The cinema thread

[Faust]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread

I watched Kiki's Delivery Service. I didn't like the story at all, too fluffy. It's stands nowhere near Spirited Away in terms of plot, character, and animation IMO.

[laika]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread



I finally saw Pan's Labyrinth. [W]</p>

I thought it was insanely good, and tremendously sad. I got depressed about the Spanish Revolution all over again, and am now reading Homage to Catalonia for the second time. </p>


</p>

[Faust]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread

/\ I'm glad you went. It is an amazing film. I need to read Homage to Catalonia. I've never read Orwell's books (except 1984, of course), only essays.

[laika]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread



You will love it. It's quite hilarious in parts, while also capturing the hopelessness/sadness of the war. I couldn't put it down.
</p>

I really liked how the movie fused fantasy with the real--i wasn't expecting the two dimension to coexist that way. Had anticipated something much more, ahem, allegorical. The violence was stunning.
</p>

[Faust]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread



I rented The Departed on DVD. Big meh. The botched up ending spoiled the whole movie. If they give Scorcese an Oscar that (and they will have to one day, otherwise he'll never go away), I'll puke.</p>

Can't wait for Babel on DVD next week!</p>

[sbw4224]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread

Interesting that you see The Departed that way, yet like Babel? I thought Babel was pretty mediocre and completely copied the story structure of Amores Perros. I don't think The Departed should win an oscar, but I thought it was pretty entertaining.

[Faust]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread



[quote user="sbw4224"]Interesting that you see The Departed that way, yet like Babel? I thought Babel was pretty mediocre and completely copied the story structure of Amores Perros. I don't think The Departed should win an oscar, but I thought it was pretty entertaining.
[/quote]</p>

I haven't seen Babel yet, I just said I look forward to seeing it :-)</p>

[sbw4224]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread

Ah, my bad [:$]. I took your sentence to mean you wanted to purchase it.

[designersheep]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread

Forget Babel, and forget The Departed.

Here is a quote from a post I've made on a film forum about two years ago. It is about elliptical filmmaking, and how some great directors use ellipsis in their directing style. I'm doing this just to get all of your interest level up on the directors I like, instead of your typical Hollywood fest like Babel lol,

[quote user="designersheep"]
Also, I agree how Bresson ended up shaping his own 'artificial' style, but that is the end result. What I tried to say was more of his philosophy and his approach. He tried to reach the truth by stripping away artificiality, and it is up to us to judge whether the end result was with or without artificiality. One can say his films have unnatural acting, but my view is that no acting can truly be natural to everyone, and no storytelling can ever be the same as the truth, whatever that means.

Narrative films are essentially the reflections of the real life, and everything in films are abstractions of the reality. Even directors like Cassavetes who heavily relies on the natural 'feel', the films aren't the reality, they are abstractions of the reality; because one eventually has to decide what to show, how to show, in which angle to show, and all that stuff in a feature length. Bresson understands this, and chooses to go in an extreme direction of stripping away everything (in his own way - Eric Rohmer does it in another way, I think), and creates his films. What he shows us, if we look at them cut by cut, are not realistic at all. Instead, his way of showing us series of images evokes the thoughts of reality within us; and essentially we are filling in the gaps our way, and each one of us fills the gaps (or analyzes the abstract images) in our own way, which would be the most intimate, real, and personal way to each of us. Well... I am going all gibberish now.
[/quote]

[quote user="designersheep"]
I think so. I don't know whether the term 'elliptical style' is solidified around film critics, but I think there is more to it than just what you and I have said above. Most notable examples of the directors with elliptical style would be Bresson, Ozu, and Antonioni; but they all have different approaches of ellipsis. I'll explain a bit about those 3 directors here, and these are mostly from my personal analysis, not something I read elsewhere, and I would love to hear different views on them.

Ozu is perhaps the easiest to explain. In his films he chooses not to show anything that would be the 'key acts' to the narrative. For example, if an arbitrary story involves a couple getting to know each other and then end up getting married, then what we would be shown by Ozu would be something like; everyday life of the couple -&gt; some narratively unimportant scenes of their encounters -&gt; gap -&gt; people talking about how those two are often seen together -&gt; gap -&gt; aftermath (drinking party?) of a marriage with a brief glimpse of the bride -&gt; etc. He does this because those 'special occasions' are not important. The important thing he wanted to show us are the everyday lives of people and how those occasions/acts end up changing their everyday lives. I think that is why he shows over and over seemingly mundane scenes (over and over across all of his films, not just within a single film). To simplify a bit here, Ozu uses ellipsis to discard what is unimportant.

Antonioni is the opposite of Ozu in terms of what he does not show. I've only seen 4 of Antonioni's films, but here's what I gathered. The common thing between Ozu and Antonioni's elliptical techniques would be that they both discards the 'key acts', but while Ozu does it to focus on what is important to him, Antonioni does it to obscure it. When Ozu skips a scene, we know what happened, but with Antonioni, we don't. The reason he does this (or why I think he does this) would be that his films IS about the mystery itself. He creates gaps that cannot be filled, and his film characters lives are heavily affected by those mysteries. I think this is a really wonderful and unique style that is distinctively Antonioni's, and he adds it in other dimensions too, such as acting (characters say a lot of things without meaning them) and camera angles. Antonioni uses ellipsis to hide what is important.

Now, Bresson has another approach. In addition to what you've quoted me above (lack of explanations and missing explanatory scenes/cuts/images), there's also the acting. Not only he is using ellipsis in terms of editing, he uses it on the acting methodology; stripping away all the emotions from his 'models' to create 'ellipsis of reason'. What I mean by this is that because his actors are so emotionless, we often don't know why they say/do certain things. Then comes in the filling the gaps part again. Therefore Bresson lets us be part of his film world by the use of ellipsis.

Ok, there. I have to confess that ALL of my posts in this forum are spontaneous, therefore I often make mistakes and say gibberish or say things I think otherwise. Anyhow, this is how I feel now, and it may change after watching another film or reading something about something

Thanks for reading.
[/quote]

I had to quote myself instead of writing one up, because I've decided to stop writing about films about a year ago; my words are just too snobbish and shoddy to truthfully describe the greatness of the films I love. I hate the way I write about films :P

P.S. I have watched neither Babel nor The Departed... and I have nothing against them. :)

[Servo2000]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread

Interesting, designersheep! It reminds me of something I was discussing today with my pottery professor about painting. I can't remember much of what we were discussing, but the center was about how abstraction and certain styles within painting can actually create more realistic images, or images that are more realistic to the viewer. Comparing two of my recent paintings, one an interpretation of cubism the other a more realistic oil, in a very real way to me the cubist portrait appears more "realistic" (which I believe was, in fact, the intent of many of the original cubists) as it... imitates life better, perhaps, by avoiding the stoicism and single perspective of traditional portaiture. I'm still working on my ability to speak precisely about these sort of things, some points are eluding my ability to describe accurately. More reading to do, apparently. <DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>The manner in which you describe these directors purposely disrupting or disturbing a typical narrative to create an experience that is perhaps more in line with our true experiences speaks of a similiar concept to me, and I find it fascinating. </DIV><DIV><BR class="khtml-block-placeholder"></DIV><DIV>Then again, I could be way off. </DIV>

[designersheep]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread

Yes, exactly. Are you in an art school? Sounds really great that you get to discuss these matters with professors.

I've read on cubism before, but I've now totally forgotten what the cubists intentions were :P

I think the parallel can also be drawn with impressionistic paintings; just at different levels of abstraction. Ofcourse, the intent of the impressionists were to express the images the way they see/feel instead of how the world sees it. And interestingly enough there was a period in cinema history around 1930s with these impressionistic films and filmmakers who made films with exaggerated mis-en-scene, acting, and lighting; but from my pov, they were interpreting impressionism in how painters would think, not in the dimension of the film. The unique dimension that exist in film but not in painting, is 'time', and I think with the examples from my post above, the directors I've mentioned applies the technique not only on how things look like, but also on how things are structured in time.

And if you wanna discuss even more abstract examples, more parallels can be drawn between painters like Pollock who don't even paint 'real things' , and filmmakers like Stan Brakhage who paints directly on actual 'films' and run them through projectors to visualize abstract movements of colors and so on.

Since cinema is a relatively young art form (and often not even accepted as an art form due to overwhelming amount of entertainment purpose films), its history does tend to follow the footsteps of other forms of art, especially painting, photography, theatre, and literature. Despite that, there are many great film directors who made films that cannot be translated into other art forms, and they are probably the reason I am so in love with cinema.

[designersheep]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread

On a similar note,

A French new-wave film director Jean-Luc Godard, has often applied techniques developed by theatre director Bertolt Brecht. Brecht was infamous for breaking all the rules of the theatre. His plays often had scenes where suddenly actors singing their lines inappropriately, talking to the audience, or other weird shit. The acting ranged from wooden to overacting, and lots of unrealistic acting principles were applied. In fact, he HATED Stanislavsky system which was widely accepted.

*Stanislavsky is the father of realism in stage acting, and 'method actors' such as James Dean, Marlon Brando, and Bob DeNiro uses his 'system'. The idea is based on actors conditioning themselves so that they actually feel what the characters are supposed to feel, so that the emotion comes internally. Instead of trying to express the feelings, the system encouraged the actors to hide the feelings, but in order to hide something, one has to have it inside :)

Brecht introduced all these 'distractions' in order to let the audiences know that they are only watching a play. He didn't want his audiences to be immersed in his plays. He added all sorts of crazy obstacles to prevent it! WHY? Because he wanted the audiences to think for themselves. Brecht's plays openly admitted to the audiences that what they are watching is only a play, but from there the audiences stop seeing the play and start seeing the ideas, the topics, and the message behind the play. He wanted us to see things for what they are, and decide what is right or wrong, or even if there is right or wrong. He didn't want to dictate us and force his views upon us (although this is inevitable to a certain degree, and he certainly did have plenty of messages to tell). He didn't want to do a play where we can enjoy the ride and come out with a grand conclusion that the good prevails, or life is difficult, or whatever most comedies, tragedies, and other genre plays aim to achieve. He wanted to make us come out of the theatre and to think about what they have seen for days or even weeks afterwards, and coming up with their own conclusions on various ideas discussed within.

Now it's really funny how I talk all this about Brecht, and I haven't attended a single play in my entire life. What I did were reading Brecht's essays, and watch about 25 films by Jean-Luc Godard, who has applied all these 'Brechtian' techniques to his films.

Godard is an inconsistent (in a good way) and totally unpredictable director, so it would be too much of a simplification to say Godard is the cinema equivalent of Brecht; but it wouldn't be so wrong to say Bertolt Brecht had the biggest influence on Godard's films, and most of these techniques are applied in one of his greatest films, Weekend. In that film, we see characters who talk directly to the camera, and a recently dead character suddenly starting to narrate the film (oops... this is Pierrot Le Fou but you get the idea), and an actor playing three different characters, and all sorts of crazy things. Rent and watch Weekend (I know Fuuma is a big fan too!).

[nairb49]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread

[quote user="Faust"]

I rented The Departed on DVD. Big meh. The botched up ending spoiled the whole movie. If they give Scorcese an Oscar that (and they will have to one day, otherwise he'll never go away), I'll puke.</p>

Can't wait for Babel on DVD next week!</p>

[/quote]</p>

</p>

I wholeheartedly agree with that. So many people have been pushing for Scorses to get the award, "cause he deserves one" but definitely not for The Departed. Give him one of those "lifetime achievement" awards or whatnot. </p>

[Faust]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread

[quote user="nairb49"][quote user="Faust"]

I rented The Departed on DVD. Big meh. The botched up ending spoiled the whole movie. If they give Scorcese an Oscar that (and they will have to one day, otherwise he'll never go away), I'll puke.</p>

Can't wait for Babel on DVD next week!</p>

[/quote]</p>

</p>

I wholeheartedly agree with that. So many people have been pushing for Scorses to get the award, "cause he deserves one" but definitely not for The Departed. Give him one of those "lifetime achievement" awards or whatnot. </p>

[/quote]</p>

That's actually a good idea! I think he should've gotten one for Casino if anything.</p>

[Faust]

Re: Photography is truth. The cinema is truth twenty-four times per second: The cinema thread



[quote user="designersheep"]Forget Babel, and forget The Departed.

Here is a quote from a post I've made on a film forum about two years ago. It is about elliptical filmmaking, and how some great directors use ellipsis in their directing style. I'm doing this just to get all of your interest level up on the directors I like, instead of your typical Hollywood fest like Babel lol,

[quote user="designersheep"]
Also, I agree how Bresson ended up shaping his own 'artificial' style, but that is the end result. What I tried to say was more of his philosophy and his approach. He tried to reach the truth by stripping away artificiality, and it is up to us to judge whether the end result was with or without artificiality. One can say his films have unnatural acting, but my view is that no acting can truly be natural to everyone, and no storytelling can ever be the same as the truth, whatever that means.

Narrative films are essentially the reflections of the real life, and everything in films are abstractions of the reality. Even directors like Cassavetes who heavily relies on the natural 'feel', the films aren't the reality, they are abstractions of the reality; because one eventually has to decide what to show, how to show, in which angle to show, and all that stuff in a feature length. Bresson understands this, and chooses to go in an extreme direction of stripping away everything (in his own way - Eric Rohmer does it in another way, I think), and creates his films. What he shows us, if we look at them cut by cut, are not realistic at all. Instead, his way of showing us series of images evokes the thoughts of reality within us; and essentially we are filling in the gaps our way, and each one of us fills the gaps (or analyzes the abstract images) in our own way, which would be the most intimate, real, and personal way to each of us. Well... I am going all gibberish now.
[/quote]

[quote user="designersheep"]
I think so. I don't know whether the term 'elliptical style' is solidified around film critics, but I think there is more to it than just what you and I have said above. Most notable examples of the directors with elliptical style would be Bresson, Ozu, and Antonioni; but they all have different approaches of ellipsis. I'll explain a bit about those 3 directors here, and these are mostly from my personal analysis, not something I read elsewhere, and I would love to hear different views on them.

Ozu is perhaps the easiest to explain. In his films he chooses not to show anything that would be the 'key acts' to the narrative. For example, if an arbitrary story involves a couple getting to know each other and then end up getting married, then what we would be shown by Ozu would be something like; everyday life of the couple -&gt; some narratively unimportant scenes of their encounters -&gt; gap -&gt; people talking about how those two are often seen together -&gt; gap -&gt; aftermath (drinking party?) of a marriage with a brief glimpse of the bride -&gt; etc. He does this because those 'special occasions' are not important. The important thing he wanted to show us are the everyday lives of people and how those occasions/acts end up changing their everyday lives. I think that is why he shows over and over seemingly mundane scenes (over and over across all of his films, not just within a single film). To simplify a bit here, Ozu uses ellipsis to discard what is unimportant.

Antonioni is the opposite of Ozu in terms of what he does not show. I've only seen 4 of Antonioni's films, but here's what I gathered. The common thing between Ozu and Antonioni's elliptical techniques would be that they both discards the 'key acts', but while Ozu does it to focus on what is important to him, Antonioni does it to obscure it. When Ozu skips a scene, we know what happened, but with Antonioni, we don't. The reason he does this (or why I think he does this) would be that his films IS about the mystery itself. He creates gaps that cannot be filled, and his film characters lives are heavily affected by those mysteries. I think this is a really wonderful and unique style that is distinctively Antonioni's, and he adds it in other dimensions too, such as acting (characters say a lot of things without meaning them) and camera angles. Antonioni uses ellipsis to hide what is important.

Now, Bresson has another approach. In addition to what you've quoted me above (lack of explanations and missing explanatory scenes/cuts/images), there's also the acting. Not only he is using ellipsis in terms of editing, he uses it on the acting methodology; stripping away all the emotions from his 'models' to create 'ellipsis of reason'. What I mean by this is that because his actors are so emotionless, we often don't know why they say/do certain things. Then comes in the filling the gaps part again. Therefore Bresson lets us be part of his film world by the use of ellipsis.

Ok, there. I have to confess that ALL of my posts in this forum are spontaneous, therefore I often make mistakes and say gibberish or say things I think otherwise. Anyhow, this is how I feel now, and it may change after watching another film or reading something about something

Thanks for reading.
[/quote]

I had to quote myself instead of writing one up, because I've decided to stop writing about films about a year ago; my words are just too snobbish and shoddy to truthfully describe the greatness of the films I love. I hate the way I write about films :P

P.S. I have watched neither Babel nor The Departed... and I have nothing against them. :)

[/quote]</p>

I agree with your analysis (especially in the first part, the second part I can't judge because I haven't seen films by either), but I don't see how it should take away from a film like Babel :-) I do agree that Hollywood is absolutely incapable of showing grit, even their super serious films are always somehow dressed up. So, while I also think you can't show reality as it is, films very in their visceral impact - it is that impact, I think, that makes us think, "Wow, that was real."</p>