 1 (2014): 5–33. https://doi.org/10.2979/blackcamera.6.1.5.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-49144608664848927032023-12-20T09:00:00.025-05:002023-12-20T09:50:02.158-05:00Top 20 Favorite Films of 2023What a year. Feels like everything fell apart and went to hell this year. Everything was bad...except for cinema which was exceptionally good. So, L O N G L I V E C I N E M A ! ? !
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Missed Fallen Leaves, About Dry Grasses, La Chimera and Poor Things. Maybe next year. Happy Holidays folks!
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Pacifiction, Unrest, Trenque Lauquen, Dry Ground Burning, Showing Up ended up in <a href="https://www.dustinchang.com/2022/12/top-30-favorite-films-2022.html">my 2022 Favorite list</a>.
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1. <b>La bête/The Beast</b> - Bonello
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With arresting visuals and seductive filmmaking, Bonello has been chronicling our troubled 21st century like no other, with a string of films that are pretty, but not too pretty: House of Tolerance (sex workers rights), Nocturama (aimless angst of youth), Zombie Child (haunted by colonialism). and most recently Coma (Covid-19 lockdown). This time, Bonello is freely adapting Henry James's turn-of-the-century novella, The Beast of the Jungle. It tells of two would-be lovers forever beset by a sense of doom always hovering over them. It is a good parallel he is drawing with the state of things here and now. The dawn of the 20th century was an exciting time, both socially and politically. And the possibilities with the advancement in science and medicine were endless, at least for the citizens of the first world. But there was also volatility in every corner of the street. Violence, disease, extreme wealth and poverty and uncertainties everywhere. <br><br>
Bonello taps on that anxiety with The Beast, which is a beast of a film, with all these hefty ideas swirling around and stylized to perfection. It is also greatly helped by mesmerizing performances by Léa Seydoux and George MacKay. This timeline-jumbled, massive film is set in three distinctive time periods (1904, 2014 and 2044); Bonello effortlessly shifts from one point to another.
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2. <b>A Little Love Package</b> - Solnicki
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It's 2019. Vienna, the last bastion among the European cities where smoking in cafe has been allowed, bans smoking indoors. It's the end of an era. Two women, played by Angeliki Papoulia (Dogtooth) and Carmen Chaplin are looking for a house to buy. One is rich and very picky about her choices and the other, her interior designer is getting frustrated as her suggestions get rejected one after another. The rich woman's child wants private music lessons from a Korean pianist in Vienna, because she doesn't like the strictness of the music conservatory. After the rich woman finds an apartment, Carmen, the interior designer, travels back to her home in Malaga to visit her aging parents and argue with her sisters about the future of their home and parents.
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Shot beautifully by Rui Poças (Tabu, Zama, The Ornithologist), A Little Love Package is loosely associated ideas and images with free-flowing narrative. Argentine Gastón Solnicki's experiments with improvisation using, for the first time, professional actors and also their real family, bear interesting results that are oddly engaging and greatly liberating.
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3. <b>Musik</b> - Schanelec
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Angela Schanelec's new, nearly silent film, simply titled Music, is supposedly 'freely' based on the Greek Myth of Oedipus. It might be the most enigmatic offering from the esteemed German director. But its depiction of melancholy and fragility of human life is nevertheless so beautiful and timeless, I can't help tearing up by the end.
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4. <b>Coma</b> - Bonello
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From 9/11 to Iraq War to major economic crisis in 2008, to global warming then now to the pandemic, the Generation Z has been through a lot in their short semi-adult life. With its crazy kaleidoscopic images and sounds, the short film is an amalgam of what the short-attention-span generation has been going through psychologically and emotionally during the lockdown. But more than anything, Coma is a compassionate love letter from Bonello to his daughter Anna who just turned 18, and to her generation. We do not know what the future will bring. He ends with spectacularly frightening images of natural diasters- giant ice shelf melting off, abalanches and volcanic eruptions- some anthropocene and some not, either cases we have no control over anyway. Coma is more like Bonello saying, "Sorry kids, but at least I understand what you are going through, but the sun rises again tomorrow."
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5. <b>Roter Himmel/Afire</b> - Petzold
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The film tells a lot about the self-absorbed world in the face of climate change and global catastrophe unfolding. You might ask, 'Leon can't be that thick headed. How is he a friend with good natured, younger, optimistic Felix?' 'There's no chemistry between Leon and Nadja, how can he declare his love for her?' and so on. Afire is also about creative process and self-reflection. And it's beautifully, deliciously constructed by the master storyteller. It's as if Petzold saying get out of your head once in a while and look around you because if you don't, it might be already too late.
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6. <b>Retour à Séoul/Return to Seoul</b> - Chou
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First time actress Park Ji-min's performance is a revelation. She makes Freddie a strong willed, fascinating young woman in search of herself. Her magnetic presence makes her always watchable. Seeing from the perspective of an adoptee and a modern woman in a still very patriarchal society, Return to Seoul is a visceral journey toward self-discovery. The quiet ending reminds me a lot of Drive My Car. Return to Seoul has that novelistic quality about it that I like.
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7. <b>Eureka</b> - Alonso
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Argentine filmmaker, Lisandro Alonso, breaks 9-year silence with Eureka, after Viggo Mortensen starring meta-western Jauja. In an episodic structure, the film freely contemplates the state of indigenous people of the vast American continents, the past and present, as well as their uneasy relationship with cinema. It's perhaps his most expansive and ambitious film to date. He digs deep into the distorted representation and history, the effect of colonialism and the influence of Western culture that displaces the natives who are left out of place and out of time. Using his minimalist, elemental way of filmmaking, combined with Deleuzean look at time-image non-linear approach and Native American spirituality, Eureka is a deeply contemplative, perplexing film.
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8. <b>Nu aștepta prea mult de la sfârșitul lumii/Do Not Expect Too Much of the End of the World </b>- Jude
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Biting and thought provoking, Don't Expect Too Much is a perfect survey of the state of our lives right now. Jude, along with Assayas and Bonello, is a master chronicler of ever changing, ever so complicated world we can't make sense of anymore. It's fun, it's tragic. All we can do is go along with the flow, like Taoists saying.
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9. <b>Anatomie d'une chute/Anatomy of a Fall</b> - Triet
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Well tuned and balanced, Anatomie d'une chute is a revealing film about this day and age where patriarchy and everyday sexism is slowly losing its grip on our society (or lets hope). Sandra Hüller again, is fast becoming the heroine we need in this social climate. Also, Triet, as with Sybil, examines the nature of art and literature- the art immitating life, plagiarism and even autofiction in a very captivating way.
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10. <b>Perfect Days</b> - Wenders
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There's a very zen-like quality in Perfect Days. Is that Wenders converting the Buddhism late in life? There's a scene where two grown men, one dying of cancer, playing shadow tag, like little children. Perfect Days is a guiless movie that makes you think about enjoying simple things in life. Forget about the complicated life you are leading in a complicated world for a second. Play childish games once in a while and enjoy the moment.
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11. <b>Retratos fantasmas/Pictures of Ghosts</b> - Mendonça Filho
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Pictures of Ghosts is a loving, intimate documentary on ephemeral nature of our lives. Our loved ones grow old and die, buildings get torn down, video footages disintegrate, but there is evidence of those lives lived and experienced all over, if you know where to look. Combining his own experience and his love of cinema, Mendonça Filho serves as our expert guide to his beloved city of Recife. The movie ends with whimsical taxi ride, throwing shades on Hollywood's superhero movies. The 80s Michael Mann vibe with night lights reflecting on the car, as it rides the bridge at night with smooth jazz - reminds the audience that the Brazilian director undoubtedly grew up loving the 80s Hollywood cinema.
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12. <b>Augure/Omen</b> - Baloji
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With multiple storylines and characters, Omen introduces a different kind of storytelling that the Western filmmaking is not used to. Much like Anisia Uzeyman and Saul Williams’s Neptune Frost couple years back, the film is not bound to a straightforward narrative. Presenting a multicultural society in flux, where things clash with each other for dominance, the film’s colors and texture vie for your attention. It takes everything from everywhere – from the Democratic Republic of Congo, South Africa, and multiple other African nations, even from the Creole culture of Louisiana. The film is mainly told through sensations and visual poetry. It’s in Mujila’s breastfeeding the river in the beginning of the film with purple milk as purple milk slowly spills out. It’s in a decrepit school bus full of pink dress wearing street urchins violently being towed. It’s in a group of women mourners crying until the floor of the house is ankle deep with their tears. It’s in witch doctor trying to exorcise a couple with sexually transmitted disease by painting their bodies and pelting them with a tree branch soaked in palm oil. Omen is a truly unique experience to be had. Using the magical realism and symbolism steeped in tradition old and new, the film is a kaleidoscopic picture of bustling Africa that is here and now.
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13. <b>Godland</b> - Pálmason
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With its circle of life ending, Godland is a contemplation of us humans’ fleeting existence on earth. In a true Herzogian sense, with large brushstrokes, Pálmason draws a grand allegory that we are after all, elemental. And it's magnificent.
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14. <b>Human Flowers of Flesh</b> - Wittmann
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We see forever undulating sea on the deck and through the round windows from inside the ship, the horizontal sea level bobbing up and down as the ship sails through the waves. Just like her first feature Drift, Helena Wittmann presents long stretches of these scenes that has its own hypnotic rhythm. The ship crew converse in many different languages - English, German, Arabic, Portuguese, Greek and so on, yet nothing is explained about their background. Instead, Wittmann concentrates on the film's visually blissful moments - the shimmering sunlight reflected on the waves just below the deck, a piece of reef Ida brought from Antigua being passed around the crew, a dance party on the deck at night with colorful flags and lights gleaming and the blue sea as Ida (Angeliki Papoulia) swims back and forth. There are some show stoppers like the camera plunging into the blue depth to find a wreckage of a downed WWII plane at the bottom of the ocean floor. The film's full of sensual images that recalls Claire Denis films. But I think Wittmann's aim here is different. In her hands, the gleaming water and the sun are the subjects. They are vital to human life and we see that in Ida and her crew's uneroticised browned skin.
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15. <b>How to Blow Up a Pipeline</b> - Goldhaber<a data-flickr-embed="true" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/149162636@N05/52991433260" title="how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline-film"><img src="https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/52991433260_0ee83728a4_z.jpg" width="640" height="360" alt="how-to-blow-up-a-pipeline-film"/></a><script async src="//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The matter of fact presentation of bomb making and careful planning are the meat of the film. How to Blow Up a Pipeline plays out like a great little thriller. Their meticulous plan hit a snag when the rope holding the heavy barrel containing the bomb breaks, but despite the setback, they carry out the attack. The twist at the end is well earned as well. How to Blow Up the Pipeline is a compelling film. It is a justifiably angry film for the generation out of time and out of options.
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16. <b>Rewind & Play</b> - Gomis
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At the end of his European tour in 1969, Thelonious Monk appeared in Jazz Portrait, a French TV program. Director Alain Gomis (Félicité) gets a hold of the rushes of that taping & plays around with some very candid moments that reveal how Monk was viewed vs. how he carried himself in real life. The best part is obviously him playing ‘round Midnight, sweating profusely, as if nothing else existed around him but the grand piano.
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17. <b>Passages</b> - Sachs
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Past experiences shape who we are. It's the reflection of the things past that makes one grow as a person. Therefore, Ira Sachs's new film Passages, is a snapshot of a person going through that process of growth, for better or worse. It's a mature film in more ways than one and a realistic look at modern relationships. Passages highlights the true acting talent of great German actor Franz Rogowski (Transit, Undine, Great Freedom) because he is phenomenal in this sexually charged character study.
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18. <b>Le otto montagne/The Eight Mountains</b> - Groenigen, Vandersmeersch
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The strength of The Eight Mountains is its complex depiction of a male friendship. It speaks volumes in their knowing glances and silences as they spend time together up in the mountains. Our circumstances change but the mountains don't. It illustrates men's ultimate desire and to retreat from the human world and finding it futile. As they grow older, Pietro and Bruno understand this connundrum, and take refuge in each other's company. This all sounds corny as hell in words, but van Gronigen and Vandermeersch's earnest approach works beautifully, with awe-inspiring views of nature and superb, stoic acting by the two leads. Swedish singer Daniel Norgren's soulful, melancholic soundtrack does here what Leonard Cohen did for McCabe & Mrs. Miller.
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19. <b>Remembering Every Night</b> - Kiyohara
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Remembering Every Night captures the unseen-world of delicate web that connects us all together. The film's very much in the same vein as Hamaguchi Ryusuke's 2021 crowd pleaser, Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy but from a different, quieter, less punctuated angle. The film's nostalgic tone, imbued with contemplation of time, memories, loss of memories and longing, lingers long after its credits roll.
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20. <b>Tótem</b> - Avilés
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We often try our best to shield children from the ugly world of grownups: responsibilites, money, parenthood, guilt.... Young Naíma Sentís, like Anna Torres before her in Victor Erice's Spirit of the Beehive, shines as a young, innocent child full of life, but who is old enough to realize that there's something awry about adulthood. Death is something we experience more and more as we grow older. It changes you and perhaps makes you grow up faster. The ending shot of young Sol looking straigth through the birthday cake candles, conveys that understanding without saying any words. Delicate and infinitely patient in her storytelling, Avilés let the film play out reach where it ends as it is supposed to. A beautiful film.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-6967285454851862852023-12-15T15:23:00.009-05:002024-03-18T15:45:08.814-04:00Go with the Flow <b>Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World</b> (2023) - Jude
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As with his previous film, Bad luck Banging, Radu Jude's new film Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World is unsparing, uproarious satire that implicates everyone in this needlessly complex society we live in. And it's loads of fun. It's a frenetic, 'moving' picture as we take the passenger seat in a van driven by Angela, a hard-working production assistant of a PR firm, Forbidden Planet, hired by Austrian furniture company. Angela's Tik Tok filtered alter-ego is known as Bobita, a bold headed, thick unibrow and bearded dudebro who spews the vilest, sexist, racist rant with six thousand followers. She spends most of her time in her car driving because her job requires driving and interviewing potential workplace accident victims, one after another, who could be featured in the company's safety promotional video. And every chance she gets, she becomes Bobita anywhere.
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Angela's hectic daily routine is intercut with an early 80s Romanian melodrama called Angela Moves On, about a wholesome female taxi driver and her life, as she drives from place to place in Bucharest. The film juxtaposes the changes in the streets and neighborhoods from Ceaușescu era. Many anecdotes, and musings of all the characters concern the reality today's Romania and of the world.
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Jude's playfulness is infectious. The actress who plays Angela the cab driver makes an appearance as the character in the film. She plays a mother of a man on a wheelchair who was chosen to be in the promotional video. The man plays himself who was a victim of the workplace accident that is obviously the fault of the company for its negligence.
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German Actress Nina Hoss plays the Austrian boss Doris Goethe (yes that Goethe), whose furniture company is leveling Romanian forests, Uwe Boll, the German b-movie director also makes an appearance as himself, directing a monster CGI movie in the green screen backdrop.
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However hilarious, the film is not all laughs. In the middle of its 2 hrs. 30 min. running time, he devotes a good 4 minutes to feature a silent segment composed of hundreds of crosses that are strewn about along the highway which Angela describes as the 250-kilometer highway with 600 crosses, while giving Doris Goethe a ride to the hotel. Puzzled Doris asks what it means. It's a one-way road that has a very narrow emergency lane, but no one follows that. They use it as if it's two-way roads. "That's very stupid." Doris responds. "We are!" Angela responds. Nothing works the way it's supposed to. Corruption is everywhere. In the EU, Romania is the poorest country, she says. Maybe except for Albania. They are primitives, Angela utters.
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Biting and thought provoking, Do Not Expect Too Much is a perfect survey of the state of our lives right now. Jude, along with Assayas and Bonello, is a master chronicler of ever changing, ever so complicated world we can't make sense of anymore. It's fun, it's tragic. All we can do is go along with the flow, like Taoists saying.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-35114346747479248262023-12-13T16:29:00.004-05:002023-12-18T16:46:40.484-05:00Top 10 Discoveries 2023Crazy depressing year 2023 has been. The news feed is too scary to look at. Covid is still around. Makes you wonder what disasters the new year's going to bring.... But there's cinema and we take consolations from it. And I've discovered many good films this year. Being in school helps too. So, in alphabetical order:
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<b>Daïnah la métisse/Dinah the Black Girl</b> (1932) - Grémillon
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A murder and racial/class politics in an ocean liner headed to New Caledonia in the South Pacific. Starring stunning Laurence Clavius as a temptress at sea who yearns to be free. Restored from a nitrate negative by Gaumont Pathé Archives in 2018.
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<b>Une femme mariée/A Married Woman</b> (1964) - Godard
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Godard's take on women being objectified in the consumerist 60s is on full display here. Also the talk of holocaust hangs like a cloud. Charlotte doesn't know what Auschwitz is as the men talk about it on the way back from the nazi trials in Hamburg. Biting and provocative.
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<b>The Housemaid</b> (1960) - Kim
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s it the puffy tail that makes all the difference between a rat and a squirrel? You might have achieved the goal of becoming petit-bourgeoisie by having a pet squirrel, but you will always have rat poison hidden away in the cupboard. The Housemaid pokes at these conundrums of living in a rapidly developing capitalist society.
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<b>Leben - BRD/How to Live in FRG</b> (1990) - Farocki
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Filmed just before the dissolution of the East Germany, but came out afterward, Harun Farocki's Leben - BRD or How to Live in FRG (Federal Republic of Germany/West Germany) stands in contrast to both, the egalitarian (East) or capitalist (West) utopias that never have materialized. He knew that the West hadn't really won the Cold War game- that there was something inherently unnatural and inhuman about the advanced capitalist system in the West. Farocki strings series of 'how to' instructional videos of all kinds from all over West Germany, where people were enacting scenarios - from birth to death, intercut them with various household products - toilet seats, washers, drawers, car doors, going through rigorous and repeat stress tests.
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<b>Schlafkrankheit/Sleeping Sickness</b> (2011) - Köhler
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Sleeping Sickness is a complex film that says a lot about colonialism and its ugly symbiotic relationship in capitalist society. As a German directed film with a German main character, the subtext of losing one's identity in a global capitalist system and yearning for some sort of metamorphosis is quite striking.
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<b>The Spook Who Sat by the Door</b> (1973) - Dixon
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Taking advantage during the integration era, a black man named Don Freeman, patiently works up the ranks as a token black CIA agent, learning everything he could while being a model employee and in turn use all the knowledge he acquired into an urban armed guerrilla warfare in his native Chicago against authorities. By the end, the film advocates armed uprising by the disenfranchised blacks in every major city in America. A radical film by African American director Ivan Dixon and writer Sam Greenlee.
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<b>Les Trois Désastres/Three Disasters</b> (2013) - Godard </b> (2013) - Godard
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Before Goodbye to Language (2014), where Godard embraced 3D as another art form, he participated in 3X3D, omnibus project commissioned by EU. I won’t even mention the other two shorts by other directors because they were terrible. But The Three Disasters, is a continuation of Godard’s contemplation on art and cinema. His wordplays are strong here: des =dice, astres=stars… as if predicting Hollywood’s short romance with the medium (again) as a gamble. “Writing was necessary. Printing was gratification. Digital will be dictatorship.” He drawls in his gravelly voice. He also observes the invention of perspectives in Western art ruined having any depth in content, correlating it to 2D and 3D in cinema. It’s Invigorating 20 minutes as any of his other films.
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<b>Typhoon Club</b> (1985) - Sômai
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Breakfast Club it ain't. There's no highlighting their individual quirks. They instinctly understand each other and forgive one another. Mikami screams on the phone to his unhelpful drunken teacher, "I will never be like you!" In the meantime, Rie's Homerian journey home during the typhoon continues. She gets picked up by a college students while shopping in Harajuku. He invites her to his apartment. It's not as exciting as she thought. After changing back to her school uniform, she decides to come back home.
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Typhoon Club predates all the 90s and 2000s Japanese teen angst films. Somai really had a great eye for small details and intricacies of human relations. It's one of the best Japanese films ever made.
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<b>Wanda</b> (1970) - Loden
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Wanda seems to be always late to the party: the divorce court, the sewing factory, at the bank robbery. It's as if she is consciously late (slow quitting). With her options in life being very limited, she seems to be holding on to her time as if it is her only resistance against the world that's expectant of her blonde female self. It's not an easy movie to like. After fighting off a rapist, she ends up in a pub where other females show her some solidarity and kindness, she still seems very lost and frightened in an unforgiving world at the end. Wanda is certainly an interesting one.
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<b>Yo, la peor de todas/I, The Worst of All</b> (1990) - Bemberg
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Based on a historical figure, Juana Inés de la Cruz, I, The Worst of All, tells trials and tribulations of a catholic nun who lived in the 17th Century Mexico. Sister Juana who was a poet, playwright, theologian and a philosopher. And because it was unorthodox for woman to be an inquisitive and brilliant intellectual in the age of inquisition, she was persecuted by the patriarchal church and forced to denounce her 'sins'. Maria Luisa Bemberg directs the unflinching version of Sister Juana's story. Assumpta Serna plays Sister Juana, whose brilliance was the subject of both envy and jealousy in the convent. She is afforded with a large library and fine material things, like a telescope and harpsicord within the convent walls. She makes a big impression on the viceroy sent from Spain to the new world, and strikes up the friendship with the Vicereine (played by Dominique Sanda) who feels a certain kinship with the Sister (convent/marriage = jail). The Viceroy and his wife become an ardent supporter and protector of Juana against the vicious archbishop who thinks Juana is a nothing but a harlot and heretic.
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I, the Worst of All, is a searing indictment of hypocracy of the religious institution and clear eyed examination of the true devotion and worldly desires of intellect. What happened to Sister Juana is a real tragedy. Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-87000178212114143542023-12-01T13:32:00.006-05:002023-12-02T08:50:55.863-05:00Rehearsals for Living<b>Leben - BRD/How to Live in FRG</b> (1990) - Farocki
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Filmed just before the dissolution of the East Germany, but came out afterward, Harun Farocki's Leben - BRD or How to Live in FRG (Federal Republic of Germany/West Germany) stands in contrast to both, the egalitarian (East) or capitalist (West) utopias that never have materialized. He knew that the West hadn't really won the Cold War game- that there was something inherently unnatural and inhuman about the advanced capitalist system in the West. Farocki strings series of 'how to' instructional videos of all kinds from all over West Germany, where people were enacting scenarios - from birth to death, intercut them with various household products - toilet seats, washers, drawers, car doors, going through rigorous and repeat stress tests.
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It's 'how to' instructions on anything in life from sex, birth, caring for child, crossing the road, interacting with clients, customers, climbing out of a wrecked car, letting others know when locked out of your house, de-escalating arguments, reprehending a gun wielding hooligan, attacking the enemies in combat, stripping even, ANYTHING. Everything is prepped early on in life. There's an instruction for everything. Unlike other 'documentaries', Farocki's non-narrated film creates its own rhythm as it equates these 'learned' human behaviors to the repeated slamming of inanimate objects. All these activities are heavy on the business transactions and also law and order. The film shows a series of rehearsals to live 'actual life' as if you are not ready to live it yet.
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Leben - BRD makes you wonder about human existence before all the technologies we have now. How did human beings survive without knowing how to have a baby without hurting either mother or a baby? How do we deal with difficult people without resorting to violence? The capitalist world is so complicated that it needs an Ikea instruction mauals on everything we do? The whole endeavors seem so patronizing. But that's the point Farocki is making. In this so-called free world, you need to be told early on how to live. How is it any different than the communist totalitarian society?
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Often funny yet pointy, especially intercutting between the residents of a group home discussing and organizing their grocery list for dinner and people practicing dining table manners with empty plates and learning the orders of cutlery use.
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Leben-BRD will make a great double feature with Godard's Germany Year 90 Nine Zero about East-West dynamics.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-19900741231817611172023-11-29T13:20:00.001-05:002023-12-28T00:49:05.133-05:00Hit the Road<b>Eileen</b> (2023) - Oldroyd
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Based on award winning novel of the same name by Ottessa Moshfegh (who also wrote the screenplay with her husband Luke Goebel) and directed by British director William Oldroyd (The Lady Macbeth), Eileen tells an oddly satisfying tale of a young woman's emancipation from her dreadful surroundings.
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Thomasin McKenzie (Jojo Rabbit, Last Night in Soho) plays the title role, a young woman working in a juvenile detention center in a depressed New England town in the 60s. It's winter. The film doesn't waste any time to establish that Eileen is a loner and sexually frustrated, as she is seen masturbating in her dad's beat up old car on the lover’s lane, while peeping at others making out in another car, parked close to hers. At work, he also fantasizes about a detention center guard wildly groping her against the glass window. At home and work, she is considered an odd duck, who doesn't have any prospect in love and life in general. Her Alcoholic father, a retired cop (Shea Whigham), tells her that she is "one of them in the movies in the background, of no consequences," that she will amount to nothing.
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Things change when a Harvard educated, new psychiatrist, Rebecca (Anne Hathaway) shows up at the prison. With no friends among colleagues, Eileen is smitten by this beautiful older woman who seem to command her life and those around her so effortlessly. They share the same interests in the case of Lee Polk, the boy who stabbed his father to death. Why would anyone want to kill their father? Rebecca asks Eileen. Wouldn't anyone? She answers, somewhat surprising the psychiatrist. When Rebecca asks her for a night out at a local dive, excited Eileen dolls herself up in her mom's clothes. The night of drinking and dancing and the kiss on the lips, seals the deal for the spell and obsession to set in.
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Eileen finds herself the next morning in her own vomit and still dressed in mom's clothes in the car which crashed into a tree in front of her house. After a shouting match with dad, he finally concedes that he finds her more interesting than before.
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Things take a darker turn when Rebecca calls to spend Christmas Eve with her. When all dolled up Eileen gets to the house, and after a warmup with some wine with stale cheese and pickles, Rebecca tells her that the place is the Polk house and she tied up Mrs. Polk in the basement. Apparently, the Polk boy killed his father after years of sexual abuse and the mother was complicit. Rebecca can't afford to go to jail for assault, so Eileen needs to help her to get a confession out of the mother as a witness. At first, Eileen is disappointed and repulsed by the whole scene, but still decides to help Rebecca, her object of desire.
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With eerie score by Richard Reed Parry of Arcade Fire and decidedly old-fashioned title sequence, framed 1:66 ratio, Eileen sets the unsentimental, natural, grainy tone of the film very early on. There are some fantastical spurts of violence, like Eileen shooting herself with her father's gun, is reminiscent of the humor from Lindsay Anderson and British Kitchen Sink Realism days, rather than more contemporary tongue-in-cheek way for cheap laughs.
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Oldroyd again, delves into a strong female character with Eileen as he did so in his feature debut The Lady Macbeth which made Florence Pugh a star. This time the character arc is reversed. Instead of the main character being trapped in her own scheme, Eileen in an odd and unique way, makes herself free. Thomasin McKenzie finds herself playing a role in a psychosexual thriller again. Looking like young Jodie Foster, she kills (literally and figuratively) as a woman stumbling her way through finding herself in the world, all by herself. Hathaway is a smart blonde femme fatale, doing her best Cate Blanchett impression with ease.
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Eileen is much more than what I described in the plot above. Oldroyd, with the help of Moshfegh and Goebel and a talented cinematographer Ari Wegner (The Lady Macbeth, The Power of the Dog), explores surviving physical and emotional abuse that women had to endure in the 60s and finding out who they are by themselves, very subtly and skillfully.
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Eileen opens in theaters this Friday, via Neon, 12/1Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-44235809832839358072023-11-17T13:51:00.003-05:002023-11-17T22:39:58.169-05:00Empty Lust<b>Saltburn</b> (2023) - Fennell
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Oliver (Barry Keoghan) is a nebbish freshman at Oxford; the year is 2007. The soundtrack is all MGMT and Bloc Party, The Killers, etc. All around him are wealth and privilege. Only friend he can find is a weird math nerd with no social skills. Then there is Felix Catton (Jacob Elordi), a very tall, handsome kid from an aristocratic family, whom everyone is swooning over. Felix's life is a never-ending party and drinking and girls. "Did I love him," Oliver asks over the series of close-up shots of present and near future Felix engaging in sexy activities. Oliver's lustful stares from a distance betrays his emotionless narration, or does it? "No I wasn't in love with him," he declares. But his luck would have it, Felix takes a liking to Oliver's poor scholarship kid with an addict/alcoholic parents sob story and off they go on the summer break to a sprawling Catton mansion, Saltburn.
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The Cattons, unimaginably wealthy family of Felix, consists of frazzled dad- Sir James (Richard E. Grant), ice queen mom- Elsbeth (Rosamund Pike), nympho sister- Venetia (Alison Oliver) and snooty, gossipy cousin and fellow Oxford mate, Farleigh (Archie Madekwe), leading gilded life pampered by a group of servants. Golf, swimming, tanning, champaigns, lounging around naked in the garden, the works. The Saltburn manor is even equipped with The Overlook Hotel-style hedge maze. The film rapidly develops into a cross between Teorema and Talented Mr. Ripley, where everyone's giving Oliver sultry looks and he in turn, taking advantage of their curiosities, one by one.
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Saltburn is unapologetically horny film. It's all about sweat, saliva and other bodily fluids. There are copious amounts of flesh shots of shirtless Felix as he is Oliver's de facto object of desire. Elordi as spoiled rich brat with a heart of gold (as his Elvis in Sofia Coppola's Priscilla) is perfect for the role. So is Keoghan, doing his creepy turn again (Killing of a Sacred Deer, Banshees of Inisherin), as an obsessive kid with dark desires. Fennell's script, bristling with sardonic wit and irony tickles your funnybones and gnarly, yet beautifully photographed transgressions (captured by Linus Sandgren, La La Land, Babylon) tickles your senses. But what does all of this amount to? Where do all these plot twists and turns and revelations ultimately lead us to?
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Oliver's methodical plan to get closer to Felix come crashing down when the trip to his home reveals that he's not whom he pretends to be. With Oliver's planned birthday celebrations that would mark an end to their friendship, things take a dark turn. And this is where Fennell's steam runs out. Saltburn loses its rudder and ends with a massive hangover and disappointment.
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There's no subtext to its period setting, there's no lessons to be learned about class disparities, not that there has to be. But with her last film Promising Young Woman, Fennell seems to be an ambulance chaser when it comes to topical issues of the day, but only on the surface level. Oliver, with his fuzzy motivations, is not consistent enough to make the film a character study even. Grant, Pike and Mulligan and others become toys to be played around and tossed (off screen even). Why do they deserve such cruel fate? Fennell never addresses. All we are left with is images of Keoghan slurping bath water, humping a fresh grave naked, and dance around full frontal in the empty manor. Keoghan is a major talent and a risk-taker obviously. I understand the film's concentrating on very narrow Gen Z and young LGBTQA+ audience. The promotion for the press screening made it very clear. But Saltburn ends up a titillation of flesh and nothing more.Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-74148661101967018732023-11-10T15:14:00.000-05:002023-11-10T15:14:12.967-05:00Wrestling Picture<b>Neirud</b> (2023) - Faya
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Brazilian filmmaker Fernanda Faya's Neirud is an intimate and affecting documentary that tells a larger-than-life story of a woman whom Faya thought she knew. Using wealth of family home videos, photos and historical news reels, Faya sets out to solve her family mystery like a good detective and constructs a beautiful portrait of her family friend, aunt Neirud, who happened to be a trailblazer in a country where things were still very much steeped in traditional ways.
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With the Roma heritage on her father's side of the family, the filmmaker’s family has a long history being in the circus business. And her ancestral history is a fascinating one - they fled the persecution during the war in Europe to Brazil, moving place to place to avoid prejudice and racism. Faya's grandmother, Nely, a trailblazer in her own right, became the first in the family to be educated, and became a well-known actress in a traveling theater group. After a stint in Europe, Nely came back to her roots and start managing the circus theater group as an artistic director. That's where she met Neirud.
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Aunt Neirud is seen in many home movies shot by Edgard, the filmmaker's father, gleefully holding the baby Faya on many occasions with Grandma Nely in the background. They are joyful family occasions. Donning full afro, Neirud, a towering black woman was a gentle giant. Her life story, told by herself in an inquisitive interview conducted by Faya, which was filmed when Neirud was nearing the end of her life, is as dramatic as any great fiction - after being abandoned by her biological mother in the small village to be cared for in a better to do household (as it was a common practice back in the day), young Neirud, being black, was put to work while attending school, not like other white children. At 8, she was already very tall and strong.She ran away to the city and asked to be hired as a nanny. At 12 when the circus was in town, enamored by the spectacle, she runs away again to join the circus. Strong as she was, she quickly established herself as a pivotal member of the troupe, then a main attraction. The legend has it, Neirud was the only one who can wield two hammers, one on each hand to put the spike in place to pitch the circus tent. The female wrestling, forbidden by law in still a conservative society, was allowed as the circus act. Developed by Nely, the female performers took on their own special characters -a pretty one, a vampire etc. In the ring, Neirud was the kimono wearing, 200 pounds of pure muscle, invincible Gorilla Woman.
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Faya, finding wealth of pictures and footage of Grandma Nely, as she was the matriarch of the family and the face of the family business, but none of aunt Neirud from the wrestling days, sets out an investigation into her family history. She tracks down the only living remaining wrestler, Rita, from back in the day. In series of phone interview, Rita reveals that most of the photos were lost in the flood. She sends her a poster featuring "the Gorilla Woman" from that period. It's a towering picture of Neirud staring down. Neirud never wrestled again after Nely's passing, retired from the business, and lived in the house by the beach that she shared with Nely. Rita also informs the clue to Nely and Neirud's relationship. From all the materials she gathered, to her surprise, Faya finds a fantastic love story between the two women whom she dearly loved. It is also revealed that how they fled together on a road trip all over South America and ultimately formed their own circus troupe.
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Neirud is not only a great love story, but an acute survey of Brazilian history and progress made in women's place in society. Aunt Neirud, along with Grandma Nely turn out to be a trailblazer in more ways than one. Switching gracefully between intimate home movie and a historical documentary, the film is also a wistful love letter to a person who meant a lot to the filmmaker. Gently bookending with the reenactments of her childhood memories of aunt Neirud driving with big colorful inflatable balls strapped on the roof of her station wagon on the beach, Faya possesses a kin eye for visual lyricism that conveys yearning and sweet sorrow.
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Along with this year's Kleber Mendonça Filho's Pictures of Ghosts, Neirud chronicles changing Brazilian society through the bounds of first-person home movie narrative. Neirud works as a playful cinematic investigation with great warmth and heart.
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Neirud plays part of DOC NYC. It has a theatrical premiere on 11/11 at Village East by Angelika, NYC.Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-30294643418697021322023-11-02T11:38:00.005-04:002023-11-02T11:42:40.553-04:00A Ghost Anywhere<b>Schlafkrankheit/Sleeping Sickness</b> (2011) - Köhler
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Ulrich Köhler's Sleeping Sickness examines a complicated relationship between Europe and Africa. It also shows how losing one's identity (in this case, being a German) is indirectly, but yet deeply connected to Germany's colonial, post-war revival past.
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Epidemiologist Dr. Ebbo Velten (Pierre Bokma) and his wife Vera have been stationed in Cameroon for a long time. Velten is there to eradicate Sleeping Sickness, the insect borne disease that causes neurological problems if untreated. He has been successful and therefore, he has no reason to stay there any longer. It's time for him and his wife to go back to Germany. But something is nagging at him. Their sullen teenage daughter's visit only exacerbates his ambivalent feeling about going back home to his mundane life as a pharmacist, according to his expat doctor/industrialist pal Gaspard (Hippolyte Girardot), "prescribing pills for a living in the suburbs."
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We see the whites' arrogance and the locals peddling for their money everywhere - at checkpoints, in restaurants, in Velten's home with guards, peddlers in city streets, in medical board meetings. The colonialism and free market enabled this ugly relationship to perpetuate and made any meaningful relationship between them impossible. The wife and daughter go home. Three years pass by.
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A well-meaning, young doctor Alex Nzila (Jean-Christophe Folly) who works for the World Health Organization is first seen at a medical conference where a black representative is advocating cutting off relief funds to Africa and letting the free market take care of everything. He scoffs at the speaker. After Alex deflects his colleague's racist joke with 'I am born here,' speech, he is sent to Cameroon to evaluate Velten's project on sleeping sickness. The problem is, when he gets there to his compound/clinic, in the remote jungle, the German doctor is never around to meet with him. After failing to perform a Cesarean birth by throwing up and passing out on Velten's pregnant Cameroonian wife, Alex finally meets Velten. But it seems the illness is almost eradicated in the region. Then why does Velten ask for an evaluation on his progress?
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It becomes slightly clear that it's Velten's cry for help, who is in the country he doesn't belong to and perhaps doesn't belong anywhere. He is pulling Colonel Kurtz. He is completely lost and wants someone else to decide his destiny.
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The film ends with Velten and Gaspard taking Alex to a night time hunting in the jungle. Alex has no idea what they are hunting for. Again, for Alex, it's a wild goose chase.
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Sleeping Sickness is a complex film that says a lot about colonialism and its ugly symbiotic relationship in capitalist society. As a German directed film with a German main character, the subtext of losing one's identity in a global capitalist system and yearning for some sort of metamorphosis is quite striking.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-39433333478232122152023-10-19T10:24:00.005-04:002023-10-19T10:26:19.982-04:00Spellbound<b>A Woman Under the influence</b> (1974) - Cassavetes
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What more can be said about John Cassavetes's A Woman Under the Influence, I mean really? The immediacy, the realness of it all. Gena Rowlands's performance is perhaps the greatest of all in the cinema history?
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Always portraying working class people with eccentricities, people who are little bit out of the norm. I keep thinking that all the people who are considered being on the spectrum and there's a large support community nowadays, if Mabel would be perceived differently today than back then - at least the frustration of Nick (Peter Falk) would've been largely aleviated because a half of the film is about him not knowing what to do about his cooky wife, other than raising his voice and knocking her down. For today's standards, Mabel might not have that much filter when it comes to social interactions, but it's not too extreme to be that upsetting. It says much about Nick and misguided masculinity as much as her.
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Overall, it's a great, affecting love story between two people. Also I have to say kids performances are also amazing, especially the little girl who plays Maria. The beach scene where Nick agressively dragging his children to 'have a good time', and Maria running away was so good. These women can not be contained! What a film! Instant favorite!
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-15543924341906834082023-10-16T14:10:00.002-04:002023-10-18T16:22:56.932-04:00Craftsmanship<b>Ferrari</b> (2023) - Mann
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Rubber, metal and mayhem ensue in Michael Mann's biopic Ferrari. Gone is his digital experimentation (Miami Vice, Public Enemies and Black Hat), but the testosterone level remains high and stoic manliness remains. Plus, it has Penelope Cruz chewing up every scene she is in as Laura Ferrari.
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After almost comical monochrome footage of old car racing with Adam Driver's face grafted on them with old timey music and everything, the film settles on 1957 and silver haired Enzo Ferrari (Driver) is seen gently sneaking out of the idyllic villa he shares with his mistress Lina (Shailene Woodley) and their young son. Unbeknownst his fiery wife Laura (Cruz), who shares the ownership of the company, Enzo has been living a double life.
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In Moderna, a quaint small town that hosts powerhouse custom sports car companies like Ferrari and its rival Maserati, where the local priest preaches in car metaphors, the times are changing. These local prides are having financial difficulties. For Enzo, it's all about craftsmanship and racing. But the company's finance in red, unless he and Laura goes on partnering with bigger companies, like Ford or Fiat, and mass produce, the company will go out of business.
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Having lost his son to illness, the Ferraris' marriage has gone cold. Mann, based on the late Troy Kennedy Martin's script, presents both funny and revealing moments with Enzo and Laura visiting the grave of their son separately, back-to-back, to mourn the dead alone. Enzo talks to his dead son. Laura smiles in silence. But being a former racecar driver himself, Enzo's focus is always on racing and forming a winning team in the future races. After losing one of his drivers in a terrifying accident during a test run, he gives a chance to a young gun, Portago (Gabriel Leone). Enzo, addressed as commendatore by the locals, is seen as cold, uncaring man who only cares about winning.
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Back then, racecar drivers are as popular as movie stars, every boy wants to be them and every girl wants to date them. Portago and many of Ferrari drivers are followed everywhere by adoring fans and paparazzi and subject of gossipy magazines. It's the danger where a millisecond decision-making can mean life or gruesome death that enthralls the spectators. It may also have to do with custom made, curvy, phallic shaped, sleek red cars they drive. Enzo instructs everyone to write a letter to the loved ones and leave them in their hotel room before every race, as it is customary to the profession.
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Adam Driver, whose physiognomy could go either appropriate or not depending on the project, is convincing as a man in his late 50s, if he doesn't remind you too much of his old man skit from SNL. Driver portrays Ferrari's swagger and arrogance naturally and amiably. But it's Penelope Cruz who steals the show whenever she's on screen. Her Laura is a gun wielding firebrand who doesn't back down from anyone and anything. There is a great scene where Laura agrees to hand over her part of the ownership of the company, in order for Enzo to negotiate the possible partnership with bigger companies. Under one condition, she says. She wants her handgun back, which she'd fired on him before for his infidelity. After a brief tense moment, they smile at each other and proceed to tear each other's clothes off. It's that Laura he married long ago and Cruz embodies her with gusto. Shailene Woodley plays Lina with earnest. She is the proto-feminist type who doesn't want to stay behind the doors as a mistress forever. It's her soft feature that contrasts Cruz's angles. Patrick Dempsey shows up as Piero, a seasoned silver fox of the Ferrari team, who ends up winning the race.
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The horrifying accident scene in the beginning presages what's to come as the Ferrari team prepares for the grueling, more than a thousand miles open road race, Mille Miglia, that encompasses Rome, Bologna, Florence, Parma and others. The route goes through densely populated cities, snaking roads up in the mountains and small rural towns alike with thousands of spectators on the side of the road. Stakes are very high, so is the danger. Mann, with his team of drivers, along with stunt coordinators, provides spectacular experience and unapologetically graphic mayhem.
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Compared with his foray into digital technology over the years, Ferrari feels much more sumptuous. With production design and period costumes - men in dark suits and glasses, it resembles Godfather - especially with the opera and church scenes. But it's the racing scenes that are pure Mann - with tight close-ups and shaky camera; the speed and tension presented on screen are palpable. It's all about craftsmanship, on both counts - the filmmaker and the subject he portrays.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3557005357973766375.post-36811644373676742612023-10-12T12:25:00.001-04:002023-10-12T15:23:20.494-04:00Native Americans Take Flight<b>Eureka</b> (2023) - Alonso
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Argentine filmmaker, Lisandro Alonso, breaks 9-year silence with Eureka, after Viggo Mortensen starring meta-western Jauja. In an episodic structure, the film freely contemplates the state of indigenous people of the vast American continents, the past and present, as well as their uneasy relationship with cinema. It's perhaps his most expansive and ambitious film to date. He digs deep into the distorted representation and history, the effect of colonialism and the influence of Western culture that displaces the natives who are left out of place and out of time. Using his minimalist, elemental way of filmmaking, combined with Deleuzean look at time-image non-linear approach and Native American spirituality, Eureka is a deeply contemplative, perplexing film.
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The first segment is a black and white western in full frame, starring Viggo Mortensen and Chiara Mastroianni. With coverages, combining wide and close-up shots, this is very much like a conventional filmmaking, not like Alonso's other works that utilize uninterrupted long takes and wide shots. Also, it's a rehash of Jauja's themes - looking for a daughter kidnapped by natives in the wild west, which the director intentionally appropriated from John Ford Western, The Searchers. The gunslinger named Murphy (Mortensen), tracks down where his daughter's kept in a small-town sheriff’s office. With the help of El Coronel (Mastroianni), he makes his way in with his vengeful guns blazing, to confront the captor of his daughter. But it is the daughter, the same daughter from Jauja (Dutch actress Wilber Malling Agger reviving her role), now all grown up, who turns a gun on him.
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It turns out, the first part is movie within a movie, playing out on TV in a household in the Sioux reservation in South Dakota. More of a background noise for a Native American cop Alaina (Alaina Clifford) and her young basketball coach niece Sadie (Sadie Lapointe) as they get ready for their work. Alaina is taking her night shifts patrolling the neighborhood. Snowstorm is about to hit the area and she has to stop in, as her dispatcher send her to the origins of one distress call after another.
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In a documentary style, we see the devastation of the Native American population living in the reservation - poverty, violence, incarceration and alcohol and drug use are everyday occurrence and Alaina being a good cop, she attends her job dutifully. Shot in a documentary style, the prolonged segment is as real as it gets. While white folks are playing out The Searchers fantasy for a century, the Natives are struggling with the bleak reality they inherited.
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Mastroianni makes another appearance as a French actress researching the reservation life for a film who got stranded in a storm. She is our interlocutor, El Coronel, an unwitting bridge to the natives from as far back as Cortez days. Sadie visits her young cousin in jail, then goes to her grandfather's trailer. Grandfather tells her, "Time does not exist. It's a human invention." She says she is ready to go away. Her grandfather gives her an herbal tea which will make her sleep and wake up in another life. Say bye to everyone you know. He says. Lapointe, just like many of Alonso's non-actors, shines, as a young woman, who wholly embodies the terrible fate befallen to Native Americans in the 21st century.
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Uncharacteristically for Alonso, we are presented with beautiful transition dissolves into the next segment, which takes place in Brazilian Amazon jungle, where a small tribe of peaceful natives who sit around and talk about their dreams. Their clothes and an old-style soda can tell us that this takes place in the past, during the Amazon's gold-rush days of the 1970s. A fight breaks out of their tranquil existence as jealousy between two men over a woman which results in stabbing and the stabber fleeing the village. The man then joins the gold-rush prospecting party nearby. El Coronel makes a third appearance, this time as a white man in charge of the prospecting operation. He is a typical middleman who would do anything for money. El Coronel tells the man that he doesn't belong there and would help him to get out of there.
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With such a strong and engaging middle part with Alaina and Sadie, the third part of the film doesn't quite gel with the rest of the film. But overall, Eureka is always a fascinating watch with full of ideas swimming around your head long after you leave the theater.
Dustin Changhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15167432942941107991noreply@blogger.com0