Mod

Quadrophenia (1979) - Roddam

Jimmy (Phil Daniels) is a mod. He and his mod friends always don green long army coat, suits and ride crazy modified scooters, listening to the Who and the Kinks and such. They are always up to no good, roaming around and always on the lookout for scoring blues (amphetamines). Working as a mail room boy in some advertising agency and living under a stern working class father, Jimmy is all teen angst.

The rockers with their leather jackets and motorbikes listening to rock 'n' roll are Jimmy & the gang's enemies and they are always on each other's throats. The tensions btwn the gangs finally erupt when they converge in large numbers in Brighton during the Bank Holiday. The huge fight breaks out in the streets of the seaside town and it culminates into to a full blown riot. Amidst all the chaos, Jimmy sneaks into a quiet alley to make out with the girl, Steph (Leslie Ash) that he always had crush on. It's undoubtedly the best day of his life. Soon after he is arrested and detained.

Back home, Jimmy's life is in shambles- he gets kicked out of the house, loses his job, Steph is now with his best friend and his scooter gets destroyed in an accident. He goes back to Brighton to relive the excitement only to be more disillusioned.

The film features young Ray Winston as Jimmy's childhood friend now a rocker and Sting as the sharply dressed mod leader who makes fool of the British court system. Daniels is a typical 70's British youngster- gaunt face, gangly figure, crooked smile, mischievous eyes. I couldn't remember where I saw him before. It turns out he was Bela in The Bride, another movie featuring Sting!

I've never been a fan of the Who and Tommy never did much for me. But Quadrophenia is great. It's full of youthful energy and disillusionment only Brits could produce. I was fully appreciative of the Brit culture scene in the 70s.

Intimacy on Film

Bedways (2010) - Kahl
Is capturing real intimacy on film possible? Does it need to have real sex in order to achieve that? What's the difference between that and a porn then? RP Kahl ponders some of these questions with the graphic new film, Bedways. A raccoon eyed film director Nina (Miriam Mayet) enlists two young, good looking actors, Hans (Mathias Faust, looking like a hunky Jean-Pierre Léaud) and Marie (Laura Cooper) for her new project. There is no script or money for it yet. It's still in a rehearsal stage. Nina is exploring what the film is going to be. For seven days, she and the company discuss the process and have erotic moments with each other.

For me, if a film sets out to be 'about' real sex and intimacy, the result is always dismal. Only a good, balanced film that worked for me, featuring real sex was Winterbottom's 9 Songs. The subject of Bedways is a bit cliché now. Not as shocking or controversial as before. But I like Kahl's approach to the subject. Armed with a small HDV camera, Kahl documents an artist's creative process without being self referential or overly dramatic. In the end what Nina finds, is what she doesn't want- and that's pretty amiable thing to realize as an artist. Does Bedways work as a movie? Not really. It doesn't hurt that three principal characters are very attractive. As far as a film experiment goes, Bedways raises many same questions that I've been wondering about but doesn't really succeed in answering them. I give Kahl credits for trying though.

Ugly Americans

Amigo (2010) - Sayles

The year is 1900. The setting is a sleepy, small village in the Philippines. A group of American soldiers arrive to secure the area and rid of it any rogue elements. It's nothing new to the villagers of San Isidro. They've been under the Spanish rule, until recently. It's the same white people in different clothes (nice blue wool shirts and cream colored khaki pants, I might add). The man in charge of this barrio is Rafael (one of the biggest name in Filipino cinema, Joel Torre). He has a difficult task of pleasing both the occupying force and the rebels, in which his brother, Simon (Ronnie Razaro) and his young son are part of. Freed by the American soldiers, a Spanish priest (Yul Vazquez) becomes somewhat unreliable liaison for the occupying force. Lt. Compton (Garret Dillahunt) is an idealistic greenhorn who has to grapple with the band of unruly, uneducated, racist soldiers while trying to win hearts and minds of the villagers.

Did I lose any of you so far?
Raise your hand if you ever heard of the Philippine- American War.
Raise your hand if you knew that a million Filipinos were killed in that conflict.
Okay, I didn't either, and I was pretty good at World History in school back in the day.

John Sayles has spent his career portraying stories based on important, neglected American history on film, and giving voice to the voiceless. In Amigo, his 17th feature, one small piece of the American Imperialism is at work in the South East Asia at the turn of the 20th century. This film, lacking a lengthy introduction or postscript, is not put in context; in other words, it is not your neatly packaged, easily digestible Hollywood historical drama and might be a hard sell to the general movie-going audience. It places a lot of responsibility on the viewers to look further into this history. At the base level, this well written film works as a searing human drama not dissimilar to other films about people under occupation, caught in the crossfire. I can't think of another American writer/director working today who can write as beautifully as Sayles.

As usual, Sayles leaves no stone unturned. Telling the story of survival and death from multiple points of view, he examines naked racism, manifest destiny, the hypocrisy of religion, the spreading of American "democracy" abroad, loyalty, friendship and more. His attention to period detail is quite amazing in Amigo. With the production designer Rodell Cruz, Sayles built a village entirely from bamboo and shot on location with a mostly Filipino crew (and NO, this is not your Marcos-era exploitation film). There are 4 different languages spoken in the film- Tagalog, English, Cantonese and Spanish. He even finds time to highlight the Filipino culture in a religious festival scene and their national pastime, cockfighting.

Dillahunt as Lt. Compton is great as soft-spoken, learned soldier, who has the best intentions at heart and is beginning to doubt his mission. Chris Cooper chews up his limited screen time as a bigoted, bloodthirsty colonel with strong military conviction. But the real star of the film is soulful Torre as the man trying to do right by his people while being amigo to the oppressors and to the Insurrectos alike.

Sayles draws obvious parallels to America's present involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan with waterboarding (which originated from the Philippine-American War, called the "water cure") and the phrase 'winning hearts and minds'. The film beckons the viewer to find out more about these hidden American histories.

Amigo opens August 19th in select cities. For more information, please visit Variance Films.

Unjust: John Sayles Interview

Regarded by many as the godfather of the American independent cinema, John Sayles has always been the chronicler of the little known socio-political injustices in American history. The prolific writer/director/editor/author's latest projects are a 955 page novel, A Moment in the Sun (published by McSweeney's Books), and a self-financed feature film Amigo (his 17th) about the little known turn of the 20th century Philippine-American war. I was fortunate enough to attend a roundtable interview that took place last week.

Tall and muscular, Sayles gives you the hearty longshoreman vibe in person, but when he speaks, it is instantly clear that he is a gifted storyteller. It was his history professor side (albeit casual) presiding over his students, informing us at great length about this long forgotten, sordid chapter in American history. It turned out we didn't have to ask too many questions. His long answers encompassed everything we wanted to know and much more. As an admirer of his work, it was a captivating experience just to hear him speak. But the 45 minute interview felt way too short.

The following interview has been edited for structure, but not content.

So what prompted you to make a film about the Philippine-American war?

It started years ago when I was doing research for a novel I wrote called Los Gusanos which is about a long history between the US and Cuba and the Philippine-American War was mentioned somewhere. Even though I had many relatives and acquaintances living in the Philippines, I've never heard anyone mentioning it before. Then I asked many of my Filipino- American friends about this and they had no idea either. They were taught that the Philippines were occupied by Spain for 300 years and the Spaniards sold the country to the US for 200 million dollars, leaving out the fact that they had the Philippine Republic, they fought for their independence and there were half of a million to a million people killed during the struggle. I got suspicious about how this history disappeared and why, in both countries.

So what it led to me is this fascinating turning point (it's the crux of my new novel A Moment in the Sun, which came out a couple of month ago), of not so much in switching how we behaved but how we thought of ourselves: we went from people who thought, "Okay we are the champions of liberty. We are down there in Cuba and we are helping the Cuban people to overthrow this nasty dago Spanish Imperialists," and only months later, somehow we were saying, "It's great that we are in the Philippines killing Filipinos to take over the country, that we are proud card carrying Imperialists".

But if the issue was in Cuba, why go to the Philippines?

That was the question a lot of these soldiers had. When they got on the boat, they were thinking that they would be killing Spaniards. 'Where are the Philippines?" "Why am I here?" "Who are our enemies?" What happened was, the US declared war on Spain and it was one of the few wars that the younger generation was more gung-ho about it than the war weary older generation was. They grew up listening to their gramps and dads about the Civil War and their heroics. And these awful people were doing awful things and for them it was a perfect opportunity to prove themselves that they are as tough as their fathers. Most of the forces who were sent to Cuba (which lasted only a couple of weeks) and the first part of the Philippines excursion forces were volunteers. They didn't know where Guam, Puerto Rico or the Philippines were, only a quarter of those troops even got to Cuba. It was over pretty quickly and they were diverted to other Spanish colonies.

In Washington, the Expansionists and Imperialists were saying, "We need to get in on this world power game. The Philippines are on the way to China. Now we are the world players like the British and everybody else. We are involved in Boxer Rebellion in China and this is what we should be doing."

And the early 1900's were the most racist time in our history. It wasn't only the poor and uneducated people being racist. There were the professors spouting hate, taken from some German philosophers. Eugenics was big. Rudyard Kipling was writing an open letter to Americans saying that it's not just an economic opportunity at hand but it's Every White Christian's Duty to enlighten the savages.

Did you make Amigo knowing that it mirrors the current situation in the Middle East and our involvement?

That's not why I made this movie, but the comparison is quite unavoidable considering that we have been in an invading mode since 1812. Justifications for the wars can change over time, but a lot of it is the same today. It just has to be phrased differently, more politically correct. I didn't have to go out of my way to find something like waterboarding, (back then it was called 'water cure') or the phrase 'winning hearts and minds' which are all in this movie. Water cure was mentioned in the congressional record during this war and 'hearts and minds' traces back to Teddy Roosevelt.

My interests lie in what these American soldiers were thinking. Some of them just wanted to kill them n***ers or "googoos" (as the Filipinos were called at the time), some were wondering why they were there and wanted to go home, some sought cheap drinks and easy women in the exotic environment, all the while trying to figure out if this smiling amigo is a good amigo or a bad amigo. On the Filipinos side, many were like the mayor (played by Joel Torre) in the film who was caught between the American forces and the Filipino rebels. They had to decide if they want to be seen as a traitor or a patriot. The same story can work under the Nazi occupation of France, or the French occupation of Algeria or the French/Japanese/American occupation of Vietnam. The story of the Mayor of San Isidro is a universal one, just a different location.

How did you narrow it all down to Amigo?

It evolved from the script I wrote about 15 years ago based off of all the research I've done, called Sometime in the Sun. It takes place in North Carolina, Cuba and the Philippines. For a two-hour movie it was just too ambitious. Then about 7 years ago I said to myself, 'why don't I just expand it in to a novel?' So I started writing A Moment in the Sun. I went back to the Philippines to do more research and my editing associate Mario Ontal introduced me to the film industry there and to Joel Torre, who is one of the biggest names in Filipino movies. I knew that the film industry there was big since the Roger Corman days but I was very encouraged by the scale of some of Joel's movies with the moderate budget. With all the money I made working in Hollywood, I saw the possibility to do a movie entirely shot and edited in the Philippines. We also shot the movie on the Red camera.

Was it a conscious decision to shoot in digital?

It was an economically conscious decision. I shot the last couple of my movies on Super 16 to save money but digital technology is way better now than when it first came out. Prior to the shoot, I had a long discussion with my cinematographer Lee Meily on what it can do and what it can't. She had a lot of experience with digital cameras before and knew exactly what to do with it.

They've got good pool of talents there so the most of the cast and crew were Filipinos. We only brought a sound team from the States, since they don't use sync sound in the Philippines. Also, the movie had to be on a village level. We shot everything in one-mile radius in an island called Negro (where Torre and Ontal are from), doubling as a small village in Luzon (the main island). We bought the villagers' crops and used many of them as extras while Joel played ambassador role to the village. The only problem we had was great abundance of fighting cocks there crowing day and night. We had to relocate them for the shoot.

There is a cockfight scene in the movie. Were any of them hurt?

No. We used rubber instead of real metal spikes they usually put on those fighting cocks. They were merely 'sparring'.

Where did you base your characters on?

Chris (Cooper)'s character was based on someone very specific named 'Hell Roaring Jake Smith' who was famous for telling his subordinates, "I want you to make this place howling wilderness. The more you kill and burn, the more you will please me. And I want you to kill every one out of ten Filipinos who are capable of carrying arms," which meant anybody older than 10. So yes, we had some hard-ass characters like the Colonel who had bullet in his hip from the Civil War who were useful in that kind of military operation. The Mayor is based on hundreds of other mayors that I read about, who got killed by one side or the other. Garret Dillahunt's character (Lt. Compton) is very much based on the soldiers' letters to home, who might have liked the army life but had very mixed feelings about their mission. Garret asked me about the character. He asked if he could play a character who likes being in charge but doesn't really know where to lead them.

While you were down there and saw the possibility of doing things more economically, did you think about doing another Filipino movie?

With grand houses from the remnants of the old aristocracy in the tropical climate, I kept thinking Faulkner. It's very much like Georgia in the 30s with sugar canes instead of cotton. Maybe a Faulkner with all Filipino cast?

You write, direct and edit your own movies. Can you tell me how you maintain your objectivity to the materials?

I write books too. I write first, second and third draft. I also write scripts for other people to afford what I do, more often than not while working on my stuff at the same time. Frankly, I forget what I've done so quickly. I say, "What's this about? Oh Spanish civil war? 1930s? Okay here I am." (Everyone laughs) It's the same with the footage. Yes I do recognize what I shot. But I get objective pretty quickly. The other thing is I've always had this attitude that "here is your new universe. I don't care what you wrote. Here is what people did today (on set). You got 2 angles instead of 5? Let's find another way to tell the story."

How is Amigo being distributed?

The supportive mid-90s to early 2000 independent film environment doesn't exist anymore. Even the movies with big names don't get distributed and go directly to video. They don't want to take the gamble with dramas. It's either comedies or comic book superhero movies. The 30 plus weeks in the theater days are over. It's all about opening weekend where they recoup the money and the 2-3 weeks run at best. For smaller movies, studios can't take their chances. Even if they do put up the money to make it, they ask you to spend your money for the promotion and distribution. So I'm going back to what I did with couple of my first films. I made 12 prints of the film (10 on film and 2 digital) and hit 12 mainstream theaters throughout the country where there are large Filipino-American population. If it does well, then we will make more prints and art house theaters distribution will follow.

What are you working on right now?

I've worked on the script for the story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg where they were accused of espionage and got executed in the 50's. I got to meet their sons and everything. I'm writing a lot for other people. Let's see, there is a script about Sacha Litvinenko, the Russian spy who was poisoned with polonium, adapting a book, Girls like Us about Carol King, Joni Mitchell and Carley Simon. There is a script about Spanish Civil War funded by an independent company but I don't know it is happening now. I was recently working on the script from the first 45 pages of the autobiography of Anthony Kiedis, which HBO stalled. There was a very nice miniseries treatment for Louis Armstrong that Charles Dutton was going to direct, but that also fell through. I'm writing one for myself about penal colony in Tasmania in the 1820s, who knows?

Amigo is distributed by Variance Films and opens in selected cities on August 19th. Please visit Variance Films website for more information.

I don't know much about kissing

They Live by Night (1949) - Ray

It concerns young love between 23 year old jailbait Bowie (Farley Granger) and a lonely gas station attendant and a niece of an accomplice, Juliette (Cathy O'Donnell). Just broke out of a jail after serving 7 years for murder, Bowie is mixed up in with tough bank robbers Chickamaw and T-dub. After another heist where people are shot and fallen in love with Juliette in the safehouse, Bowie wants out. They get married at a bus stop chapel and get settled in a small cabin in the woods. But the sensational newspapers blow him out of proportion, making him a some kind of sleek gangster. And the tough guys wanting the third wheel, wouldn't leave him alone.

Ray's attention is on the two young people in love rather than on their impending doom. "I don't know too much about kissing. You will have to show me." The love sick kitten Juliette purrs. "I don't know much about it myself." Bowie replies in earnest. "We'll learn it together." she says. If this was said in any other film, it wouldn't have worked. But it's Nick Ray film. Fresh faced Granger and O'Donnell are perfect for the parts as young lovers who are basically children that the circumstances made them playing grown ups. Instead of coming off as naive, they are sullen and aware of the world they live in. They are just happy they found each other and want to be left alone. You instantly feel for these kids.

Even though it's regarded as the granddaddy of Bonnie and Clyde, Badlands and slew of other caper flicks, They Live by Night is a typical Nick Ray film first.
They Live by Night is a sentimental film. But you can feel that Ray's sentimentality comes from a genuine place, out of well drawn characters. I really loved it.

Float

L'Atalante (1934) - Vigo

A country girl, Juliette (Dita Parlo) marries a young skipper of a barge named L'Atalante on the Seine. They sail from one port to another along the river with a couple of shipmates- buffoonish, grizzled sailor Le père Jules (the great Michel Simon) who owns a dozen cats that seem to be always roaming around the ship and a kid. Juliette soon finds the life on the barge boring. Her eyes sparkle when she hear the news of docking in Paris.

It's a simple story beautifully told- young lovebirds, temptation of the City of Lights, jealousy, rash decisions and regret. The moving ship inevitably provides plenty of great cinematic visuals. There are many memorable scenes too- Le père Jules' cabin of curiousities, a street peddler's one man band act, and of course, the memorable under water scene. But my favorite scene is the newly weds sleepless night apart where Vigo goes back and forth with the simplest, yet very effective shadow play to tie them together.

I've heard a lot about L'Atalante's influence on my favorite film, Leos Carax's Les Amants du Pont-Neuf and now I can see why. A beautiful movie. I'll just go and put my head in the water bucket now.

The Box

Kiss Me Deadly (1955) - Aldrich


Craaazzzy movie. It starts out very strong with a woman only wearing trench coat running barefoot on the LA highway at night, then body stopping the car driven by a thick-headed PI, Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker). Soon They are captured by a bunch of thugs and when Hammer comes to consciousness, he witnesses the woman being tortured to death. Next thing he remembers is their car being pushed off the cliff with him and the woman in it.

This cold war paranoia tinged 'whatsit' movie is so ridiculously hard edged, so hilariously brutal and so not PC, it kept me chuckling throughout. It's a archetypal pulpy noir: nothing is really explained here and it don't matter. It's still amazingly delicious. You can see its influence everywhere from Tarantino to Lynch. Hammer is no Marlowe or Spade. He is a vain, big, tough man who wouldn't hesitate to slap anyone around to get what he wants. There are lots of dames in this one and non of them are that pretty. The femme fatale of the movie is a waifish curious cat, Lily/Gabrielle (Gaby Rogers). You have to slog through the saggy middle but the payoff at the end is so grand, it made me laugh for the longest time.

Heap of Sand

The Hill (1965) - Lumet

It's a military prison in North Africa for deserters, thieves, troublemakers and weaklings of the British army. The place is tightly run by square jawed R.S.M. Wilson (Harry Andrews) who truly believes that good old discipline will make a soldier out of any man. The man-made sand hill in the middle of the camp is shown in a spectacular crane shot that opens the film. It's the crowning jewel of Wilson's legacy. Under his command, the prisoners would march up and down the hill under the unforgiving African sun until they pass out.

Enter a new batch of prisoners - Roberts (Sean Connery), King (Ossie Davis), Bartlett (Roy Kinnear), McGrath (Jack Watson) and Stevens (Alfred Lynch). After few scuffles, the new cellmates bond but are worried about weakling Stevens. It's the sadistic Staff Sergeant Williams (Ian Hendry) who's after Stevens and the gang. After grueling run on the hill wearing a gas mask, Stevens cracks and dies, sending out ripples through out the camp.

With Ray Rigby adapting from his own play, The Hill crackles with sharp dialog delivered by amazing actors including young, just-off-doing-Goldfinger Sean Connery playing a man who refused to fight in a suicide mission. The character actor Andrews is also great as a man drunken with power, Hendry is nurse Ratched worthy and Michael Redgrave as the sympathetic medical officer brings in humanism. But the star of the film is definitely Ossie Davis, who plays a whiskey drinking Jamaican man and steals every scene he is in. Oh god, he is a national treasure here, ready to be discovered by Nicolas Cage. One of my all time favorite performances by anyone.

The film is not bogged down by sentimentality or a big message. The mere notion of Military invokes 'leave you brain behind'/'no-common sense required' in my mind. Lumet doesn't have to try hard to make things anti-military. It's out there in the form of giant sand heap for all to see. He just shows that it doesn't have to be super serious or highly dramatic to make a point and he does it marvelously.

Gerry-Rigged

Gerry (2002) - Van Sant

If a film starts with Arvo Pärt's Spiegel im Spiegel, you know that shit's gonna go down and someone will die. It sets the tone. That's what happens in Gerry, but very slowly. We follow Casey Affleck and Matt Damon through a desert hiking trail and where they soon get lost. They totally gerried their directions. At first, with uneven visuals (mainly long takes but not the usual Harris Savides style), minimal dialogue and annoying moody score, I had a hard time getting into it. Once it settles in with the desert vistas and monotonous trekking, I was totally sold on its hypnotic nature. There is a funny ten minute marooned-on-the-rock scene that ends in totally ridiculous way.

Gerry is not an incisive character study, nor huffy survival tale, nor reflection on today's wayward youth. Van Sant keeps things deliberately obscure. It's challenging. Two characters are totally interchangeable. There is nothing really going on. Yet I couldn't keep my eyes off the screen. It's an interesting experiment that is only possible in cinematic terms. I liked it.

Uncle Boonmee Choice Cuts

Watched it again recently since it's out on DVD. Sublime. Got some screengrabs:











Uncle Boonmee Review
Apichatpong Weerasethakul Interview

Time

The Future (2011) - July

A couple of weeks ago, I was having brunch with my wife at this German place we know. Some waitstaff's ipod mix was playing through the speakers and a familiar song caught our attention. It was 'Where the Streets Have No Name' by U2. Then it occurred to us that the song was 25 years old. 25 YEARS OLD! Where has all the time gone?!

'Time' is the subject of The Future, the second feature by artist/author/filmmaker, Miranda July. Filled with anxiety of getting nowhere while getting old, it's decidedly sadder and darker than her previous film, Me You and Everyone We Know.

Sophie (July) and Jason (Hamish Linklater) are thirty something, self absorbed modern couple going through their early midlife crises. Unmarried and childless, they are stuck in jobs they hate (Sophie works at a dance center for children and Jason, an over the phone computer tech support). Their decision to adopt a long haired, injured cat named Paw-Paw (who narrates the film in a scratchy, high-pitched voice- by July) pushes them into existential crises. This rash decision was based upon the prior knowledge that Paw-Paw has only six months to live. It's a short term commitment- something tangible: they would love and care for the cat for his remaining time here on earth, then they would move on with their lives. But at the shelter clinic, they are informed that with lots of love and proper care, Paw-Paw might live for up to 5 years!

To have the cat fully recovered from his injury at the shelter, they are given a month of freedom- so to speak, to do whatever they want, before they commit to the daunting pet ownership. For Sophie, it's creating 30 new dances and put them on youtube. For Jason, it's surrendering himself to fate. They quit their respective jobs and even quit internet which they are married to. The film turns darker when artistically frustrated Sophie starts having an affair with an older man. It culminates to her confessing to Jason. But he can't take the harsh truth, so he literally stops time- it's one of the tricks the couple practices.

July again tackles the internet age human interactions through seemingly normal characters with their abnormal lives. As usual, she does her delicate balancing act where her quirkiness could easily turn uncomfortable at a moment's notice but never tips over. More so than in Me You and Everyone We Know, the characters in The Future are emotionally transparent, exposing their vulnerability out in the open. They are as terrified of the ominous, uncertain future just as the children often are.

Being a thirty-something, semi-professional myself, the film hit me very hard. It makes me contemplate on how the technology (wide use of internet, cell phones and game consoles, all happened in our twenties) could be a contributing factor for our generation being trapped in a perpetual arrested development. The Future is funny and poignant in its depiction of adult angst, but I can't shake off the sadness I feel after watching it. 

After making an appearance in the Berlin, Sundance and SXSW film festivals earlier this year, The Future opens on July 29th in the US, followed by a UK opening in November.

Horseman of the apocalypse

Disclaimer:
WARNING!! THIS FILM IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. IF YOU HAVE EXISTING HEART CONDITIONS, PLEASE LEAVE THE ROOM NOW!!

To beat the 104 degree heat and unbelievable boredom, me and crew were at it again.
Can a youtube clip scarier than death? Apparently so.

I gotta thank the crew again:
Brandon for Nicolas Cage impression, David for mindblowing lighting set-up and Asuan(?) for your emotional support.

What we need is some kickass soundtracks.

Encounters of the Spooky Kind

Disclaimer:
WARNING!! THIS FILM IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART. IF YOU HAVE EXISTING HEART CONDITIONS, PLEASE LEAVE THE ROOM NOW!!

Gosh, I haven't done any filming in years. Bored out of my mind, me and some kids decided to make use of the new HD video camera at work.
It's shot on SONY PMW-F3L XD CAM with an 18mm Zeiss Prime.

I have to thank these brave souls who made this sacrilege possible:

Eric the horse whisperer
David for his mesmerizing performance
Asuan for lighting, btw, how do you spell your name?

Poltergeistus

Insidious (2010) - Wan




Director James Wan (Saw) delivers some really effective scares in this Poltergeist + Nightmare on Elm Street mash-up. Wan takes his time to gear up the suspense and it pays off nicely. The visual is pure 80s Argento, with red dominating the color palette. At time's Insidious feels like a Tom Waits music video and has no weight to it since the devil's appearance and demeanor (with hula music and all) has no strong reference points from anywhere other than some shaky urban legend tabloid stories. The ending almost ruins the good fun, but it still is much better than other recent horror films.

Haru's Journey

Haru's Journey (2010) - Kobayashi

Tadao (screen legend Tatsuya Nakadai) is very upset. He's first seen storming out of the house by the sea in a small fishing village in Hokkaido, with his granddaughter Haru (Eri Tokunaga) trailing behind with his cane. She apologizes profusely but he is adamant. It is finally clear after they are on the train what their argument was about: Haru's job at the school cafeteria is no more since the school is permanently closed. She wants to go to Tokyo to get a job, and therefore Tadao will need to find some way to support himself alone. He is begrudgingly on his way to ask his siblings whom he hasn't seen for ages, if they could take him in. So starts Haru's Journey, a moving, beautiful film by Masahiro Kobayashi (Bashing, Rebirth).

Haru's Journey is a road movie. Our odd couple travel by train from place to place, relying on Tadao's worn address book, from one of Tadao's siblings after another. But there are no prospects of them accepting his proposal. They have their own problems and Tadao's insolence is not helping. It becomes clear that quiet Haru's been taking care of the old man all this time. Their money is running low and Tadao's lame leg does not help the matter.

The film can be seen as an updated version of Yasujiro Ozu's Tokyo Story, but instead of older parents asking children for help in the industrialized post-war Japan that amplified the widening generation gap and breakdown of the tradition, Haru's Journey touches upon the two of the most pressing issues in contemporary Japanese society- growing number of elderly population and the crippling recession. Since it being a Kobayashi film, there are no archetypes in Haru's Journey nor any moral grandstanding. Tadao is not an old saintly man contemplating about changing times but rather a stubborn, uneducated, selfish man who throws tantrums from time to time. Haru, whose mother ended her own life, is a deeply wounded girl, about to venture out to the world on her own. Every character in the film is three dimensional and has redeeming qualities. And there are no perfect answers to the life's complications and not one person is wiser than the other.

As the tearful reunion between Haru and her father and his new wife gives Haru and Tadao a glimmer of hope in attaining a real family, but they realize that they can't just intrude on someone else's lives. For better or worse, they only got each other until the end.

Nakadai is nothing short of a revelation as a stubborn old man with no regrets. With his commanding presence and vulnerable gaze, the film showcases his great range. Eri Tokunaga is also remarkable as the withdrawn nineteen year old country girl whose resilience is the bedrock of the film. Kobayashi skillfully punches in for close ups of these two faces which convey so much feelings, in critical moments. The strong support cast include Chikage Awashima as Tadao's kindly older sister and Teruyuki Kagawa as Haru's equally wounded, understanding father. Haru's Journey is a quietly affecting modern day masterpiece that will break your heart many times over.

Haru's Journey plays part of Japan Cuts 2011, July 20th 7pm. For tickets and info, please visit JAPAN CUTS 2011 website.

Trashy Fun

Tabloid (2010) - Morris

Errol Morris's examination of the nature of tabloids turns out to be the funniest film I've seen in years. He tells a crazy story that happened in Britain, 1977 involving a beautiful all around American girl Joyce McKinney. From her side of the story, it makes McKinney a hopeless romantic- love at first sight, but her man goes to Britain for a mission (he is a Mormon), she goes after him with some friends, kidnaps him and ties him to a bed and have sex with him to de-brainwash him. The Scotland Yard sees it differently and puts her in jail. British tabloids see it differently as well dig up some of her sordid past including bunch of nudie and s&m pics of her.

Real life stories are nuttier than fiction. Morris lets his subject tell their stories without much interruption. Conveniently, all the records and photos are missing from both sides, the truth lost in the middle somewhere.

Then there is a Korean connection involving cloned dogs named Boogers one to five. The tabloid story doesn't get any weirder than this.

In the age of Newscorp scandal and sensationalized murder trials, Joyce McKinney story seems fun and innocent. Morris is on top of his game and has never been any more entertaining than this. Will definitely end up in my top ten of 2011.

My Errol Morris Interview

Global Recession

Sketches of Kaitan City (2010) - Kamakiri
A young shipyard worker takes pride in his work. You can see it in his face when one of the gigantic ships he worked on is being launched to sea. There is almost a childlike glee in him. Then the news of the company restructuring and the layoffs hit the airwaves. It's all down hill from there in the northern port city of Kaitan, where the soul crushing effects of economic downturn are the only things gloomier than its unforgiving wintry weather. Kazuyoshi Kamakiri's Sketches of Kaitan City is a relentlessly bleak film.

This Altman-esque, episodic film chronicles five very distinctive and loosely connected stories based on the shorts by novelist Yasushi Sato, set around a joyless new year's eve: the aforementioned shipyard worker and his sister take the city tram up to the overlook to watch the first sunrise of the year, only to find out that they don't have enough money for both for the lift down, an elderly woman refuses to move while the city tries to demolish her shack and make way for a new shopping mall, then her cat runs away, an operator of the shaggy city planetarium doesn't know how reconnect with his unresponsive teenage son and suspects his bar hostess wife is up to no good and, an abusive gas supply business owner beats his wife, who in turn, beats their son and an old trolly conductor meets his estranged Tokyoite son at his wife's grave.

With its handheld camerawork and minimal music, Sketches of Kaitan City resembles strongly of the neo-neo realism of the Dardenne brothers' films but without their sense of hope. That's just the thing. All the stories are equally strong and performances, very good. You feel their pain and suffering. But Kamakiri's documentary style filmmaking is too distant and dispassionate to be appreciated. It is problematic for a nearly three hour film where the only character that gives the audience a glimmer of hope is the pregnant cat, that there will be adorable kittens in the near future. Well, if you were jobless, homeless, beaten and isolated, what good would the kittens do?


Sketches of Kaitan City will be screening as part of Japan Cuts 2011 on Tuesday July 19th 6:30pm You can find out more information at Japan Cuts 2011 website

Headless Limbless Companion

Torso (2010) - Yamasaki

One might wonder that whether we need yet another film about a blow up sex doll, especially one coming from the long time Hirokazu Kore-Eda's cinematographer Yutaka Yamasaki. Not that Kore-Eda's approach in Air Doll was in any way sensationalistic, but Yamasaki's Torso is neither an over the top titillating sex comedy nor a whimsical fantasy about an inanimate semen receptacle coming to life. It's rather a quiet character study deeply rooted in realism.

Hiroko (Makiko Watanabe) is a thirty something office worker and by all account, a cold fish. She seems quite satisfied with her single woman status. Her interactions with people including her younger half-sister Mina (Love Exposure's Sakura Ando) are curt and distant. She declines invitations to the night outings by the men-hungry coworkers at the office. With no makeup and her scant wardrobe in shambles, she doesn't seem to try very hard even though she's not unnoticeable- with her black rimmed glasses and her hair tightly held back, she can pass as a sexy librarian. But she has a secret: every night, she inflates her male blowup torso, takes bath and snuggles up in bed with it. As the film progresses, we realize that this inflatable object is more than just a sex toy.

The tension rises when Mina moves in to Hiroko's tiny apartment after a fight with her abusive boyfriend Jiro (with whom Hiroko has a history with) and declares that she is pregnant. Forever a pesky little sister, Mina accuses her introverted older sister of ruining her life by introducing the womanizing brut to her. There is a strong sibling rivalry and complicated family dynamics at play. Their mother favors Mina and hates Hiroko for all her late husband's misdeeds. "When people die, they all become saints," mother replies, effectively cutting off Hiroko's reason for hating her dead stepfather and not showing up at his funeral. 

There is a funny beach getaway scene involving ecstatic Hiroko and her headless, limbless boyfriend in a Speedo that ends in skinny dipping. It's the first time we see her smile and giggle like a little schoolgirl. She seems to find the situation just as hilarious as the viewers do.

In Torso, there are no huge confrontations or public embarrassments to speak of. It is inevitable that Mina's snooping in the small apartment would result in finding out her sister's little secret. Would that be a big deal? Would it be less embarrassing if it was a dildo?

Yamasaki handles what could easily have been a sordid material with subtlety and maturity. Fortunately, in his hands, the inflatable object remains to be the inflatable object and never takes over the film as a centerpiece. It is Hiroko's emotional support system, a symbol of comfort against hurtful things. But she can't stay in her comfort zone forever. Torso is an astute observation on the state of arrested development, aided by hand-held, natural photography and pitch perfect acting by Watanabe and Ando.

Torso will be screening as part of Japan Cuts 2011 on Sunday, July 17th You can find out more information at Japan Cuts 2011 website

I Can be Funny Too: Errol Morris Interview

I'm not a big fan of roundtable interviews. It's not as intimate as one-on-ones and you have to share the short given time with other interviewers. But when an opportunity comes along to interview Errol Morris, one of the most revered American documentary filmmakers, in the week of the release of his uproarious new film, Tabloid, who am I to say no?

Luckily, the time slot I was given was at the end of the day with only two other journalists so I was able to slip in fair amount of questions. Even after repeated interviews, Morris appeared to be chatty and generous in his answers about the film, the state of modern journalism and a new narrative project with This American Life's Ira Glass while showing a bit of his 'funny' side as well. Here are the excerpts from the interview:

[All the questions are mine, otherwise marked with *]

Even though Tabloid is being regarded as aesthetically different from your previous films, I still see it very much as an 'Errol Morris' film. In a way there are a lot of similarities in Fred Leuchter [Mr. Death], Robert McNamara in The Fog of War and Joyce McKinney. Was it that self-delusional, ironical aspect of her story what attracted you to do this film?

Yeah. Maybe in part, I think.

Did the Mormons give you any trouble making this film?
No. Mercifully.

You are not expecting a backlash from them after the release?

We were showing the movie in Salt Lake City and people there seem to love it! I think Joyce might have liked it more if the movie was more antagonistic to the Mormon Church. But as you know, it's an element of the story, not THE story.  

The tabloid culture seems a lot different now than in the 70s with the decline of serious journalism in general, many newspapers going under, the popularity of the reality TV and now The News of the World scandal. What's your take on it?

Things have clearly gotten worse. The News of the World story is not so much of a tabloid story. I mean there are elements of that kind of story in my movie where people no longer care about the facts or the representation of reality or truth. The News of the World story cranks it up a couple of steps further and shows that they not only don't care about the truth, but they don't care about anything at all. It's all lies and manipulation, crimes, hacking into people's phones and playing games with people's lives. With Joyce you can say 'ok she is not a completely innocent victim of the tabloids, she is a participant at least on some level that she sought some kind of fame or notoriety and she got it.' But you take the parents of the girl who got abducted and killed, they didn't seek any fame or attention. And the police were trying to decide whether the girl was alive or dead and the tabloid was fiddling around with the evidence? That's different. That's really truly screwed up version of journalism.

*One good thing that came about was that they shut the paper down.

No, it's not clear if anything is going to happen to the Newscorp. Some low level workers who were dependent on the paper got the blame but at this point, I'm not sure what it means over all.

Do you see Tabloid as your own response to your previous, more 'serious' films?

The Standard Operating Procedure wasn't particularly well received. The reviews were all over the place. I felt that the movie was misjudged by many people. Whether I went loony-toons in it or not, I felt the movie was never really appreciated. It didn't do particularly well at the box office either. And I thought it was good time to do this [Tabloid] because I consider myself as a funny person and this is a funny movie. So people can't quite say ERROL = NOT FUNNY because of The Fog of War and Standard Operating Procedure. So in a way I wanted to do this movie as a way of saying, "FUCK YOU I AM FUNNY!"

*You've collaborated with Philip Glass and Danny Elfman in the past...

Yes and I will work with both of them again. Philip and I did 3 features together and then we did a short project for IBM for its hundredth anniversary, it's on youtube. It's about a half an hour film and he did an original score for it (search: IBM Centennial Film: They Were There - People who changed the way the world works). I love Philip's music and I'd love to work with him again. I'm planning on one with Ira Glass as it was reported in This American Life. It's a narrative feature about the first cryogenic freezer, which is kind of a tabloid story. Either Danny or Philip will do the music. They both are great and they seem to tolerate me. (Laughs). John Kusiak did the soundtrack for Tabloid and he did a fantastic job.

Are you nervous that it's coming out the same week as the last Harry Potter movie?

I'll just have to face it down.

How are the Boogers [Joyce's dogs] doing?

I think they are doing fine. One of the Boogers was at the screening yesterday in a matching sequin dress with Joyce.

So that means there is really a future for successful human cloning, perhaps?

The clones would be very convenient for the screening appearances and interviews. (laughs)

*So Joyce is coming for the screening tonight too?

We certainly invited her. I get the feeling she will show up at the LA screenings too.

*So her not being happy with the movie and appearing at the screenings uninvited are...

We really had a good time the other day at the screening. She was funny, unlike when I was editing the film for the last six months. She was threatening and talking about suing me and all that. Is it all an act? We don't know. One word that comes to mind in dealing with Joyce McKinney is 'Kevlar'.


IFC Films will open Tabloid in theaters on July 15.

My thanks to Taiyo Okamoto from COOL Magazine and Adam Schartoff from filmwax for their camaraderie during the interview.

Long Live VHS!

Videodrome (1983) - Cronenberg

Long gone are the days of magnetic tapes. Today, it's all about shapeless, formless streaming video. And there is nothing physical about the technology anymore. It might be false and frivolous on my part to be nostalgic about a finite format, but hey, I spent my formative years in the 80s, so I am a product of that silly decade. I can be emotional about seeing a disheveled rubics cube with a couple of its tiles missing in a pitbull's mouth, if I want to. But David Cronenberg shows what was there back then- a subversive filmmaking. I can't think of any recent film or filmmaker that is as daring as Videodrome.

I saw Videodrome as a horny teenager, not grasping its implications about the physical manifestations of watching sex and violence in the media. Seeing it now, it's an electrifying experience. Casting the 80's sex kitten Deborah Harry in a s&m loving TV personality role is pure genius. James Woods has never been better since or prior to as a sleazy public TV show programmer.

One could see a strong correlation with Videodrome and Cronenberg's later, Burroughs adaptation of Naked Lunch. But I think I'd prefer media induced hallucination over drug induced one anytime. The film definitely becomes my favorite Cronenberg.

*Psychedelic Indie Nerd Glam

Ringing in Their Ears (2011) - Irie

The film starts out with Noko, a lead singer of Japanese metafunk band Shinsei Kamattechan, on stage, singing while holding a laptop in front of him. With fans' comments flying across the live streaming images of the concert in the background, Noko sings off key, accompanied by childish pop melodies and loud guitar. His voice is awkward and powerful at the same time. Unlike the group's less than rock star attire and cheerful sound, their lyrics are often dark and borderline weird.

Yu Irie, who graced last year's NYAFF with a pair of sleeper hits, 8000 Miles and 8000 Miles 2 about Japanese wannabe rappers and the suburban ennui, comes back this year with a decidedly mature film, Ringing in Their Ears, featuring aforementioned, Shinsei Kamattechan.

Taking place over a week building up to Kamattechan's big concert, Irie skillfully weaves the trials and tribulations of several Chiba-ites into a funny, touching film. Kaori (Kurumi Morishita) is a struggling single mother doubling as a nightclub dancer and a cleaning person to bring up her forever-glued-to-a-laptop, kindergartener, Ryota. The boy, being a big Kamattechan fan, gets into trouble when he teaches his classmates a disturbing song, obviously influenced by the band:

I want to live/I want to die/Either way is fine, ma, ma, ma, ma
I want to fade away/I want to die/Neither way is fine, ma, ma, ma, ma

A high school senior Michiko (lovely Fumi Nikaido) clashes with her parents because she wants to be a professional shogi (Japanese chess) player instead of going to college. Then her boyfriend who'd introduced her to Kamattechan's music, leaves her for the more conventional college-bound girl. The band members, with the exception of reclusive (apparently in real life too) Noko being AWOL until the concert, play themselves as they rehearse for their big concert, while their conflicted manager (Mikito Tsurugi) hesitates to break the news that they are getting picked up by a major label and about to become a sellout.

It makes sense that Irie, who demonstrated the knack for channeling the disaffected youth in his previous efforts, is the one showcasing this Chiba based (like 8000 Miles 2), web savvy, word-of-mouth, indie rock phenom. But Ringing in Their Ears is not just another publicity tie-in or fanboy movie. It stands on its own as an affecting narrative. It just happens to have kick-ass music too. Irie's nuanced, minimalist approach is never on the nose about the issues - shut-ins, outcasts and the generation gap. He conveys all those things through likable characters and the spirit of rock'n'roll without being showy or cocky. Ringing in Their Ears will satisfy music fans and film lovers alike.

Ringing in Their Ears will be screening as part of the 10th annual New York Asian Film Festival in conjunction with Japan Cuts 2011 on Thursday, July 7th and Monday, July 11th. You can find out more information at the NYAFF website and Japan Cuts website

*Psychic indie nerd glam is the term used to describe Shinsei Kamattechan's music by good people at jrawk.com. Please visit their page

Korean Food Anyone?

The Recipe (2010) - Lee

The Recipe's Korean title, 'doenjang' refers to 'fermented soybean paste' which is the base of almost all Korean cooking- it is in soups, stews, marinades, condiments, side dishes... the list is endless. With such an ever-present, everyday ingredient as the subject, I thought the film would be a tongue-in-cheek, Tampopo style comedy. Director Lee Seo-goon rather takes a tear-jerking, populist approach, a la Le Grande Chef, and the result is lukewarm at best.

It starts out quite promisingly- a death row inmate's last wish to taste the same doenjang jigae (soybean stew) in a small mountain restaurant where he was caught, triggers a TV producer Choi (Ryu Seung-ryong) on a wild goose chase. The police report and eye witnesses support that it was the aroma of the stew that stopped the violent criminal in his tracks.

With the help of his always hungry police friend and a lab technician, Choi searches for the story behind that mysterious soybean paste. The story cuts back and forth between Choi's investigation and Hye-jin (Lee Yo-won), the young woman carrying a small crock pot.

Growing up surrounded by meju (square blocks of fermenting soybean) hanging from the ceiling, Hye-jin has the talent for finding the right ingredient for making the best doenjang. Orphaned early on, Hye-jin travels countryside to find the right elements for her magical paste. In a southern rural village, she meets a handsome plum wine maker and falls in love.

As a Korean food aficionado, I expected to see some mouth watering Korean food in display in The Recipe. Unfortunately, the film turns out to be less about food and more to do with its gooey melodrama that involves an unrealized lovers' pledge, a fateful car accident, tears, butterflies and a goblin.

The most interesting part of the film is the process of making doenjang. Lee tries to elevate the art of doenjang making as that of wine making. A lot of elements play the roles: the location, soil, soybeans, water, salt, yeast, pollen, clay (for the large crock pots that would house the fermenting ingredients) and of course that special individual touch. Lee shows the process faithfully, if not a little too cutesy, sterile way.

Still looking for that one good film that would satisfy my desire to see delicious Korean food parading in front of me, I walked away from The Recipe with my mouth completely dry.

The Recipe will be screening as part of the 10th annual New York Asian Film Festival on Tuesday, July 5th and Saturday, July 9th. You can find out more information at the NYAFF website

Pretty Jamie Gumm

The Collector (1965) - Wyler

A young, introverted butterfly collector (Terrence Stamp) in a secluded big house with a separate cellar, moves up his territory when he kidnaps a pretty art school student (Samantha Eggar). After begging and pleading and escape attempts, they sort of agree on their terms - he will let her go after 4 weeks, hoping she will fall in love with him.

With only two principal actors (plus one small character in the middle), this John Fowles adaptation feels more like a play. Young Stamp is intense, playing the role of creepy, shy man with chips on his shoulders. Is it sex that you want from me? Miranda the art student asks him. No. He wants to respect her as a proper woman.

There is a big confrontation over Catcher in the Rye. Their class differences are highlighted and the gap between them is obviously too wide. The film suffers from Fowles passive aggressiveness of the characters and their shallow psychological makeup. Stamp is effectively creepy but the film doesn't quite escape from its Stockholm Syndrome/captive drama mold.

I Hate Musicals

Sell Out! (2008) - Yeo

The Filmbegins with sultry Rafflesia (Jessica Lai) interviewing a Malaysian film auteur for her low end TV talk show called "For Art's Sake". The auteur is Yeo Joon Han (the director making a cameo) who just won the prestigious Young Overseas Chinese Women New Directors Honorary Mention Award at the Krychindangzhongbushaus Village Far Eastern Film Festival. When asked about why his almost silent indie art film "Love is Love and Nothing Else", is so slow and boring, Yeo, who appears in the nude for the interview (and seems very comfortable), vehemently defends the authenticity of his film by citing that in real life, nothing really happens, that no one actually breaks out into a song in the middle of it. He goes on even further, stating that people who make musicals should be chopped into 18 pieces!

This prologue shows director Yeo's mischievous intentions. Sell Out! is an all-out, over-the-top satirical musical romantic comedy where many things happen and people break out into songs, many times over. And it's uproariously funny.

After capturing her lovelorn boyfriend's death on camera where he recites his poem before he dies, Rafflesia comes up with a concept for the ever-popular reality TV - a televised death. This will surely show her pretty half-English rival who the boss is. The only problem is, she has to wait by the deathbeds until her sadsack subjects croak. A potential megahit in her hand but under the tight deadline, she has to find a more reliable subject very soon. What kind of deaths are predictable? Suicides.

Enter Eric (Peter Davis), an honest engineer who works for the same greedy conglomerate that Rafflesia works for, named, ahem, Fony Corporation. He is in a pickle because the clownish corporate bigwigs can't believe their ears when they hear his 8-in-1 soy bean machine is built so well, it won't break right after its warranty runs out. How can you make money out of the product that won't break down? This is followed by musical number, "Money". They end up exorcising Eric's creative 'dreamer' side out of him, But the exorcism goes wrong, resulting in two Erics - the dreamer and the practical. Deeply depressed by all this, the practical Eric comes up with a plan involving lovely but heartless Rafflesia.

Director Yeo jabs at many things with his ironic sense of humor - snobby art film scene, money hungry corporate culture, absurd reality TV shows and even Malay English (Manglish). The film's filled with horrible, insensitive jokes and people but in Yeo's hand, they never feel malicious.

Sell Out! caught me by surprise, since I didn't know what to expect watching my first Malaysian movie. It's a light romantic comedy version of Network set in bustling modern day Kuala Lumpur with its own karaoke singalong time built in for the audience. I haven't had this rib roaring good time watching a film in a long while.

Sell Out! will be screening as part of the 10th annual New York Asian Film Festival on Friday, July 1st and Monday, July 4th. You can find out more information at the NYAFF website.

Lunch break Contemplation on Life

Tree of Life (2011) - Malick

It is a noble attempt to visualize someone contemplating his life for five minutes in his office during a lunch break. But The Tree of Life as a film just doesn't work. It is a fluffy snoozefest, 'Cotton: the fabric of our lives' commercial stretched out for two and a half hours with a better quality National Graphic episode thrown in. An old photograph from one's own past can more effectively evoke such thoughts than that of Malick's pretty picture diorama.

It's beautiful I admit on many occasions and some of the details of growing up are beautifully done. My problem is not with its semi-narrative structure. I appreciate poetry as much as the next guy. It has to do with how it's put together. It's way, way too meandering. And the walk on the beach scene showcases Malick's gooey life affirming tendencies at its most cringe inducing worst.

Rageaholic

Under the Volcano (1984) - Huston

Al Finney's boosy Brit diplomat the south of the border is fun to watch. But it's a bit too melodramatic for me. I've heard a lot about Malcolm Lowry's book that the film is based on, filled with symbolism, details and whatnot about the looming WWII. The ominous vocano, white horse, Day of the Dead are all there in the background but they don't make that much of an impact on the story of a man who can't get over his wife's infidelity. Solidly done, and Finney's great. But I couldn't get over how a scrumptious woman like Jacqueline Bisset would come crawling back for pale, flabby man who is drinking himself to hell. He gets away with saying hurtful things because he is drunk. I've always hated that passive aggressive tendency about drunks. It still makes me curious about the book.

Fire Within

Saturday Night and Sunday Morning (1960) - Reisz

Whatever people say I am, that's what I am not.

With his rugged good looks and swagger, Arthur (young Albert Finney) is a hard working, hard drinking factory worker. Constant trouble maker in arrested development, he has to face the consequences and think about settling down when he gets his girlfriend at the moment- a wife of a co-worker, Brenda (Rachel Roberts) pregnant and meets pretty, young Doreen (Shirley Ann Field). Would he change his ways and become like his characterless parents who only know work and TV?


Saturday Night is a matter of fact depiction of working class. "All I'm out for is a good time - all the rest is propaganda." Arthur declares in his narration early on. Finney's at his best being a brut without real menace. Straight laced Roberts plays an object of desire for a good looking working class bloke here and again in This Sporting Life for young Richard Harris three years later.


Quoted and loved by many British rockers- from Steve Ignorant of Crass to Morrissey to Arctic Monkeys, I can see how Arthur's take-it-or-leave-it attitude appealed to many young men before Travis Bickle age.

Heartbreak Capital

Cafe Noir (2009) - Jeoung

Cafe Noir is screening for free Tuesday, June 21 at 7:00 PM, as part of Korean Movie Night at Tribeca Cinemas. You can find more details and information on the Subway Cinema site.


Jeoung Sung-il, a well regarded Korean film critic, makes a directorial debut with Cafe Noir, largely based on two works of literature - Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther and Dostoevsky's White Nights. This sprawling three hours plus contemplation on love and heartbreak also draws from many different cinematic sources. This concoction doesn't always work, but is still quite intoxicating. And in Jeoung's hands, Seoul, the neon megalopolis, becomes the new capital of the heartbroken.


The film opens with a young woman unwrapping and eating a hamburger while looking up forlornly to the heavens in what appears to be an indoor mall. Tears roll down on her cheeks as we see her stuffing her face in real time. She is our Joan of Arc of the fastfood age, christening the film.


Young-soo (Shin Ha-gyun, Sympathy for Mr, Vengeance, Save the Green Planet), a music teacher, is first seen getting dumped by his lover- a mother of one of his pupils, on a Christmas eve. Not accepting the defeat, he devises a plan to off the obstacle (the woman's monstrous, Rilke quoting husband). When he fails to kill the husband of his lover, Young-soo realizes that for the happiness of the woman he loves, it is he who needs to be out of the picture.


For the second part of the film, Young-soo re-emerges, only to go through another crushing heartbreak. He meets a young woman on a bridge by chance (showcasing the brightly restored Chung-gye creek which runs through the heart of Seoul). She begs him not to fall in love with her, but to be a confidant and proceeds to tell him a sob story in one long take- she has been waiting for her lover on the bridge for a year. They made a promise to meet after a year if they still love each other. Tonight might be the night, or tomorrow night, or the night after.... Her lover is obviously not coming, and our melancholic hero can't help falling for this delusional, yet vibrant, lovesick woman.


With its deliberate episodic pacing, arduous monologues, forever tracking shots, mix of B&W/color photography, a lot of intriguing supporting characters and a lot of film references (from The Red Balloon to The Band of Outsiders' dancing sequence to jabbing at recent Korean movie hits- Old Boy and The Host), Cafe Noir is a truly astounding cinematic examination of unrequited love.


With everything mapped out to a tee, Jeoung's style is quite the opposite of Wong Kar-wai. But it wouldn't be a stretch to regard him from now on as Wong's cerebral brother.

Wrong Play!

The Dresser (1983) - Yates


The setting is WWII London. Norman (Tom Courtenay) is a dresser to an aging Shakespearean actor, known only as Sir (Albert Finney in his career best). The only reason the senile actor can marginally perform his Othello, Macbeth, Richard III, King Lear night after night without fail is because of Norman. He dresses, washes, coerces, pep-talks, encourages, feeds lines to, takes insults and rants from the old man.

Sir has a close call and ends up in a hospital after he throws a fit in the bombed out London street. As the theater staff contemplate on shutting down the production, they find him returned to his dressing room and being incoherent. Is he going to be somewhat ready for tonight's performance of King Lear?

With Ronald Harwood (The Pianist, Diving Bell and the Butterfly)'s blistering script, the two of the most gifted British actors go mano-a-mano. Watching them in real time as Norman harangues downright deranged Sir to get ready is an exhausting experience. Norman is at once Salieri to Sir's Mozart, Felix to Oscar, Ratso to Buck, King to Fool. Thanks to Courtenay, Norman's affection and devotion for his master is real and heartfelt. Very awesome.

Feline Curse

Kuroneko/Black Cat (1968) - Shindo


The film starts with the farmers- mother and her daughter-in-law, gang raped and their house burned down by a band of lawless samurai. The women's black house cat ringers around their charred corpses. The setting is warring medieval Japan.


When they appear again, they are beautifully dressed courtesans luring the samruai in to the bamboo forest in the middle of the night and sucking their blood dry. Distressed leader sends the rising young samurai to destroy these monsters. The fate would have it, the young samurai happens to be the son and the husband of the two farmers who were raped and killed.


As shown in his Onibaba, Kaneto Shindo again, shows his hatred for the ruling warrior class and greed. Black Cat follows the best Japanese ghost story traditon, a la Ugetsu. Also it is the rape revenge story that is far more artful and elegant. The theatrical set and dramatic lighting are beautifully composed. It also features some great wire work and beautiful day for night shots. Very worth checking out.
_________________

What is Flesh Alone?

Je Vous Salue, Marie/Hail Mary (1985) - Godard









Godard's take on Virgin Mary might have been seen as an assault on Christianity and the idea of Immaculate Conception but it's actually about one of his usual themes- body/soul dichotomy. What's refreshing about Hail Mary is it's also about relationship between two young people being tested: can they love one another without touching? I can see the film's influence on many younger filmmakers whom I once religiously followed, namely Leos Carax and Hal Hartley with their brooding anti-heroic archetypes.


Hail Mary is perhaps the most beautiful color film I've ever seen. Punctuated by amazingly graceful nature photography and anchored by Myriem Roussel's Marie, a high school basketball player and a virgin who finds herself being pregnant. Marie's questioning "what is flesh alone...?" and her struggle to keep herself chaste is touching and deeply felt. It's the presence of Roussel that differentiates Hail Mary from Godard's post-Anna Karina cynicism.


From what I hear, Hail Mary is one of the last films before Godard turned his direction toward visual essays of the 90s which I find dry and uninteresting. Call me old fashioned, but for me ideas are still best conveyed through stories and characters, not in the lecture halls(movie theaters) that Godard still seems to preside over. Cinematically no one can top Godard's playfulness in the 60s, not even Godard himself. But this is a gorgeous stuff. Easily a top ten material for me.